Ok you have probably all seen me wandering around on these forums for the past two weeks or so, asking questions and generally sticking my nose in; now I have something useful for me to do instead and I need your help/Suggestions/Experience to make it work. Its a lot to read so please bare with me. I’m planning to build a cube PC made entirely out of acrylic. It is going to be back painted like macro black, and a small as possible. I’m working on the premise that I will use the SV24 board or VIA's Eden Board or one of the boards from this thread http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=5489 , get it TINY. All of the corners are going to be mitred and double thick 1/4" acrylic. (Painted on the back of the outside sheet). They are then going to be rounded using a router and a 1/2" half round bit. The MB(bottom)/HD(dead centre of cube)/PSU(back centre)/Slim-line CD|DVD(front centre, vertically) are going to be mounted to 1/8" acrylic plates and slotted into the actual cube (the cube can be completely disassembled without tools). The front three sides are going to be bonded; the back held by pins threaded through the top and fed through holes drilled through the entirety of the inner back and through the bottom before being bolted. It is going to be raised on 2"cube legs. The legs/body of the cube will be lit by bright blue leds. An 80mm fan mounted in back with vent holes bottom front will establish airflow. EMI will be minimized by using an automotive, metal flake spray paint (OOOOOOH). For those of you who care (I know there are some, just look @ linear's thread). Possible toys: 40x4 Serial LCD (If I can figure out how to get White/Bright Blue on Blue/Dk Blue)/Maybe a VFD if they get that big and not too expensive. 5" or 6" LCD panel mounted in the front(no need for a monitor) Clear USB Keyboard?/Clear USB Mouse Without buttons?(I've seen them; here I think) Get the point; it is all sort of Macintosh G4 Cubish. It will be several months before I can get the actual Hardware (I have to wait for the Canadian tax man) so for now I am going to content myself with constructing a Full Size wooden mock-up. ($15 never was spent so well) Ok, time for your part: What do you like, what do you don’t like? What do you have experience with and can warn me before a pitfall? What would you like to see? Have I missed anything I should not have overlooked? Any accolades, or any other various statements you think need to be said? I hope you get the picture, I have none to show you, it is all in my head.(along with other things) As always Money is a BIG object, but I still want Ideas. Please Go and Speak, and may the Mod Gods Be with you...
well... im new to the boards but not all *that* new to modding :rofl: first i figured this would be for LAN parties; IE Gaming but... anyway; as i was reading heres what i was thinking: when you talked about it being "TINY" i thought to myself ok...cool. then you mentioned those TINY boards on that thread and i thought oh God how could someone get something like that for a LAN party box i mean theres absolutely NO possibility of a decent graphics with a mobo like that. the rest of the box sounds pretty good. i would look more into the airflow of the box though. the way it sounds there will be solid sheets of plexi (1/4" i believe you said) inside the box (to support cdrom, etc.) i would look into maybe cutting and using nubs (little pieces of plastic) bonded to the sides to support it. especially if you are thinking of overclocking anything. heat becomes crutial when creating "TINY" boxes. then you got down and said you had no need for a monitor, and that a 6" LCD would work. so obviously i thought to myself OK so not having room for a GFX card is no longer an issue. but what i really want to know is What Is This Box For?!? the way its sounding it would be an AWESOME War-Driving machine. all its lacking is a battery! i can only imagine rolling up to a friends house with a big day of netstumbling planned and whipping out that baby!!! wow........ the compliments id get. overall (IMHO) your idea sounds well thought out, and generally sounds sound. i think the problems you encounter along the way will be a pain (working with "TINY" things always is) but im sure you will figure it all out. and i *REALLY* think that building a wooden version before hand is a *GREAT* idea. you will come across all your problems here (as far as heat, and wiring goes anyway) and have them solved before tearing up that expensive acrilic.
Mitred corners aren't absolutely out of the question, I know one guy who pulled it off. I just don't think it's the best idea. That 45° angled corner is going to chip something fierce unless you use top-of-the line material, and probably even then. I would engourage you to take a stab at a few mitred joints on test pieces before you fall too in love with the idea (if you're a plastics pro, pardon me, no offense intended). Rounding the outside corners, on hte other hand, should look amazingly good, especially if you're good with the router. But 1/2" round bit sounds wrong to me, don't you mean 1/4"? Again, test pieces. Everything in my case got tested before I put it in the case. Tiny is cool. Look into a 1U server PSU. Dunno what CPU you want to run, but there should be some new Shuttle boards hitting the street pretty soon that would rock. Slimline CD drive should work great. Spring for a laptop HD if you can. I like your pin idea, I was cooking up something along those lines myself. Thought about card slots at all? You have read my planning article, right?
Sounds like its going to be interesting. i dont have any plastic experience myself but i gotta agree with linear about the miter cuts. besides when you round them, i dont think youll be able to tell how they are joined. I'm curious why you are going with 2 pieces of 1/4" with paint in the middle, instead of 1/2" with paint on the inside, im assuming you are gonna put the led's in the inner layer for glowing edges maybe, other than that, i cant see why you would make it doubly complex.One other thing im wondering about, in going for smallest possible size, then adding vfd and 4-6" lcd, both of those will prolly require more size then you expect, specially the lcd. I dunno if you are going for a moblie usint or not, but a guy on another board is making a mobile unit and you might find some of his ideas apply to yours also here is a link to the thread: http://www.pheatonforums.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=186 Keep us posted on your progress and send some pics of drawings or your wooden prototype, i'm sure i'm not the only one who would like to see them. PS: something i'm curious about, how would dove-tail joints work with acrylic?
