SketchUp MNPCtech & Bit-Tech.net case design contest #5 - (Deadline moved to September 1st)

Real cool seeing Xtrafresh help laserhawk64

The drawing on the grid paper reminded me instantly of "sethnmalice" that is how he planned and executed all of his awesome scratch builds

 

Fine by me -- far be it for me to say that anyone should do /two/ designs at once, especially when they're competing against one another!

 

@Dark, Duck & Gmork- NOOOOO!
@Dullonien - A box with the word 'motherboard' on it would be enough. Concentrate on the design.


-Can't be a stickler on incomplete builds this time. Shall we count everyone who posted something as a competitor this time?

 

For all the last ditch entries - I've added a few more pages of inspiration to the Tortuous gallery I set-up:

*CLICK IMAGE FOR ACCESS*
​

*j

 

-Where's your entry?

 

As I have no time left after today, I'm going to post my entry... it's not completely done, but it's almost done so you should get an idea.

It's an mATX case, with a mostly acrylic shell. It is designed to look like a camera and I've gotten ideas from Portal, an M60 (don't ask.) and my TomTom and I basically combined all of the features (except the bullet shooting part... yea, it doesn't shoot.. )

It also features changeable feet, so far a suction cup version and a normal standing version, a backplate cover to hide all the messy wires(ofcourse it can be taken off), and use a big tube or something similar to get the cables from the case to the plug/pc.



So, first up. Main image for the case, it's an opened up version. It will be possible to open the case for easy access(and coolness ), since the 4 panels are attached to the chassis using hinges and will be held together closed by either a small magnet, or a ring of some sort.



Up now is just a front view of it standing on a desk or something similar.



Here you will see the other feet, the suction cup feet, they can be attached to almost any surface and will provide you with the possibility to hang the pc on your wall, behind down from the ceiling, or in a corner like a camera as seen in picture below, etc. Also, this is a basic back-side view



Preview of the camera hanging in a corner


That's it, all I can make of it, hope you like it

EDIT: made some final changes thanks to Dark~3nergy and Xtrafresh, also fixed some minor issues

 

whoa ! that looks awesome !
but where do you have the hard drives ?

 

Sweet work Bartaggio! You really should have included a webcam-thingy in the front so you can actually film with it

 

looks nice bart, especially like how it hangs in the corner there, sneaky sneaky mean little thing, but suction mount it ? im not really sure about that i mean there are carry handles for big sheets of glass which can hold um to 300 kg just with suction, but its alway just temporary, as soon as u try to mount something that way for a longer timespann ittl fail...

 

It now has it in the compartment that covers the backplate... but after seeing the pictures, I could've just mounted it on the back side on the mobo tray

That could be done actually, but I'm not sure how it'll work since the PSU is almost again it.... I have 30 minutes left, I'll try to come out with something

Well.... my TomTom has been hanging around for a few months now, but I get what you're trying to say.. I honestly don't know how long it would hold,even though I used those "push clip down to make them hold" types of suction cups..... which reminds me, on the picture of it hanging they're not tightened

 

Sweet. Lenne's right. Suction cups don't work on ceilings. It's still awesome stuff, though. Nice use of a useless corner.

 

Mine are on my desk here... it's not the 1st yet.

 

I have a suggestion: Please increase the number of final pictures to something like 10. 4 is way too low to appreciate some of the good ideas some people have. Rather limit the file size and resolution to something like 1024xX or 1280xX. With 4 you can only post something like front view, side view, back view, opened case.

 

doyha problems

Today I started to work on laserhawk's Doyha design. First thing I did was actually binning Xtrafresh's model. Sorry pal, I just work a different way and was missing a few lines here and there I'd use as a guidance you'd already got rid off.

Not much new to see here:




However I did run into a few problems I expected from the start, namely the position of the hardware. As far as I understand the concept he wants to use some (hopefully custom) extension cables to run a few connections from the lowest corner of the cube directly into the top of the base. It's a great concept, and with the glowing helix it looks awesome.

