Project: Serverama - Frame finishing - 9th Oct

Are you thinking of Meccano?

 

Looking good! Ill be doing something very similar very soon and if it turns out half as good I'll be well chuffed


( I'll be borrowing your jig idea, if you dont mind? )

 

Its the only way if you want perfect corners, and even then some of mine are a little off, but not too badly (i think theres 2 of them a cpl degrees out). If you want, i'll post some pictures of its deconstruction and modification once im done with it as it has a few flaws.

At lat there is more progress on the case, coursework and actual paid work (*gasp* ) has taken its toll, but im off for 2 weeks, have no coursework for a while and determined to get it done before the summer (if i had a pound for every deadline ive set for this case.....)

No pics of the progress yet, try and get a few this week but i have a few pics of my stop-gap solution to my current case (which is a pain in the backside).







Behold its glory

Found it at work, end of line, full aluminium atx case, 120mm and an 80mm fan inside. for the princely sum of £14.90 less staff discount. so for less than £13.50 i've got a nice spare case for my server. So gonna move my server today and upgrade the mobo to my spare Xp2500 Barton and Gigabyte board.

Off to buy some ram now, cos ive used all my DDR in my desktop.

 

Oh yea please, that'd be handy

 

Update

Once again, another eon passes between updates. But non-the-less i shall prevail and eventually some progress on the HD racks.

Ive tried to build the HD racks already and the epoxy worked substantially better than contact adhesive, but it still didnt work perfectly as the rails moved and the epoxy didnt set properly.

So a new plan, make another jig to hold all the pieces and do each side in one go.

On with the pics!
Got some help for my dad, mainly cos i was tkaing pics

First of all needed a base, some scrap 3/4" ply suitably trimmed worked fine.


Used the first piece as a template to check sizes.


Found some Laminate flooring for the guide pieces.


Got an inch high strip fixed to the side to hold it parallel


Fitted.


Set the 2nd support rail up.


52 HD support rails, not all of them equal length


Cunning plan (not mine tho, damn)


Tungsten Carbide, one of the greaest tool enhancements around


52 Equal length rails


More of the same laminate for the spacers.


Full side test fitted.


Started to finish the rails with a brushed effect from the drum sander in the drill press. Seems like a good look, done the support rails too ad gonna do the whole case frame the same.


Should be fixing the first lot together tomorrow night and sanding the next set. Nother update then.

 

Shocking, 2 updates in 2 days, perhaps even a 3rd tomorrow (dont hold your breath)

More spics of the first set of supports.

All the parts laid out at room temp ready to fit


Glued and drying, needless to say i did have more exciting things to do than watch the glue dry (barely).


Sucess! Sadly also glued to to the jjig holding it in palce, which was a problem, but nm.


Removed, and in one piece too.


How it looks in the frame.


Hopefully get the next one done tomorrow night and then work out how to make the middle piece.

 

nice work, but i think you made an error with your images in your last post

similar structure to what i did on my first ever project, although looking a little sctonger than mine did

 

You're right, wrong number on the bottom one and the ftp prog crashed loading the last 3 image , fixed now, ta

 

More HD Rack work.

Right, first things first, theres a LOT of pictures here and they're shot over a couple of days, so i'll post them seperately, other wise they appear disjointed. also i think a post with 20odd 800x600 pictures in is a bit excessive.

Anyway, on with the pics.

As you can see, the template jig i used for the side pieces worked well, and i made 3 identical sets, one left, one right and half of the middle piece.

To make the middle piece another set of supports is added to the other side of the first rails. But the problem is that now the template is too low to support the fixing process. So, butching time.

The original template with the new pieces.


The new pieces screwed in place in the same holes as the others so this wasnt much work.


The previous pieces fits perfectly in the new template.



At this point i ran out of time, and when i went home again the next day i forgot my camera, but all that was done was fixing the new rails in place. So on to a new day

While the epoxy was cyring properly over night and through the day, i started work on some of the other mounting points for the HD Rack in the case.

To do this i decided to use some of the 1/2" x 1/2" L bar i used in the first incarnation of ServerRama to hold the HD Clusters.


