Phobya water-cooled case design thread - FINAL STAGE

Lol... yeah, here's mine. This seems to be the other common way louvers are usually done, besides the cut-and-press method. It does give a nicer result, and would probably work well enough for my design. I guess it'd be up to them, ultimately, how they want to do it.

 

@Subtec, material thickness of 1.6mm is very strange, but 1.5mm is pretty standard. I think that LiLi uses mostly (only?) 1.5mm aluminum in their cases.
Machining front panel from 10mm aluminum slab is just unnecessarily heavy and expensive. Also dozen of small pieces for bezel is very bad (expensive, time consuming, needs assembly etc). Just make it 1.5mm or 3mm alu with lasercut holes and manufacturing will love your design.
And about screw sizes; Just use button head hex M3 for everything.

@Mick64, very impressive - seems that your case is completely ready for manufacturing.

 

Zesti - Normally in the US raw materials are not their advertised size ( I have no idea why ).

For instance Aluminum may be sold as 1.5mm but if you mic it you usually find it is 1.6mm, and depending on the manufacturer I have gotten 2mm that is anywhere from 2.03 to 2.06. Or even more confusing is that you will buy materials sold in imperial measurements, lets say .125" and it will actually be 3mm, or .5" and it will actually be 12mm. If you are running parts where you have to maintain .01mm or better than .005" tolerances this is a real time killer.

I have to mic all my materials everytime I start a job so I can find the pieces that are either the right size, or at least oversize by a small amount so that it can be surfaced to the spec'd size.

It is very time consuming and annoying. If I had to guess, I would put the total amount of cost this adds to every job at about an extra 1 or 2 %, which can lose you a job when you are in a situation where you are bidding against other shops.

This kind of brings me to a question I have had in the back of my mind ever since I started using SketchUp for the design process. Why do the contestants have to spec out a final design in SketchUp ( which google specifically states is only accurate to within .1mm - and many people have demonstrated that it is actually not even that accurate ) when some Engineer is just going to look at the design and create his interpretation of it in Pro-E or Solidworks and spec out industry standard clearances and hardware anyway?

I don't want it to sound like I am coming down on the organizers. I just know that for my own work I end up with customers all the time who have drawn things as best they can, or even used any of several different CAD programs, and I still have to sit down and import the design in to Solidworks and revamp everything so that when the parts are actually put together the assembly functions as requested.

 

Yeah, that is very annoying. I remember when I bought "10mm" polycarb and it was 9.5mm (3/8"). In the end I just took it back to the shop since it was useless. I also hate when they sell "16mm" drill/milling bit and it has 5/8" printed on side even though package says 16mm.

I bought some 1.5mm alu couple months ago and now that you said it being usually 1.6mm in the US, I just had to measure whats left of it. With my vernier caliper I got exactly 1.5mm from all four sides. (Okay, the piece left was pretty small, 300x400mm or so.)

And I bet that Phobya wont be able to use winners design directly. There's always some small details that designers haven't thought or that are very hard to manufacture.

 

@Nitrix Any news from the fab shop? Machine spec

I must say that ¨ease of manufacturing¨ rarely goes hand in hand whit cost effective method. Cnc machining is often easier but almost always too costly. So in order to take our design one step futher i think machine spec and dollars target are a ¨must have¨ .

At this point i really need more info on production method & resource to make design decision as for material thickness and front of the case design.

Please do as quick as you can cause i only have week end to work on it...

Thank you for your time... i know getting in touch with evrybody involved in ¨THE next step¨ is very hard.

@Zesti even if you think of everything they will redesign the case to make 2-D drawing and to make it match their workflow and production philosophy.

 

I wish I can join you guys now, but I am so busy with schoolwork and prefect duties, and I'm planning my next project. But I WILL make time to work on my case.

 

I am getting the feeling this will be a rather uneventful 4 weeks

Ill be moving into my townhouse so I won't have much time to work on my design either.

 

Yeah probably. I just want to render my case with hardware in it, because I think people will vote for that more easily. I think it's kinda unfair. Not complaining, because I got through!

 

1.6mm ~ 1/16th", so not so strange if you're in the US. I got that from looking at standard thickness aluminum sheet on onlinemetals.com and translating it to metric, since that's what I'm using in sketchup.

 

I wish I could help you mates, I'm an engineer but at computer engineering. I can help you with electronic or programming, but manufacturing details is far behind my knowledge.

I still can help you with aestetic aspect or features aspect .

@Razer : I can't do your homework either . And yes, add render with hardware installed. It won't change anything from my own point of view, as I can easily imagine the beast running, but I'm not sure about other voters. Maybe it would have help if I had rendered my deisgn instead of SKU 2D export ... anyway, now I'm resting far from stress ... and I'm lovin' it

 

I came up with another idea for the front bezel louvers:



Two separate pieces, vent openings are cut on the exterior panel to get crisp edges/corners, insert is louvered by cutting & pressing the way SnowyOwl suggested. Seems like a decent compromise, no?

 

Looks good subtec, that could work.

-Ash

 

When I try to refine the design now, and make it "kinda" manufacturable, I now realize how badly the thing is designed.

 

Any feedback from Phobya ? A week as passed and it feels like nothing has changed .

 

Ok just to put some cool factor in this dying contest.....ok cheap shot but the organizer could show up just a little bit more.

Playing around with maxwell and a flat black texture...that software is powerfull.But 7hrs render is kinda long....

 

Amazing!

Great to see everyone helping each other out with things. Good luck everyone

and post pics of everything! does seem abit... ermm... dead in here

@Razer, yeah thats what tied me up with mine.... and then I went and changed it and it just went to pot! lol. Im sure you've got the skills to do it though

@everyone

 

(owl sound : on) Houuu houuhouuuuuuuu (owl sound : off)

Nice one there. Like mate painting over glossy ones. Is the bay riveted or screwed to the case ?

 

how does it work?

 

It's all screwed to the case
@Razer It's a plug-in for solidworks or sketch up (Maxwell V2.5 by Next Limit) Very easy to use and a lot of tutorial from their web site.

 

LOL nah I mean the actual HDD drive rack. How does it work?