Scratch Build – In Progress Project: FUGGDIVINO (100% Complete)

Thanks for that mate, any info would e great.

 

@ jrs77, ty there will be lighting

@ alpaca, ty , was trying to avoid polishing the case and bits n pieces as I have polished a custom case before and its sooooooooooooooooooo time consuming, but the option for it is still there, still early days in the project though. Side panels, are just a thought in my mind at the moment.

@ tjay@TJ, ty maybe a prison ship , containing an alien?

@ [ZiiP] NoloaC, ty

@ Voluntary_Pariah, ty , Nibbler spring exploded today, so will be agetting a few new ones on the weekend.

@ Sni9er, the best kind

@ The boy 4rom oz, ty

@ malccy, ty , dremel + flex shaft + titanium cutting bit and metal files to clean up the edges, and later on I'll be sanding and flame polishing the edges to clean it up and give the edges that smooth look.

@ Sleepstreamer, honored to have you here Sleep, you've been one of my inspirations and ty

 

Took a bit of a rest so my hands could recoup, and worked some more on the acrylic getting things right, making sure bolt holes were big enough for bolts, etc, then did an overall test fit.

Also finished off the DVD bezel thingy...


Made sure the lian li DVD bezels fit.

Moved onto the chassis construction, and for a few hours got stuck.

You see I designed the front panel and the back panel and just didn't have any forethought in making the chassis at all, so I stumped myself, as I'm up to that point in the build where everything should tie in nicely to the case, I have failed somewhat.
So.....<adds thinking music>...
Need a plan of attack...
<light bulb moment>
A few hours looking at the front and back panels and thinking of ways in which to do this, finally I had a vision, and the more I played with the idea in my head, the more it made sense.
I'm going to make a plain looking box, but I have to think about everything else as well, so I have to answer all these questions to know if it will in fact work.

1. Will the case obscure the motherboard tray in any way?
2. Is there enough room for the hard drive bay/s?
3. Will the case be easy to access or impossible to access?
4. Will the top, left and right panels be easy to remove? (for maintenance at a later time if called for)
5. Will there be ample cooling?
6. Cable management.

I was able to negotiate all these questions into my simple design for the case.

So I will begin this chassis journey with you now and you can see how it unfolds and whether my thoughts will be a success or a fail.


I cut me some 'L' shape Aluminium and fashioned a rectangle from them.


The front panel is pretty heavy mostly due to the Acrylic that's been afixed to it, so I'll be cutting away a greater portion of it to reduce some weight.


Measure many a time before building the rectangle box which is now attached temporarily to the front panel.
It doesn't look like much at the moment, but in turn what will happen is that the chassis frame will slot into the outer edge of the fron panel frame and be riveted into place, or bolted. This will also apply to the rear panel which I'm in the process of building.
Doing it this way still gives me ample room to play with, within the case.
I'm guessing none of this makes sense as I type it, but as this progresses I hope through the photos you all will understand it alot better (as I'm having trouble trying to explain it in words).
So in theory, having the front and back slip around the chassis, will increase it strength and make everything tie in the way it should, I have also thought out how the top, bottom and left and right panels will be attached.


Random Photo.

I wanted to add that I usually spend anywhere up to 14 hours a day doing this but due to my hands hurting I'm slowing down to half days, so my large updates are being reduced to small ones spanned over the coming week/s

ty for viewing.

Seth

 

Extremely well done.Very original design.Congratulations.

 

Really taking shape very nicely.

 

Started on the back panel and had taken some pics of how I pieced the corners together but they all came out blurry, I'm not good at close up pics yet but am working on it.
Basically i piece the 4 x L shape Alu in a rectangle and used a larger L shape Alu to connect the corners together, and added 2 rivets to each piece so they all connect, then lined them up on the back panel, made some holes and drilled them out then drilled those out, added the acrylic, dremel those holes through, then put the whole lot together, one huge test fit.


Like so.

Also added the Lian-Li motherboard tray taken from my old series 7 server tower that I have no use for, but makes good as spares, and added it to the back panel.




Head on.

Close up.

I'm pretty wrapped how everything has turned out so far, but am far from finished, I decided to add an upper and lower piece of Alu tubing and connect the whole lot together just to see how it looks and how big it will eventually be, bare in mind that this isn't the build I'm going to be using, its just to see if I need to extend or shorten the overall size of the case, and from these next pics, you'll be able to see it's pretty big as is.







There doesn't appear to be a lot of room in it at the moment, so I may extend its length somewhat, to accommodate for the 5.25 bay nor the hard drive bay/s, these will be addressed when I commence the chassis build tomorrow, or later today.