Laserhawk never showed any drawing of the hardware placed inside the case, and I am not sure I understand everything he wrote as I am no native speaker and some of his writing is a bit gibberish, sorry. So I just used my common sense instead.

As far as I can see there is no other way to place the mainboard, as part of the lowest corner is cut off to create the opening for the cables and the helix. The cube is 7" on each side, an itx-mainboard is 6.7" squared.

So let's say you could place a mainboard in that position somehow which wouldn't be easy, esp with all the extension cables to be routed around in the case. The airflow would go to hell, as the air isn't guided through the case but pushed against the mainboard with no real way to exhaust.

The same can be said for the base. There are no air vents anywhere. Where's the PSU supposed to draw air from? Where's the hot air supposed to go? A velociraptor HDD produces a lot of heat.


Here's what I'd do: Increase the size of the cube by one or better two inches and increase the size of most other parts to accomodate. Place the mainboard on one of the sides then. Not only would the mainboard be far easier to mount, you'd have a really great airflow which could easily cope with high end components.

Something like this:



This would be the cube with a side width of 9", everything else the same. Looks a bit out of proportion alright but as I said, the size of everything could be adjusted. The case would be 28% bigger, but it'd fit one of the biggest air coolers ever now.

 

Here's another super quick concept I just came up with. Not my final entry, but something to share.

This next concept was inspired by the idea of long winding country roads

The idea here is to build a 20CM cube from a material 1/2" thick.

Each panel is to be CNC routered with a lolipop cutter (or undercutting endmill if you want to get technical):


The panels all fit together in such a way that the CNC milled groove creates a single continuous line all the way around the case. Crossing each joint 2-3times for stability.

A climbing rope is then slotted into the crack and it holds the entire design together.

No fasteners, no glue, just a little rope puzzle - I figured it would also be quite a bit of fun to assemble.

The variety of available ropes on the market would allow for a great deal of customization options:


Here's the quick mock-up I threw together just now.

The path of the rope, and fan hole locations are not final by any means - I just errantly drew a squiggle.

I'd imagine the final design would have careful consideration put into the path of the rope.








I can't take 100% of the credit for this as I seem to recall seeing a piece of furniture held together this way quite a long time ago. [edit]I googled the living daylights out of it but I cant find the furniture I speak of... IIRC it was a bench[/edit]

Opinions? Suggestions?

I have a few more ideas to share before September. Tune in soon. =)

 

There's been over a hundred views since I posted this, no comments?

 

I like the idea. The only downside would be the setup you would need to cut it.

 

Thanks Cheaps, the idea os making it cubic was so that you would only need 1jig to hold the parts for cutting, since they all have the same size.

Here's another one.

This time you'll need a bit more imagination. I built the prototype extremely quickly so you'll have to bare with me.

The yellow shape is the part that houses the actual computer, with 120mm fans on the top and bottom.

This piece then fits inside a shell - shown below in blue cardboard.

The blue shell is made up of dozens of pieces (imagine that the black printed lines are actually cutouts).

The idea here is to make it look as though the shell is made up of pieces which hover around the computer.

Each piece of the shell would be subtly backlit with an LED.

The cords and such will all flow out the bottom of the case through a triangular cutout in the shell.

------

I hope this makes sense to someone other than myself... I'll let the -crappy- pics do the rest.

Exterior:


Interior:


Assembled - upside-down:


The parts:



A quick and dirty mockup with some transparency so you can get a better idea of what I'm talking about:


More angles of the outer shell - the final design would see all the cutouts (shown here with printed black lines) line up perfectly:




A couple more shots of the inside:



The effect of making the parts of the shell float would be achieved with a skeletal structure like this:


Thoughts?

*j

 

I had an idea to do a similar design as a case skin. My idea involved running all the cables under the raised parts so they were exposed in the cracks. Added wires would give it the look of robot guts.

 

whoa, that last design looks awesome langer !