Modding experiments in making an acrylic drivecage... walkthrough

well, we had the metal bending experiments earlier... had some fun this weekend... making a drive cage for my optical drives. This was just some trials to get the process down and if I stop sharing I'll die.

Things I have learned - Don't throw old optical drives that don't work away. I originally made models emmulating the size/shape of optical drives out of mdf as a mold to bend the acrylic but then I had a beer moment... Why not just use an actual drive, what could be more accurate than that? I had an old 24x drive that was kaput, excellent candidate. Another thing I learned is there is a such thing as acrylic that is too thick for certain jobs. I used 1/4" acrylic and when it bent, It created a wrinkle on the inside of the bend that made the gap between the drive and the cage wall a little larger than for comfort.. I later used 1/8" acrylic (actually plexi) and it worked much better... anyhoo... on with the pics..

I measured the drive so the cage would sit flush with the front of the drive (minus the bezel so it could poke out through the computer case) and extend back to the second set of screw holes. I calculated how much the sides would be by using twice the drive height plus a little space for air flow. The centered the drive and clamped it all together. It is very important to get everything square to make sure your bends are true. Also important to let the drive hang over your surface because being able to heat both sides of the acrylic is a big plus..

Turn up the heat using a heat gun and slowly move it back and forth for even heating... on thick material, it is good to give a little extra heat to the ends for a clean bend.. you can lightly test the acrylic with your hand on the end of the material by trying to move it up and down..

Sooner or later (take your time, heating it up too fast will cause blistering or a shop fire) it will start to give, once it is loose as a goose (technical term). it is time to bend. I used a scrap piece of wood to give a nice flat surface to work with as well as protect my delicate hands from the hot material (note, the drive is rippin hot too..and man, my arms are hairy...)

Hold it there and allow it too cool into place and then voila..

one more view..

Much deserved beer break.. (note: cold beer can helps cool hand if accidently touches the hot drive casing)... turned the setup around for the other side..

heating again

bending the second side... and holding in place while it cools..

For some further insurance (and to free up my hand for the camera and beer) I clamped it up to let it completely setup.. the top clamps aren't applying any pressure, just holding the upright pieces in place so they don't try to lay back down in their semi liquid state...


after the clams are removed... you can see from the side where your mounting holes need to be drilled, I used a pencil/scribe to mark the hole locations and drill without the drive in there. I learned this the hard way when I drilled the first hole and bored out one of the screw holes on the drive...

that's it...

Safty tip... I only had one beer during my break.. intoxication and industrial heat guns don't mix well... I'm assuming this because it's not like I ever.....

 

Nice!

That is about 10x easier than the way I did mine--I glued mine up so I had to have flat edges, square corners and so forth. I recommend your way for anyone who doesn't need practice gluing (which is why I did mine the other way).

With your method, it should also be pointed out that other shapes besides rectangles are quite possible.

 

ooh, one other thing I learned... if you're unsure of your bending talents... you can make the length of your acrylic too long for what you need. What that means is that if you center your mold and make good bends your uprights will have extra material that you could cut away to size... just a little insurance. The alternative would be what I did (cutting the acrylic exactly to size and then bending) doesn't give you much/any room for error, my came out real nice but this was my third attempt and several times the uprights came out uneven. If you give yourself some extra to trim later, you can insure that you will end up with an even and square box shape...


and, oh yeah, you must do this with the material neked... take off any protective plastic/paper... it will melt/catch fire. Trust me, the kindling point of the protective materials is much lower than the bending temperature of the acrylic... especially thick acryilic...

 

That's a great job you did there. Awesome info, I've been toying with the idea of making a drive cage for my Clear PC. Thx for the info it will come in handy.

 

cool how do u plan to attach it to the rest of the case?

 

more on that later... just wanted to share what I have learned so far in my current project without revealing too much. Although, the way my project is going, my solution may not suit the general modding population but who knows.