This was perfect as it was only 1/16" thick and strong enough for the purpose, plus it was cheap as it was scrap from the first case. All i needed was to cut the brackets, and produce....


This was all well and good, but slow with a hacksaw, and rarely perfect (filing them all to exactly the same size would be a pain). So having had it suggested to me to to trim the support rails with the table saw, i enquired as to its cutting ability. As i suspected, it was easy and i left it to my dad to actually do it (didnt want to screw up his blade mainly).

Now, herein lies a lesson, and an important one at that. Dont cut short bits of metal on a table saw

As suitable as it was, it was not that good at handling short pieces which were cut off the main piece. While the end was trimmed easily to square the edge, the first, and last piece as it happened was not as sucessful.

This is what happens when a small chunk of aluminium gets hit by a tungsten carbide tooth at 150Mph.




The piece actually shot across the garage and slammed into a solid Cast Iron top of a wood jointer and left a dent. I'm suitably grateful i was standing at the other end of the garage after being vaugly warned to move back. So, upshot of this is 1) no more cutting brackets with a table saw, and 2) more arm work for me.

So, the new plan look like this.


Now that ive got the brackets cut, i need to reliably drill them. so yet another template, Using more of the scrap (this time 3/4" x 1/2") from the previous build.


Using some of the offcuts from the HD Supports (3/4" x 1/8") poprivited to the angle piece, this would hold the blank in place.


The blank fits but is too thin to be held in palce by any template piece.


Epoxying a bit of random 1/16" aluminium in place solves this and raises it high enough for a template. This will sit on top of everything else and fit around the blank.


However, this failed miserably when trying to locate the pop rivits to drill clearence holes for it to sit in. So i started on a new plan, wedging a piece of 3/4"x 1/8" between the two pop rivits each side of the blank.


This fits perfectly, as shown.


The blank produced was fine although i couldnt test it properly as i ran out of time, again. So i left it, another post to follow soon with the rest of the work.

 

Post 2 of this giant pic-fest.

Overnight the middle section cured and could be removed from the template.


As usual, the metal was stuck to the template but prised out easily.


Yet more metal picked up this morning so make the rails which hold the rear support of the central piece. this was cut to roughly 12" as a start. Using the bracket template these are fastened with freshly drilled brackets, which work nicely. starting at one side, the frame for the rack are built and then the centre piece added, then attached to the case framwork.


Work on the central piece can begin now that there are pieces to work from as reference. This use 2 brackets on each side of the main piece.


This can then be test fitted to the frame once both ends are done.


I decided to just fix the central piece in place as it was there anyway. and it actually stood up, which was nice


Proof it holds a HD and is the right size


I started to run short of time and so just fixed the 2nd side in place to make sure it was done right and i didnt forget to do anything.


Finally, the Rack is about 90% complete, still needs finishing touches and a few tweaks to the build, but it looks quite impressive with a few drives in.


More to come, up next is fitting it to half of the case, then cutting the new pieces f the case to final length and fitting the whole thing back together for a test. That'll probably get done between now and easter.

 

By my count, you now have space for 26 drives. My God Man!!! That's a lot of gigage...or terage..it's just way more than I would ever need. Sorry I didn't read back, but how much HD gigage are you putting in this monster?

BTW, nice job so far. Templates and jigs though a PIA are the only way to go for consistant reliable results. Good Work!

 

nice project! done rigidly properly too i always have to force myself to do things properly... but you've got it down to a T

 

Thanks for the good words.

Yeah there 26 spaces, The smallest drives initially will be the 2x160GB drives ive got, along with 2x 200GB drives, eventually i'll replcae the drives when/if it ever gets filled from the smallest upwards. so if i filled it all with 200's, i'd have roughly 5.2TB of raw storage space. given that a 200GB HD becomes 186GB of usable space that brings it down to around 4.8TB. Which is still nice. and thats only with 200GB drives. Using the new 500GB drives, that'd be 13TB Raw and about 12TB of actual space, which would be hilarious

However, by that time, you'd have some immense drives available, and so the capacity only increases with age

 

you have allot of storage potential. But one small question? How do you plan on puting all those drives on a single mobo. Im assuming you get a 5x pci mobo and lets say 4 built in chanels for hdd's. and I asume you get pci cards that have ide or sata conectors and lets say 4 more per card. thats 24 drives that you can use on your mobo. But newer mobos can carry up to 6 devicess i supose.

Also what are you storing in that beast?

That would make a killer pron server....j/k LOL

Keep up the good work.

 

Yeah the mobo is 5xPCI so i can use 8x sata or pata cards with pata->sata convertors on the drives, it doesnt hit performance in a noticable way for a fileserver and allows more than the 26 drives. The mobo itself has support for 8x ide drives as it has 2x 40pin IDE and 2x 40pin Raid connections, currently in use as standard IDE channels, so that still not a problem with the setup you decribed.

I prefer the idea of PATA -> SATA convertors purely for neatness in the case (i dont even want to imagine 13 IDE ribbons, let alone 13 rounded Ribbons. So i think an SATA card and some convertors, gradually purchsed is the best way. After all, im not going to fill this beast with drive imeadiatly

The current plan is actually to have 2 drives each containing the same data, not raided, as im far too lazy (currently) although this could be changed if i can be bothered.

Mainly at the moment its used for films, tv and music, basically this will increase as i buy more drives. nothing else really. after this project i'll revive ClusteRama and work on that while i fill this one. Gives me plenty of stuff to watch while i work

 

You better be making a lot of movies and storing a lot of songs lol. I mean that is a lot of HD spaces. Definatly a cool mod though. I am scared to think about how much heat 26 HDs would make in there.

 

scary, you're almost my double, side on at least.... (im a little lighter, and probably a little older though) - dont have a side image to compare unfortunately.

Nice work so far, mr double!

 

cheers guys, i plan to mount 80mm fans down the front of the door on some kind of fan controller to make em quieter and still cool them enough.

Theres beens ome major problems today, havent got many pictures but i have got a few, will do an update later, just got in and uni work becons

hopefully update before the night is out though.

 

Pictures! at last, got more work done but the affore mentioned problems set me back. I mounted the HD rack in the case at one side and while filing one of the mounting brackets down, i heard a crack. I looked and noticed that one of the HD support rails was loose, i touched it to see if it would fall off, and it did, along with another 3 . So i checked the others on that side, and they ALL fell off and i was left with....



Then i checked the others, thinking about the possibility of all of them falling off in my hands . Thankfully only another 2 fell off the other side (none from the middle thank GOD). So, ive bought more exopy (araldite in fact) as the other stuff was about 6 years old, however the rest of the peices seem secure so im not too worried about it falling appart. The epoxy was actually so poor it peeled off the metal.


Anyway, on with the rest of the pics.


I cut down the joining pieces to roughly the right length, then started hacking them into shape to they joined nicely and i could fix the rack to the sides properly.


Once the two front pieces were in the rack got joined to the sides so it'd keep everything square (or just about).


After this was done i finished fixing all the other holes for the front pieces, and pleasingly, it looks good

So finally the last piece of work was to join the rest of the pieces together and rebuild the case....


There was a problem with this and if you look closely ou'll notice that not all the holes are filled, stupidly i ran out of bolts, which frankly is a problem, and i couldnt be bothered to faff about with the rails, so i left the off for the time being while i finish the frame, then i'll go back and sort them next.

Next update probably early next week.

 

Delay after delay....

More problems recently, more of the HD rails have fallen off, so im pretty much going to strat that part over with some better epoxy. However because of this i have no reliable way to mount the vertical rails in the right place, so im taking a different tact.

Firstly, ive noticed that the top and bottom of the case are different widths, so currently thats being rectified. on was 10 5/16" and the other was 10 3/8". This wouldnt have been to bad if it was front and back but to make a door which isnt square open effectivly will be hell. So, another problem to sort.

Once this is done the HD Rack mounting rails (which hold the back of the Rack in place will be fixed to the sides directly, rather than being held through the vertical supports of the Rack itself (its an odd way to fix them, im not entirely sure why i did it this way, but nm).

So once these are mounted (hopefully sometime early this week) i can start to look at the Rack itself and start fixing that back together. So ultimatly its been 1 step forward and 2, maybe 3 back