Scratch Build – In Progress Project: AshTek (Update, 04 July - Motherboard tray & Drive bay)

Some of you proberly know me and know af my project I've been designing over the past 6 months+. I had a thread on the modding forum getting feedback about the designs. It's been a long time in the process, mainly due to me striving for perfection in my designs.

The hardware I initially bought for the project was:

Mobo: Asus A8N VM CSM uATX
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
Memory: 2GB Corsair XMS3200C2PT
GPU: Gainward 6800GS 512MB
PSU: Hiper TypeR 580W
HD1: 80GB Seagate Barracuda
HD2: 200GB Seagate Barracuda
Optical: NEC DVD+-RW

Since then I have upgraded to:

Mobo: Abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD uATX
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
Memory: Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2-6400C4 TwinX
HD3: 320GB Seagate Barracuda
HD4: 500GB Seagate Barracuda

Right on with the project.

I am planning on a Small Form Factor case built from scratch out of wood, Ash to be exact. I started building the case a while back, but put off creating a project log untill I had a decent amount of work completed because I knew it was going to be slow going.

Here's the final renders of the designs for the case:






Right on to what has already been done:

To begin with a furniture maker mate of mine planed down a board of Ash down to the required 15mm thickness. He then cup the initial 6 pieces to size and put a mitre (45degree) angle on all sides. A great thanks goes out to him for doing this inital step for me, a step he did because his boss wasn't hugely willimg for me to use the large machines necessary!

I have no pictures of this process, but here's the final result:




And temporarily taped together to find the best fit and to see how the joints turned out:




There are small gaps on some of the joints, but easily fixable when it comes to glueing them together




And a final shot for size comparisons


This is how the project stayed for a number of months because I was unable to get to his workshop 20 miles away. But recently I managed to borrow my mums car once a fortnight (I live in a flat with my g/f by the way) to go to the workshop and get on with the project.

More in a bit.

 

hahah when i first saw the 3d render i thought it was the actual thing!!!! lol

nice work! i like the design

 

Looking good!
Just make sure -when you are still going for those rounded edges- that the joint looks good from the outside AND the inside. You wouldn't want unexpected gaps to show up once you've rounded them.

Second: the ends of would don't glue very well. (Talk to anyone that works with wood (greensabbath in the house?), they will tell you you can't really glue them at all.) So make sure you have other means of attaching the boards together.
It might even be something you could incorporate in your design.

Good luck, and remember measure and fit at least 6 times... Wood is a beautiful material, but your case will fall or stand on the amount of thought and time you put in the joining.

 

The rest of the pictures from no on were taken using a new camera bought after Christmas instead of my useless cameraphone.

I started off marking up the front pannel of the case.


In this picture there is space for 2no. 120mm SilentX fans and a slot for the optical drive to pass through.The next essential step when working with wood was to scribe the cutting lines using a sharp knife to stop the edges of the cuts chipping when working on them:


Slightly closer:


The fans are counter sunk into the wood by 10mm as space inside the case will be at a premium. To do this I used a very versatile tool.... a router:


In the above shot you will see that I have setup a straight edge to guide the router in a straight line using a ruled edge. Then I started off routering a channel around the edges of where the fans would sit. Closeup of the inital cut:


I learned a valuable lesson early on, always move the router against the way it wants to move, otherwise it sometimes catches and this happens:


After the outer edges were done they looked like this:






I then continued to remove the wood left in the middle, using the router freehand this time. One done:


Both finished:


I then cut out the slot for the optical drive, sorry forgot to take progress shots, but I basically drilled four holes in each corner and then used a jigsaw to finish the cut. I then used the router to straighten the edges right up to the line:


Using a chisel to square the corners:


Thats it for now, I need to render a new shot of the inside of case, showing the layout of all the components I'm cramming into this small case.