 

do it as an article

 

One thing I learned also in doing hte same process is don't take a cloth material (towel) and wrap it around the wood piece thinking that you can protect the acrylic from scratches when you bend it because in the end the cloth will just stick to the hot acrylic. Rendering acrylic and cloth messed up, and mother upset from missing dish towel

 

Well it's always easy if you have the right tools in your garade

BUT some ppl don't

 

I'll admit, I have a lot of quickgrip clamps (but I would offer you can't have enough). But you could certainly do this without them. All that really leaves is the heat gun (which I borrowed from my brother - but can get one for around $30). I just wanted to cover the basics of what I learned so people with more or less resources than me could benefit. Trust me, you don't need a machine shop to do this...

 

Could I use this same method for making an actual drive case/shell. I'm getting a ClearPC case and would LOVE to have a clear CD-RW. The ultimate window mod!


Could you or linear (the plastics GAWD imho) gime some ideas, tips, hints, anything?

well... I would need some of the original drive's casing for the front faceplate clips and the little white thing in the top of it... maybe if i cut any of the excess metal off and then bent a thin sheet of plexi t go around it... mmm that could look pretty good...

 

I do believe these things run $30 or so a piece

 

Tip #1: buy a drive with pretty insides. The one I got is just a yawnfest to look at.

But seriously, the material thickness is going to be a problem. That and the radius at the corners. You could probably cheat the radius problem slightly by adding height to your enclosure above the standard 1-3/4" (so your drive's guts clear the radius inside). But the thing that's out of your control entirely (except as noted below) is the drive guts have to fit inside your housing, which will be smaller inside than the sheet metal housing of the same outer dimension.

Two possible ways to dodge that bullet: use thin plastic (I don't have a source for thinner than 1/16"--hopefully that will get the job done) or increase the inner width of your drive bay. If the case is your custom creation, the latter cheat is preferable, and works on PSU housings as well. Otherwise, thin is in.

The other thing to think about is that acrylic contracts slightly when heated, perhaps 2-3%. You must allow for this (and the radius) when you fabricate the housing if you choose to use bending.

There are a zillion and one plastic bits inside a drive, I wanted to disassemble my slotloader and vinyl dye the gubbins all different colors, but I lacked the cojones to disassemble that brand new DVD drive I got for the cube (at least to that extent).

 

How did you do to bend the acrylic?

Looks niiiiiiceeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

The ones I have cost about half that... you can get a set of two for $28... but they are well worth it, no other tool like them.. easy/fast to use and have the rubber pads. I have several other/larger clamps (my wife and I do a bit of woodworking) but they have metal surfaces that can be rough on some materials.

Did you read the post?... clamp it all down together and using the heat gun to soften the material, use the wooden piece to bend the acrylic...

 

Just one thing, a while ago I did read up on bending acrylic, but never tried it. The one thing I remember from it though, is if you heat the acrylic on the outside, you can possibly get a tighter bend (as the outside has to bend around more than the inside). Just wondering if you tried this or not?
Anyways, good job

 

Yeah, you are right on about that... I may not have made it clear but I tried to communicate that point. Glad you pointed that out for clarification.

 

Sorry, I was trying my best to read it all, must have missed that bit!

 

another thing that is noteworthy too... I was using some cheap-o material.. I wouldn't use this stuff (got it from Home Depot, cheapest stuff they had). There are different grades of acrylic. Thanks to Linear, I have learned that cell cast stuff is much better if you are going to be doing things to it such as bending or milling/machining in any way. I am 100% confident that with good tools and solid execution, that the results would be better with better material.

 

I had that idea too, been playing around with an old drive to try and figure it out.

I was thinking of bending but thougth there would be too much trouble with that, since I have no heat-gun and such. So what I did was the ol' cut and glue methode. (Thx for the guide linear).

Cutting will be easier than bending but you won't get as good of a finish. What I did was take the cover off, but I built the drive case into the enclosure. I glued a top and bottom plate along with a back plate with the conectors cut-out, to the sides of the case enclosure. So instead of taking out the drive I can only take out the "guts" of the drive.

For the pin's on the bezel if your really really carefull you can cut them out and glue them to a clear bezel that you created. It took me a few tries (thank gawd for spare floopys) but worked, just have to have exact mesurments.

Hope that helps.