This build is amazing. I've been watching a Japanese house restoration YouTube channel called Tokyo Llama and I'd say this is on the level of the people they hire to do their carpentry. Except this is a PC build! The best of both worlds! Absolutely love it!
How patient you are Dude ! Your woodwork is gorgeous, neat. I feel your calm mood when I see your work. And all is always clean around ! You are exaclty what i'm not able to. The strictly reverse
Thanks everyone! I hope you all continue to enjoy the log and like the finished project. Distro Plate Part I This will take a while but here is the first part of the distribution/pump/wiring plate. I decided to start on the smallest part in case I screwed it up and needed to start over. For all these cuts, I used a single flute bit, either 1/4 inch, 1/8 inch or 2mm for all the small stuff. Here goes nothing, this will hold the pump: First cuts made: Threads proved challenging for me, partially because I forgot what I had figured out when I did them the first time. Eventually I got them to work though: After this I flipped the piece over and cut all of the screw holes as well as water channels:
Distro Plate Part II This is a little out of order but it will all make sense later. I was going to put wiring access on the motherboard side but I eventually figured out it made more sense to put it on the GPU side. I did many iterations of this design that I used for mockups but I'll cover that more in the wiring section. However I decided to cut the wiring channels while also doing the water cooling part of the distro plate to minimize setups: Blank Slate: First blood. The beginnings of the wiring channels. This will lead to the RGB header on the motherboard: More channels. This will hold the CPU power cable along with RGB lighting hub: From here I started the water-cooling section again, first by drilling about a million holes: After that, I flipped over the work piece and routed the channels for the water cooling along with the O-Ring channels: Practice vs the real thing: With fingers crossed I combined the two sides with some practice o-rings to check fitment. To my delight everything worked out:
Having already seen the finished result, I'm still astounded by the methods used. I'd have had a pint of glue all over the Kumiko
I'd have a pint of glue in my hair. Woodwork is a lot easier at the cabinet scale. Shrinking it down to SFF makes any slip really visible.
This is why I use actual damage for weathering effects. If you slip up and damage something then mission acomplished
The nice thing about the kumiko was I didn’t really need to glue anything. The only things that eventually got some glue were the corners but it wasn’t really needed. I decided that I’d probably end up making it messier than it was. I also decided not to take it apart to sand the edges (but it was crunch time too so fiddly little stuff didn’t seem fun)
Since I am making a pretty small PC I needed a pretty small power supply. Luckily I got my hands on a Cooler Master 650w SFX power supply which is surprisingly small for how much power it has: I wanted to make a holder for this that goes with the rest of the case and since Wenge is so strong, I decided to make a thinner holder with this. As usual I made a few test pieces to get the basic dimensions: I then needed to get the stock ready. I resawed some Wenge stock with my bandsaw: Resawing left a surprisingly smooth surface but I cleaned it up with the drum sander anyway. First things first though, time to glue up! All cleaned up: Similar to the main case Wenge, I wanted the grain to be continuous so I cut it accordingly: I wanted to showcase dovetails as a design element in case so I chose to use them again here. Luckily these were much easier as they were much smaller. Marking: First cuts: Marking some more: More cutting: And after some cleanup we end up with more dovetail joints: I needed to make the cutout to mount the PSU to so I cut this out on the CNC with a 2mm O flute bit: It works!
No milling fuzz on the edges! I wouldn't trust that thin join to hold the PSU if you were running this through the post office, but it looks beautiful.
Haha thank you, neither would I. I also realized there’s only one contact point attaching the distro to the top of the case but it seems ok so far. Luckily the wenge is super hard so I’ve treated it almost like metal instead of wood.
Thanks! Luckily, if your computer is catching on fire then you have other problems. The cooling won't be effected by the wood so we are all good.
I decided to attach the PSU bracket to the acrylic with both screws and a dado joint. To do the dado, I used my trusty router table: With this done, I located some holes to screw the bracket into the acrylic and used the same 6-32 screws I've used on most other things so far. Next I needed some vent holes for the PSU fan and some holes for the power supply cables. I decided on a simple design that would get the job without attracting too much attention to itself.
Once I had the holes for the GPU and Motherboard made into the central acrylic panel and knew where they were going to sit in relation to the bottom wenge portion, I could make the holders for these along with corresponding holes in the Wenge. They would look something like these: I used more of the 12mm acrylic: And cut them out: From there, I marked their placement on the Wenge and matched up the holes on the real thing vs the CNC model: Luckily I measured well and got the holes in the right place: Next I made holes from the bottom to attach the acrylic with countersunk screws: Lastly, I sanded the edges and made a slight chamfer:
I needed a little piece to hold down the GPU to the acrylic mount. Eagle-eyed readers will notice how the photo above does not match the final version. This is because I kept messing up and made this three times. Slow down to speed up is my motto but sometimes I forget. I also cut out the profile on the bottom as seen in the photo: And the final version:
Earlier I routed a hole and groove for the PSU power cable and fan cables shown below. I wanted to put a cover on this to hide most of the wiring: I picked a piece with matching grain to make this as hidden as possible and ripped it to the right size: I thought about using the CNC for this but hand tools worked better in this case: Getting close, I just need to do the rounded corners: And a small slot for the cable to pass through: All done and ready for sanding:
Not only did you make the GPU holder three times, you also posted it twice Full respect for making these little parts so damn accurate