Scratch Build – Complete Carbon/Wood-scratch build

Nope, that's the back panel! None of them are visible under normal conditions.

 

So lets see, smoothing things out, building mounts, what's next?

Oh yeah, cutting giant holes in a part that took 3 months to make with a custom mold. Fun.

So first off, I taped it up for my layout.



And after I took that picture, I ground all the edges down cause I was tired of 1/2" splinters and sliced hands.



And then laying out component locations.



Had to make sure my tubing worked.



Then I took implements of destruction and cut it all out. Jigsaw, dremel, 4.5" hole saw, whatever worked. I was sure the hole saw would grab wrong and wreck the whole thing, but it didn't!



You can see I slipped in a hole for the I/O. To mount the motherboard, I took 10mm standoffs, cut the threads off and epoxied them to the panel. I needed a bit of weight to hold it down, so I used what I had.



And it didn't fall off.





With everything laid out and cut out, now I can trim this bad boy down to the size I want. But I'm gonna save that for next time.

Thanks to GeForce Garage for indulging me!

 

This is what is always incredible with your work, carbon fiber is such a long and tedious process, and every time I am impressed of the amount of hours that you must spend to achieve your projects, even if it certainly gives great results in terms of weigh and sound damping, and allows all imaginable shapes, it's an incredibly hard job ... so

 

Thanks yall! As far as sound dampening, this stuff rings like a bell! The backpack I did might as well have been a guitar body once I put the fans in.

 

Now to cut this thing down to size. I guess I didn't get any pics of laying it out. But that's the boring part anyway, lets cut stuff!



I had been trying to figure out the best way to cut this since it's a tight spot, but the jigsaw fits in just fine for most of it. In the tight areas and the corners, I flipped the jigsaw to the other side, and used it like it was mounted in a table. Not the recommended use, but it worked for what I needed.

I made sure to give myself room on the cuts so I could file and sand it to the final shape.



And the final product.





I was starting to get worried about the size because I was wanting a more compact case, but now it's looking about right.

Next up I'll start work on the outer panels, but here's a sneak peak!



Thanks for following along and thanks to GeForce Garage for dealing with my slow a**!

 

You think you are slow. I'M not slow compared to some of the original Bit-ers.
Heck, Darkened just popped back in after not being here since 2014!
You are racing ahead at a furious pace, considering the curing times and sanding involved.

 

Not going to argue with you there

 

That's why you combine time vacuums.
-Although sanding CF on the toilet is probably a no-go.

 

Looking good! What's the wood? Looks like maple?

 

The paper would be the least of your concern, that carbon fiber dust...on the private bits...god no!

Yeah, It's an interesting piece of maple I came across. Was looking for something more exotic, but the place I get it from didn't have anything that stood out.

 

Is that spalted maple? Looks like it has some darker rims... Should be very pretty if so!

 

No just hard maple. It does have dark and well defined rings. That's what caught my eye. Even has some curl to it.

 

And now the outer panels. I choose a hard maple board from one of my local shops. I was hoping to find something exotic that I thought would look good, like a tigerwood, but no luck. The maple stood out because of the definition in the rings. A few spots had a little figure, but that wasn't really a factor in the choice.





First thing I needed to do was to join the pieces so I bought a biscuit joiner and got busy.





Once they were joined and smoothed out, I needed to transfer the shape of the carbon fiber tub to the panels. I usually use a roll of tape to trace an outline like this, just roll the tape along the shape with the pencil on the inside and you get a consistent distance even around corners. I didn't have a roll of tape thick enough, so I used a hole saw. It's janky, but it worked.





I cut out one panel, traced it to the other board for the second panel, then all I needed to do was clean up the edges.



I used a belt sander on the edges and to make sure the panels stayed lined up, I made up a few brackets that I screwed to the bottoms.





To finish shaping the panels, I rounded the edges. 1/8" round over on the inside, 1/4" on the outside.



To mount the panels, I laid out my holes on the carbon fiber tub and then transferred those to the panels, making triple sure that everything was lined up and square.



