I agree, I think it's worth all that time. Also, I'm interested in doing a case similar to yours, and I'm wondering how sturdy the frame is.
Sturdy, well lets just say im not a small guy. I've stood and jumped on the case without it moving, bending, budging, very sturdy. The thing that worries me though is if the panels will sort of rattle or something when there is a pc in there running and creating vibrations, thats one of my biggest fears with this design.
That's good. If you think rattling will be a big problem, you could probably find a spray-on (in other words, thin) sound-proofing solution at a car supplies store.
Update, re-did some brackets for the top that I think look better, here are some shots. Might have the nickel plated to match the frame better of black anodized to match the panels. I was debating putting a bevel into the brackets sort of like as per this pic Now that I have made them though I dont think I will. Also working on a bottom loading cd silo type thing for getting discs into the optical drive inside so i dont have to put a slot or door anywhere.
Well its just about the end of the week and I'm not going to get anything done for a few days due to that unfortunate thing called a lan party. So here's where the project is at now. I spent alot of my free time this week creating the framework for my cd silo idea. Basically theres a tube which will sit flush with the bottom of the case which will deliver cds from the bottom of the case to the cd tray. So it starts off with relatively quickly built linear slide, The slide is pretty friction free, but it did take some time to get it machined all nice and squarely and to get the holes to the kind of precision required. The slide will likely be powered by a belt drive system, motor at the top, tensioner/return pulley at the bottom and the belt clamped to the black delrin arm you see inside. The system will be driven by a PIC and will use microswitches or something similar for travel stops. It only needs three positions, full down, and full up, and tray level. The assembly, partially assembled with the tube, The tube isnt slotted for it yet, but the tray from the player will actually partially reside/eject into the tube, so the process works by having the pic traverse the slide to its top ("home") position, eject tray, wait, traverse down to tray position, activate solenoid on the picking arm (that hasnt been designed yet) to pick up the cd, raise back to top, close tray, traverse to bottom, turn solenoid off, cd drops to desk, wait until user loads the next disk, which will be indictated when the user hits a microswitch on the arm (this should be reasonably slick as the cd will be slide up a shaft until it hits the switch, then the solenoid will trigger causing the expanding collet/arbour at the bottom of the shaft to expand, thus capturing the cd) Then the whole process reverse it self, relatively simple, hopefully.
