Cases Has anyone built a tank-like case?

If you dropped the cases wouldn't all that force be transferred to the ground and not the components? The components accelerate/decelerate at the same rate no matter the mass of the case.


Lets say you kick the 1000Kg case with 1000 newtons of force, the case and components will accelerate at 1m/s^2. If you kicked the 1Kg case with the same 1000N kick the case and components would accelerate at 1000m/s^2. What would you rather have your hard drive be accelerated at 1m/s^2 or 1000m/s^2?

 

Just rap it up in loads of bubble rap

 

Okay, maybe I won't do the two-floor drop test, as it's not practical in the first place. I will, however, beat it with a baseball bat. And maybe drop it out of a moving car onto pavement. Not nearly as hard as a two-floor drop test but still physically traumatic. They're both more likely to happen then a second-floor drop, especially the physical abuse test. Like The_Beast said, it's commonplace for people to accidentally kick or knock over PCs.

I'll also do a test spilling soda all over it. That happens a lot too.

 

If the components are rigidly connected to the case then they accelerate and decelerate as a whole experiencing the same acceleration.

As for impacting the ground, Newtons third law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, while the case might exert a 1000N force on the ground the ground will also exert a 1000N force on the case.

It's probably a bit too simplistic to consider the case and components as a point mass. Given that the components themselves have a fixed mass the only way to decrease the acceleration they experience during an impact is to increase the time of impact and essentially the only way to do that is to suspend them (padding is a form of suspension)

Moriquendi