Welcome to my first home-made case log. It's been a while since I've posted and figured that it was time for a new project. My inspiration for this is pretty simple: make a small-ish, light-weight, easily toted case similar to some of the new mini-ATX cases I've seen coming to market. I don't have the money to plop down at once for one of these cases, but I can spend a little here and there. And besides, I'd rather have the satisfaction of making one by hand rather than buying one outright. Most of the cases I've seen (Q-Pack and one by Antec come to mind) use mini-ATX motherboards and non-standard power supplies. I have neither, so I'm making a case that will fit a full-size ATX mobo, standard power supply, two CD-Roms, floppy, and at least two hard drives. On with the pics... First off, all aluminum will be used. Angle pieces are 1/16"x3/4"x3 ft. Flat pieces are the same, just not angled. You can get a feel for the thickness below... My tools of the trade... And my newest editions... Aluminum angle is now cut to length. The finished case will be 14"W x 16.5"L x 10"H. And here is a removable motherboard tray that I took from an old case at work. And who says that working in an IT dept doesn't pay? And that's it for now. I hope to have the frame put together by the end of the week, along with the tray mounts in place. Mounting holes for said tray should be done as well. From there I'll be working on the power supply mounts along with the drive mounts, which I have yet to figure out. (If anyone has an idea on bending 1/16" aluminum at a right angle please let me know.) From there I'll work on the side panels, which I hope will be aluminum as well, but the prices for big enough pieces are looking more than I want to pay. I'm hoping to get quite a bit done this week as my wife and daughter are off in Arkansas. I also intend on installing a new dishwasher before my wife gets home as a surprise. After that updates will be sporatic due to funding, work (it pays the bills guys), and life in general. Later...
Yup the pics are fixed now. Looks like you got the right tools for the job. Are you just putting things together along the way or have you created some sketches?
Just mental sketches for now. Similiar to this. Of course the front will be my own design, along with the sides and top. There will be more than one fan, of course, but all of that is to come.
Update 6-22 Well, here I am again. Progress was good and went rather smoothly last night. I wanted to get more done, but it's just too hot in Texas at the moment, that and my back was sore. Anyway, on with the update. The frame is assembled and turned out rather square. Actually more square than I expected. I was expecting to have to drill out rivets and do some trimming, but none is needed. As you can see from the pic below I went through and drilled out holes for the rivets. I overlapped the pieces as I drilled so I knew the corresponding holes were in the right spot. Below is a rather bad shot of the countersinking. Sorry, I forgot to turn macro on and only remembered after all of the pieces were together. This process didn't turn out as well as I wanted. With the aluminum only being 1/16" thick I didn't have much to play with and most of the countersinking is shallow. Guess I was being a little to cautious, but better to err on that side than the other. First corner assembled. Bottom and corners assembled. Yea! All parts riveted (which turned out to be a pain, literaly.) Just a shot with the removable motherboard try in place. You can see that the lower portion of the tray is extended (kind of in an L shape, I guess). I'm assuming that this is for mobo's with long ISA slots, but since I don't need the length it's coming of. This tray is actually quite heavy for its size, so I plan on removing some of the middle to lighten it up a bit. Just a shot of where I intend to put the power supply. This is an old one that I again scavenged from work. It should work fine as a place holder until I buy a new supply with a 120mm fan on the bottom. And the last just is of one of the corners. Pretty good considering when I did the trim work on the house it came out a whole lot worse than this. Comments, questions, suggestions are more than welcome. Until next time...
just remembered, it gives me something to do with the 4x 1.8m rods of aluminium ive got think ill be making a 30cm cube sometime hehe
OK, time for another update. So far not all that much has been accomplished. The power supply bracket is now in place, but I'm thinking about redoing it. As you can see it's formed from one piece of angle that I cut a triangle out of. I went a little too far on purpose just to make sure that there was enough room to bend the aluminum. Turns out that I took too much out. The gap is plainly visible and I'm not liking that. I plan on having a window on both sides and this section may be visible, which would not be that astetically pleasing. This show what I intended to make the optical drive mountings out of, but as it turns out the 1" flat bar was too thin to support the weight. Just a pic of the pieces that will be used to mount the support bars to the actual pieces that the drives mount to. Here you can see the rails on which the motherboard tray will be supported by. (Thanks Dad for this one.) These are 1/2" aluminum angle running the length of the case. When the tray is in place it's slightly out of level due to the lip on the tray. I'm thinking about notching the rails to counteract this. Not a very good pic, but here I'm tapping out the holes for the optical drive mounts. And here you see the case as it stands now. As you may be able to see, I had to swap out the flat bars for angled on the optical drive mounts, as mentioned earlier. For now these are held in place with the zip ties. The mounts are actually a tad too far forward (about 3/8") for the drive faces to be flush with the front of the case. Good evidence of measure twice, cut (or in this case, drill) once. Instead of lining up the middle of the flat bars with a mark that I had made I lined up the middle of the angled bars. I wasn't thinking at the time and got in a wurry. After looking at this I plan on redoing it anyway. There's an easier way to do this. Just a side shot that shows how I've removed some of the access material from the motherboard tray. The extended area for ISA cards has been removed, along with some of the middle, weight-producing area. Front shot Top shot Another mobo shot And a back shot. Power supply will be mounted above the PCI cards in the upper right corner. A 120mm fan will be in the upper left corner.
Nice, I wish I had the tools, my dad's a carpenter, but he's only got stuff to cut wood with What sort of system you gonna put inside? And use of the system?
Actually, the tool that I cut the aluminum with is just a compound miter saw. I just replaced the wood cutting blade with one that cuts metal. The blade just cost $5 (don't know the conversion, sorry). As for the drill press, it was $48 and was bought with birthday money. Eventually I plan on starting a small furniture side business, but I need more tools than what I have. The system that I plan on putting inside is what I have currently. AMD 2500+, 1 gig RAM, 2 HDD's (160gig total), two CD-Roms. Eventually once I'm debt free (a little over a yr from now) I plan on buying the latest and greatest, so whatever is out then is what I'll be getting. As for the use of the system, the typical computer stuff, ie: gaming, connectivity, and office productivity type of stuff.
I personally was thinking you'd be better off using the PC for practice rather than the house, but only because you live inside the house and just to the side of your PC, which also lives in your house. Then again, a house doesn't have a 12-18 month refresh cycle to stay anywhere near compatible with the newest fun stuff.
Looks Good! I was planning on doing somthing like this for my HAL 9000 Project but the price of the 24"x48" aluminum sheet I needed for the front and back scared me away.
Exactly. I've been trying to find aluminum sheet that has the right thickness and is large enough to cover all of the sides, but also doesn't require me to take out a loan. So far I've been unsuccessful. McMaster has some, but I'm hesitant to order from the Net when I can't get my hands on it first. Lowe's and HomeDepot have disappointed so far as well. Look for an update later today.
CD-Rom rails OK, got another update for yall. Hope everyone had a good Independence Day (well, those on this side of the pond). Well, I didn't like the mounting system that I was using for the CD-roms, floppy, etc... The following update is basically just covering this change. Below is the rail that the drives will slide into and mount on. Here you can see the holes that I drilled for the mounting holes on the CD-roms. I put more than one so the drives could slide forward or backward if needed. Here you seen an almost finished side of the rails. And both sides complete. And now mounted with drive for effect. Side shot And a couple of overall shots
I like it. Any updates? Looks kinda like my cube case I made for a customer. Awsome work btw. Keep it up.
