Well, I have taken the plunge into the deep, dark world of case building. WooHoo!!! First, a little background on why I decided to make a custom case. (This will be wordy, so if you wish to skip this, scroll now.) I have had my sunbeamtech acrylic case for a while now and it has served we well, but after seeing all these amazing mods/builds on here I thought to myself, it is time to do one of my own. It just so happened that I was able to take an independent study this semester, so I talked to the instructor and dean about it and they both agreed. I should add that I am a CAD major and my instructor is a huge fan of PC modding and the like so he was more than willing to allow this for credit. With the approval portion out of the way I began where every mod/build starts. The brain. After a few preliminary brain sketches I had an idea to work with. I chose my materials I was going to use. For this case I am using 3/16" thick cast acrylic in white. I bought it from www.delviesplastics.com I bought 4 24"x48"sheets from their clearance section. The sheets normally sell for $42.00, I bought them for $12.50 per sheet. The reason they were so cheap is because it was older acrylic and the protective backing was “hard if not impossible to remove.” I figured how bad could it really be? Well, I found out when I got it. More on that later. I also bought a .5” cast acrylic rod and 4oz. WeldOn #3. For the hardware, I bought a pack of 100 M3 button head cap screws 10mm in length and black in color, and a pack of 50 brass threaded inserts. I bought them from www.mcmaster.com Having the material and hardware selected I sat down on my PC, fired up Autodesk Inventor, and began drawing away. After god only knows how long, I had all the pieces drawn up and a working assembly drawing. (Pictures coming after this posting. I have to add in all the screws (yuck) to the assembly and then render the image. I'll get them up ASAP, promise) So, who’s ready for some pictures!?!?!? I know I am! First up: The Hardware and material As stated above, I have here the screws(black blob in the bag), threaded inserts, WeldOn #3, and a couple of needles and syringes (courtesy of my local pharmacy.) *I know that I shouldn't remove the backing before the final assembly, but a new rule had gone in to effect this week. Some idiot using the laser cutter wasn't watching it and didn't turn on the air assist and started a fire that ruined part of the bed. So now all backing is to be removed prior to lasering. GRRRRRRRRRR.* Remember when I said the backing on the acrylic was hard to remove? Well, you would have if you actually read that LONG intro. Anyways, the backing is pretty tough to remove, but with a little, well actually a lot, of goo gone, it comes off very nicely. The acrylic still has the shine! Some of the sheets I have pulled the backing off without using any goo gone. So thank you Delvies for sending me acrylic that was NOT "hard if not impossible to remove." The sheets were cut in half (now 24"x24") to accommodate the laser's bed size (24"x36") Here is what it looks like: Corner shot: Little more: More little more: Tada! (It's really bright white, I'm using my girlfriend's camera and I'm still learning how to work it) Before being able to laser the parts I drew in Inventor I needed to do the old covert and open in another program and save to another format. So I drew the parts in Inventor and exported them to a file format that AutoCAD can read. I imported them into AutoCAD and then saved them to a .DXF format so that I can open it in the program that runs with the laser cutter. So to recap, my parts go from .IPT > .SAT > .DWG > .DXF >.CDR YAY for ease of use Now that the protective backing is removed it's off to the laser! Most sexy machine on the planet: Oh wait, there's TWO! The one on the left is a 45Watt with a bed size of 18"x24" and the one on the right is a 120Watt with a bed size of 24"x36" I loaded the first sheet and began cutting. Little bit more done: I might add that some people have very dirty hands! Look at the glass! After all the cutting was done I ended up with these: Close up of what will be the front of the base portion: Cutting all those out on the laser took 10min! Well, that's all I have time for now. I'll keep posting more as time allows.