I used inserts in the panels so that I could reliably screw and unscrew them without tearing things up.





For finishing the panels, I tried out different options. Different dyes, techniques, and finish coats.



In the end I went with straight Arm-R-Seal because it kept the prominence of the rings. I also really brought out the figure of the boards which I hadn't even really been looking for.





While working on these panels, I was making up some hard drive carriers. I wanted something to dress up how the mounted. Bring out the aluminum.



They're very simple, just a square with a couple of bends and a few holes. But with a bit of playing with a sander, they look pretty spiffy!



I'm only starting with one spin drive, but I made two so that I could upgrade down the line.



They're mounted from the back through the carbon fiber with a couple of flat head screws so that they don't interfere with the side panels.



Next update I'll be studying this piece of acrylic.



And also digging out the Cooler Master AIO I originally bought for this project because apparently there is a World Series this year. I'm glad I found out two days after entries opened up by seeing someone's post on facebook about their entry.

Anyways, thanks for following along and thanks to NVIDIA for sponsoring my tool buying habit...I mean this build.

 

The wood came out beautiful.

 

+1 about the wood - very pretty!

 

Now to take care of that giant open section in the middle of the case, and I'm gonna start with this.



Just your standard smoked acrylic, but I did have them cut it to size and round and polish the edges. A bit extra in cost, but it pays for itself in the labor I saved. Plus I'd probably mess up the first one polishing the edges.

The plan is to mount it to the carbon fiber tub with a hinge giving me a door to access everything.



This is why I made my GPU bracket so big and ran it to the top of the case. I wanted something extra to support the hinge and not stress the carbon fiber.



So first I cut a pretty standard hinge I had left over from another project and got it mounted to my acrylic.





And then mounted that to the case. I know, rocket science.



I had wanted to mount the hinge on the back side of the back panel, but had to settle with mounting it to the inside to get enough clearance for the screws. Not a big thing, but if I had to do it again, I might try a different hinge style.

That was all simple enough, now to try and ruin a $100 piece of acrylic. Let's bend it.



I had brainstormed a bunch of different ways to try this in order to make sure the bend came out as well as possible. Like cutting a mold out of fiber board or hot gluing a thin piece of sheet aluminum to the case to make sure the acrylic didn't sag. In the end I just went for it straight up.

I got a bit of sag in the middle of the bend, but an acceptable amount. Nothing that ruins the look.



Only a couple of things left to finish the acrylic. One is to cut off the bottom edge so that it matches the case. The others I'll get to later.



I wanted to try something a bit different for the power and reset buttons so I did a little hunting on Amazon and some electronics sites...and couldn't find anything that I liked. Figures. So I bought a couple of styles that I thought I might be able to make work to see what I could come up with.



I was basically looking for these style of buttons, but with the wire coming out the bottom. No luck. And yes, that's just a standard pcb mounting momentary switch in a housing. I could have made a new housing but I decided to just chop these up.



I'll mount them so the cut is in the back and no one will be the wiser. Except for you all and you're not gonna tell anyone...right?

With that bit of prep done, I needed to get the final finish on the carbon tub.



First thought was clear coat, and boy was that the wrong thought.





It was great for the outside of the tub, but the inside had way more pin holes than I had imagined. You can kinda see the rough finish in the reflection of the PSU bracket on the side panel. That should be glass smooth or damn close.

So, there was a lot more sanding and a few applications of epoxy to seal up the inside of the case. Yes, it sucked and was a pain in the ass. Especially trying to keep from messing up the outside finish and making more work for myself.



Once that mess sanded out, I tried the clear coat again.



It turned out much better this time around. The reflections of everything make it almost too busy now.



Remember those switches, I'm gonna go ahead and pop some holes in the PSU bracket so I can mount those later. That reflection is sooooo much better.





Thanks for following along, next time I'll be growing some trees on my 3d printer.



Thanks to GeForce Garage for sponsoring a level of sanding that I hope to never repeat.

 

Always impressed by your patience and dedication with every step of the build, the case takes a real great direction with the wood panels and those reflexion effects