The front and rear panels are also very heavy, even for a front and rear panel, so I will be cutting away some of the area within the rectangle bracket to lighten the panels a bit.

Still lots more to do

Seth

 

Looking very nice, I love your work.

 

This is looking great.....

 

I really like custom builds, and this is a very original concept. Its one thing to mod a case. It is another to build one from the ground up factoring in all of the design considerations like cooling, wire management, etc. I can appreciate your attention to detail. I'll have to keep an eye on this one.

 

now.. thats alot of filing.. wow.. great end result!

 

Thank you for the comments they are appreciated

I removed the majority of the acrylic from the front panel to make it lighter.


Before Dremel Hacking.


After Dremel Hacking.


Put it all back together to make sure it was still lining up and cleaned up the edges of the acrylic that was left over.


Sanded the front panel down, in preparation for painting.


This is a Lian Li 5.25 cage, cut in half more or less, this only hold 2 drives.
It was originally black and for the life of me I couldn't remove the paint via sanding, so instead I used a brass wire crush to remove the paint. Well that was a near fatal mistake, it shredded into the aluminium, but it was done, so I went to work on sanding it, a few hours later...


Its not as rough as it was, its actually pretty smooth, a decent undercoat and new paint and you wouldnt even know I did any damage to it.


Didn't remove all the paint though, but its a smooth finish none the less.


Riveted the cage to the front panel, everything lined up perfectly.




Sanded the front grill too, so it's also ready for primer and paint.


Random Shot.

Frame/Chassis construction or Deconstruction.

I have been working on this progressively during the week and this is how it stands at the moment, but I may change, because I thought of a different approach to the situation.


Using 20mm tubing, I built the frame of the front panel, and drilled holes over existing holes and put it all together, its not the best looking frame work, which is why I'm opting for a different approach, but it's a start none the less.

 

The process of the first panel that I didn't show you , but will show you with the rear panel, in regards to the acrylic.


Using a dremel with a cutting bit , I drilled a pilot hole with it and cut out the center part of the rear acrylic panel.


Removed the center piece, I cut maybe 1-2 mm from my actual drawn lines, so I could then file it to match the lines I had drawn, you can see the rough edges.


Filed and cleaned up, by no means the end of the process, I wont be flame polishing the edges till the very end as I want to keep the protective paper on until the very end of the mod.

Moving onto the PSU hole, nothing ever goes to plan, and this is a perfect example... I managed to cut the PSU hole the wrong way round, which ment the PSU would actually mount external to the case...oops!!, so quick thinking came up with an alterate idea, and that was to make a PSU plate, much like the lian li ones, but this one is modeled off the one from a NZXT Rogue, (I have the case laying about gathering dust)


Here you can see my stuff up , followed by the fix up, I will cut these lines out with my trusty nibbler and file it down and clean up the rough edges, then I will make a PSU thingy to go over the top of it, and no one will ever know I made a booboo.


The black is the original and the bottom is the one I made, it still needs a sand.


Test fit, and it looks good, bit of a clean up and it'll look much better.

Rear Panel Chassis build thingy..




As you can see from these two photos, its basically the same concept as the front panel, you will also note the acrylic now only sits around the back panel, as with the front panel, I have reduced alot of the weight out of both panels now.


Building the frame for the Case.

This is very experimental at the moment, and its not final, but more a preview that I hope will stir my imagination into creating something decent, or I'll just stick with this idea.













My intentions are to make an L shape at the ends of each of the four current pieces that are holding the case together, then I'll either rivet or use bolts and fix them to the front and rear panels, I wont know till I try it, but that's the plan.

The alternate plan is to make the Chassis then mount the front and rear panels to the frame, which would be a lot easier to do , than what I'm currently doing.

This is just to give you all an idea of where I'm currently at.

And last but not least, I'm in the process of making the rear fan grill, a simplified version of the front grill, I have a 50/50 chance it wont actually fit on the back panel, so it may be used on the inside of the case, and I'll use mesh for the rear.



Seth.

 

Building a decent frame for a case is allways the trickiest part in a scratch-build imho.

Using hollow aluminium-profiles doesn't make it any easier, why I'm using solid square 10mm aluminium-rods for the frame usually.

You'll find something that suits your needs tho

 

Amazing.

 

Great work,this just gets better and better

 

+1

 

Truely Marvelous! Keep up the great and I mean GREAT work!

 

Amazing design!
It looks good even though it's not finished!

 

Amazing Project, your aluminium work ist absolutely great.

 

Nice work man keep going