My supplier (who works with this stuff every day for the last 14 years) talked me out of it. According to him, all the usual carpentry techniques are no good because the thickness of the material varies too widely, and the material can't be planed or milled like wood or metal can to compensate for the variations in thickness. At least the clear stuff can't and stay clear. There are a bunch of colors and opacities. Dig, I missed the part about double thick 1/4". Why? You'll be surprised to find the inside dimensions are a full inch smaller than the outside. That's a lot of wasted volume for a case that wants to be tiny.
1/2" 1/4" it doent make that big of a difference (1/4" + 1/"4 = 1/2") I just want a semi invisible joint. There was more here, but i wrote it out better and replaced it.
Ok bare with me again, more writing... I wanted a finish completley free of screw holes, paint scrapes, lines and other such things, I also wanted a fairly secure attachment of the panels (since I am putting expensive components in it, expensive being a relative term). So i went with the idea of my coloured "skin", which could quite frankly be in 1/8" acrylic (however i like the weight of the 1/4" stuff), bonded to a rigid skeleton. The mitred joints may chip I hadnt fully realized how much they might, but wouldn't the rounding elimniate them as long as they are not too large... Combine those two points with the fact that I will be cutting 1/8" deep slots into the side and front pieces to act as slides for a "shelf" for each component and you get my reasoning for double thick 1/4" construction. The leds would be drilled to the outer layer,The shelves would isolate vibrations. Im gonna hack some free Geocites webspace and post a scan of my only drawings to date, at least the the least cryptic ones, and perhaps Il draw a perspective too if you are lucky. The mock up may be ready in a week or two(it gives me something to channel my creative juices into so I do not charge in and screw up the expensive acrylic), Ive got exams coming up and more on until the end of april pretty constantly. Give me a day or so for the pics. I am not designing it to be a gaming machine, hence no real requirement for heat. A lot like linear's machine it will either be run by a celery or by a Via C3(actuallly eden) proc. Now That is not to say that I will not play games on it, but it really doesn't have to play them flawlessly @ the highest resolution with the highest detail(unreal will be a must! at some playable level, I still love it). It will be mostly used to run folding/seti and mabye browse the internet or even play DVD's(If I can get a slimline ROM drive for that), some word processing, and other generally boring apps that we all use most of the time, even though we buy machines capable of sending 1000 lunar landers to europa(a measure of processing power). I doubt it will replace my 1.4 athlon, but it will at least allow me to still have the internet and check my email without being deafened. This may change in the future as we all move to smaller form factors, damn sounding like an intel engineer again. Expansion: I am planning to use the Eden board(buy a full eden system or just the board), but have designed it to fit the shuttle SV24 board, or any other similarily small enough board in case my desired hardware choice is nowhere in sight when it comes time to purchase my shtuff, which will probably limit me to PCI. Since the LCD panel/TV requires a TV out that is a must and would probably be looked into later. Designing room for a PCI card and other assorted expansion ports(USB/Firewire/floppy(check the who's got a floppy thread I think) Is not too hard now, hence the reason I was looking for your input.(translation: hmmm I hadnt thought of that). I orginallly planned for a uATX board with expanison cards, but after look @ how much room they take up I duickly discovered that it defeats the purpose of a compact PC. Put it this way. Imagine a square the width of your computers bezel, now make it a cube, thats how big the puter is going to be, now that's styling! The site Im looking @ has a 5" LCD with Overall Dimensions (mm): 127W x 93H x 19D, nice fit in my case(it would stick in/out a bit) and a 6/4" that would fit good too ( much higher cost though) "Works on a standard composite video signal from any video card with video out via "s" jack, VCR, video camera, or navigation system". My last thread talked about the VIA having an LCD controller built in, I will check that out, but the screen would prolly be much to large to mount on the case itself so the former may be the only option if I want to go that way. The MO LCD would be Module size: 190mm(L) x 54.0mm(W) x 27.0mm again fits comfortably in my cube(will stick in & out a bit) and would be white/blue or blue/black if i can figure out how to do it. The outside dimensions will be 21x21x21 cm plus 5 cm feet, inside roughly 19cmx19cmx19cm. a little larger than the apple cube @ 8.5" instead of 7", not bad for a home builder. LCD panel: https://www.overclockershideout.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=o&Category_Code=DE MO LCD:http://www.matrixorbital.com/products/lcd4041.htm P.S. The wooden mock up will be put to good use also, if I can get my GF to spend some dough on a shuttle board or something, i have the rest of the parts.
I would give some serious thought to alternative ways to protect the paint, like another coat of paint, maybe something epoxy-based. Why have all the extra thickness? Until you see what you described, it's hard to appreciate how much volume you're losing to the case sides thickness. Especially with your case so small, it will be a huge difference. Plus you'll have an impossible time getting the bend radii the same. That is, getting the inner bend radius of the outer piece to equal the outer bend radius of the inner piece.
bend?, I might end up going with small square corner bits and shelves on legs or something, but thats what the mock up is all about, actually seeing the case in 3-D. ^^^^ My smallest post yet...