 

Don't worry about the jointing. It's going to be increadibly hard to do, but I have done it before using this style of construction. One fo my best mates is a fully trained cabinet maker, he uses a new glue that's similar to the expanding foam used to fill in the gaps when installing windows in houses etc. The glue actually expands into all the grain a pores in the wood, this means the joint is actually stronger than the rest of wood itself!

The main reason I used this jointing tecnique is for the fact you can't see any of the joints, they all hide each other, which is exacly what I wanted. The fact that I'm rounding all the corners will also hide any of the imperfections of cut, chips etc. that have collected on the perfect 45 degree edge

 

I was wondering when your project would re-start..

Makes me want to re-start my wooden pc ideals..

 

Cheers Mankz.

Just quickly rendering a few new pictures of the case with my new version of Viz. Really getting the hang of the lighting.......... at last.

Thanks also to x06jsp fr your kind words. The new renders should look alot better.

Just to let everyone know, I will be updating frequently as alot more of the case has been completed. More in the next couple of days.

 

nice look forward to the updates

 

Well done

Well done, looks good. Keep up the good work.

 

looking good! nice mill!


YOU MUST TELL ME WHAT CAD PROGRAM THAT IS: could you give me the whole name for it?

thanks

 

just so you know its a plunge router not a mill.

 

The program I used to design the case was Autodesk AutoCAD (was using version 2006 when I designed this, but now onto 2008).

When I have the basic design, i.e. without materials or lighting etc. I port the model into Autodesk Viz (was using version 2004 for this, but now onto 2008 also).

Autodesk Viz is basically an Architectural based 3DSMax that has a direct link to AutoCAD i.e change something in AutoCAD, it changes in Viz next time you load it.

Here's another quick project I've been working on over the last month or so, there's still alot more to do:


That shows some of the capabilities of this software which now includes MentalRay out of the box if anyones interested.

Right, I've gotta get to work.

 

This is starting to really interest me, love the design

 

Forgot to give a huge thanks to TheoGeo for the help he gave me during the design stages. He was the one who came up with the idea of the second front that would cover the fan's etc.

Thanks to everyone else who also gave their input.

[thread=115001]Link to the design thred in the modding forum[/thread]

 

This is case looks nice, wooden computers are undergoing are surge in popularity right now...
I'm making one myself.


H.B.

 

Looking really nice. Cool designs. Hope all goes well

 

Small Update

I've gotta go out tonight for a friends 22nd, so this is going to be a small update.

First off, Heatsink lapping.

A quick picture showing my CPU heatsink, a Zalman CNPS9500 LED and the Premium heatsink lapping kit from Custom Pc's which includes the following grits:
400
600
800
1000
40micron
25micron
20micron
15micron
10micron


This is how the base looked when I bought it:


It seemed to be pretty flat, but not very shiny.

This is how it looked ater going through the 400-1000 grit sandpaper:


Still pretty blurry. After 5-10min with each of the remaining 100-10micron papers it looks pretty good, good enough for my needs:




Also lapped the base of my VGA cooler, a Zalman VF700-Cu LED:


A before and after shot:




I'm not sure why the very bottom the the base looks kinda cloudy, I tried to get rid of it, but I was worried of sanding down the base too much!

I'll show more of what I've done tomorrow.

 

Looking cool, cant wait for more updates.

 

Anything below 1200 is useless. You want the base of your Heatsink flat first, polished if possible, but flatness is the most important.

 

Yeh I used the 400-1000 to get the base flat first. Then used the 40-10 micron to polish.

The CPU coolers base is completely flat. The kit included a piece of glass to lay the sandpaper on (using some water to keep it in place) which ensures a flat finish.

I don't think the Graphics Card cooler was completely flat, still isn't, but I couldn't sand it any more! On the outer edges of the base the cut's for the fins were starting to show through. The cooler uses one slab of copper which is then sliced to make the fins and then bent apart. Not good in my opinion, so I decided it was better to have a slighly off flat base than ruining it and having to buy a new one.

I'll try and take a closeup shot sometime, if I take it off the graphics card again that is.

Cheers.