Hi, for an A-Level product design course, I have been building an Art Deco PC. This is my first eve case build, as my previous experience only lies with simple PC maintenance such as replacing the graphics card, etc. The PC is more of a prototype and had to be finished within a space of approximately a month, so some parts aren't finished as well as I wanted. I first did a few sketches by hand, which are unfortunately, fairly poor quality (Im not much of an artist ) Here are the orignal hand drawn sketches: After this, I worked on a Google Sketchup model, which allowed me to make changes with accurate scales, etc. As you can see, I made a fair few alterations to the design during this process. Here are my Sketchup renders: It was time to start the construction. Most of this process was done in my school workshop, which had a variety of tools such as a pillar drill, Band Saw, Circular Saw, Hand Held Drills, Belt sanders and most useful of all, a Boxford 3D CAM router. The wooden frame was cut out of a 2400mm x 1220mm sheet of 12mm birch plywood. This then was cut using a circular saw, into 12 parts, which were then machined using the 3D CAM router. They were then stained according to my design and then constructed into the main frame. The metal was all designed on AutoCAD, then cut from 2 sheets of 1000mm x 500mm x 2mm bendable grade aluminium, by an engineering firm - Nerak-Wiese, using a large, industrial scale water jet cutter. The metal was then machined and bent at the school work shop, using formers, many G-Clamps and in some instances, a blow torch Here are some pics: Sorry for the lack of pics constructing the frame, but I was working solid to meet a tight deadline and taking pics just somehow slipped my mind, which is useful... Finally, the pc was mostly complete and after mounting the PSU and Motherboard (By hand, using simple workshop tools, which was more trouble than I anticipated) I began to add cooling and lighting. The case is cooled by using 3 80mm Akasa pearl white LED case fans and vents at the top of the case, at the back of the two arcs. I also included two white Cold Cathodes behind the acrylic window on the side plate. The PC is now finished, with the exception of a small piece of acrylic that just needs to be cut on the CAM router, to add an IO symbol to the on switch! Here are some pics of the finished product! Hope everyone likes it!
Please note that this thread is the correct thread. I accidentally created two threads, one was un-finished.
Wow, this seems to have skipped peoples attention with it shooting through, it's awesome mate, complex form nicely done, congrats. Thanks for sharing just next time try to keep a log of it though but nice rig.
Update - New IO Button Just an update, the final IO button has now been cut and fitted. I had to wait over 2 weeks for the supplier to send a whole sheet of black acrylic for a 70mm x 70mm button... Here are the pics: IO Button close, pc off IO Button Close(ish) with pc on IO Button, PC on with HDD load - loading LEDs (Note the slight blue colour near the top, this is more obvious in real life) So, the case is now officially finished
At the request of my Product Design tutor, I have now also added mirror screws to the top of the arc roofs, to add a better finish. So I thought I'd may aswell upload it with this better finish: Mirror Screws I also thought I'd give a better demo of how bright the On button can be, so here is a pic from the front:
