Welcome to my AL-rylik project. I'm continuing from here due to new process and the creation of this sub-forum since I posted last. (Mods, hope that's not against any rule. ) Discussion log here. Welcome to my first home-made case log. It's been a while since I've posted and figured that it was time for a new project. My inspiration for this is pretty simple: make a small-ish, light-weight, easily toted case similar to some of the new mini-ATX cases I've seen coming to market. I don't have the money to plop down at once for one of these cases, but I can spend a little here and there. And besides, I'd rather have the satisfaction of making one by hand rather than buying one outright. Most of the cases I've seen (Q-Pack and one by Antec come to mind) use mini-ATX motherboards and non-standard power supplies. I have neither, so I'm making a case that will fit a full-size ATX mobo, standard power supply, two CD-Roms, floppy, and at least two hard drives. On with the pics... First off, all aluminum will be used. Angle pieces are 1/16"x3/4"x3 ft. Flat pieces are the same, just not angled. You can get a feel for the thickness below... My tools of the trade... And my newest editions... Aluminum angle is now cut to length. The finished case will be 14"W x 16.5"L x 10"H. And here is a removable motherboard tray that I took from an old case at work. And who says that working in an IT dept doesn't pay? And that's it for now. I hope to have the frame put together by the end of the week, along with the tray mounts in place. Mounting holes for said tray should be done as well. From there I'll be working on the power supply mounts along with the drive mounts, which I have yet to figure out. (If anyone has an idea on bending 1/16" aluminum at a right angle please let me know.) From there I'll work on the side panels, which I hope will be aluminum as well, but the prices for big enough pieces are looking more than I want to pay. I'm hoping to get quite a bit done this week as my wife and daughter are off in Arkansas. I also intend on installing a new dishwasher before my wife gets home as a surprise. After that updates will be sporatic due to funding, work (it pays the bills guys), and life in general. Later...
Well, here I am again. Progress was good and went rather smoothly last night. I wanted to get more done, but it's just too hot in Texas at the moment, that and my back was sore. Anyway, on with the update. The frame is assembled and turned out rather square. Actually more square than I expected. I was expecting to have to drill out rivets and do some trimming, but none is needed. As you can see from the pic below I went through and drilled out holes for the rivets. I overlapped the pieces as I drilled so I knew the corresponding holes were in the right spot. Below is a rather bad shot of the countersinking. Sorry, I forgot to turn macro on and only remembered after all of the pieces were together. This process didn't turn out as well as I wanted. With the aluminum only being 1/16" thick I didn't have much to play with and most of the countersinking is shallow. Guess I was being a little to cautious, but better to err on that side than the other. First corner assembled. Bottom and corners assembled. Yea! All parts riveted (which turned out to be a pain, literaly.) Just a shot with the removable motherboard try in place. You can see that the lower portion of the tray is extended (kind of in an L shape, I guess). I'm assuming that this is for mobo's with long ISA slots, but since I don't need the length it's coming of. This tray is actually quite heavy for its size, so I plan on removing some of the middle to lighten it up a bit. Just a shot of where I intend to put the power supply. This is an old one that I again scavenged from work. It should work fine as a place holder until I buy a new supply with a 120mm fan on the bottom. And the last just is of one of the corners. Pretty good considering when I did the trim work on the house it came out a whole lot worse than this. Comments, questions, suggestions are more than welcome. Until next time...
OK, time for another update. So far not all that much has been accomplished. The power supply bracket is now in place, but I'm thinking about redoing it. As you can see it's formed from one piece of angle that I cut a triangle out of. I went a little too far on purpose just to make sure that there was enough room to bend the aluminum. Turns out that I took too much out. The gap is plainly visible and I'm not liking that. I plan on having a window on both sides and this section may be visible, which would not be that astetically pleasing. This show what I intended to make the optical drive mountings out of, but as it turns out the 1" flat bar was too thin to support the weight. Just a pic of the pieces that will be used to mount the support bars to the actual pieces that the drives mount to. Here you can see the rails on which the motherboard tray will be supported by. (Thanks Dad for this one.) These are 1/2" aluminum angle running the length of the case. When the tray is in place it's slightly out of level due to the lip on the tray. I'm thinking about notching the rails to counteract this. Not a very good pic, but here I'm tapping out the holes for the optical drive mounts. And here you see the case as it stands now. As you may be able to see, I had to swap out the flat bars for angled on the optical drive mounts, as mentioned earlier. For now these are held in place with the zip ties. The mounts are actually a tad too far forward (about 3/8") for the drive faces to be flush with the front of the case. Good evidence of measure twice, cut (or in this case, drill) once. Instead of lining up the middle of the flat bars with a mark that I had made I lined up the middle of the angled bars. I wasn't thinking at the time and got in a wurry. After looking at this I plan on redoing it anyway. There's an easier way to do this. Just a side shot that shows how I've removed some of the access material from the motherboard tray. The extended area for ISA cards has been removed, along with some of the middle, weight-producing area. Front shot Top shot Another mobo shot And a back shot. Power supply will be mounted above the PCI cards in the upper right corner. A 120mm fan will be in the upper left corner.
OK, got another update for yall. Hope everyone had a good Independence Day (well, those on this side of the pond). Well, I didn't like the mounting system that I was using for the CD-roms, floppy, etc... The following update is basically just covering this change. Below is the rail that the drives will slide into and mount on. Here you can see the holes that I drilled for the mounting holes on the CD-roms. I put more than one so the drives could slide forward or backward if needed. Here you seen an almost finished side of the rails. And both sides complete. And now mounted with drive for effect. Side shot And a couple of overall shots
Acrylic Front And here's where I'm at today. I haven't had much time to work on this since the last update, which was oh so long ago. But anyway, I think you might like what you see. The piece that you see here is only a test sample, just to make sure that the etch and the two holes would work. (Which they did!) On the real front there will be mounting holes cut along with two more drive bay openings. (One opening for an LCD/VFD -hoping- and one for a media card reader.) There will also be a spot for front mounted USB ports. There's more of this coming. On with the laser etching! Pardon the reflection and my fat gut! I'm wanting to with anodize or simply paint the aluminum I use a dark blue. Since I don't have the AL yet I looked for a piece of construction paper, but didn't have any dark enough. When I was getting dressed for church last night I saw this shirt. So, in wanting to get a feel for how it would look, I used my shirt as a backdrop.
very very nice. That looks incredibly clean and very sharp. Its always a pleasure to see creativity in a custom made case. Do you plan to have all sides acrylic?
To keep the costs down (hey, my 2nd child is due in 3 months; then I'll have no money!) I will probably have 3 sides acrylic only (top, left, right), 2 sides aluminum only (bottom and back), and one side aluminum and acrylic (front). The sides with acrylic only will either be painted from the inside with "windows" (unpainted area) or they will be tinted. At this point I have yet to decided. The two sides will have laser cut 120mm holes for intake/exhaust fans and maybe an etching to go along with it. The top will more than likely be plain. Oh, I forgot to mention. A big shout of THANKS! goes out to Tim the engineering graphics teacher where I work for drawing up my design in Illustrator and then lasering the acrylic for me.
Just placed an order for a blue illuminated Bulgin vandal switch & a Logisys 5-LED Lazer light kit from FrozenCPU. Should be here around the beginning of next week, maybe.
Just noticed this project, and I'm glad I did! That's a very nice custom aluminum frame you fabricated there I like the layout and the etching. How are you attaching the acrylic to the frame?
Thanks gvblake22! Acrylic will be attached via bolts with acorn nuts OR the allen wrench bolts (can't remember the correct name) if I can find some local. The aluminum will be done via pop rivets, except for the front. Alu and acrylic on front will be done with bolts only. But, in thinking about this, if anyone has a suggestion on a clean method of attaching the sides I'd like to hear it. (Meaning, no bolts or attaching method seen.)
Well, I have an idea, but it would require very accurate measurements/drilling and would depend on the thickness of the acrylic used. If the acrylic is at least like 1/4" thick, you could drill a hole through the aluminum angle (the frame) and then drill a hole only partially into the acrylic (like half way) and thread the "half-hole" in the acrylic. Then you run the screw from inside the case, through the hole in the aluminum frame, then thread it into the small hole in the acrylic. Just use a very short screw. The threaded hole in the acrylic essentially acts like a nut with the whole piece of acrylic being the nut. The only other thing I can think of would be to use some sort of a screw with a very low profile head (prettymuch flat) and just screw the acrylic to the frame like you normally would and then put some kind of a thin covering frame around the whole outside edge of the panels to cover up the screws. Not really sure what you would use or how you would attach it because any kind of glue would work great until you wanted to remove the side panel... LOL
Hmm, great idea! Problem is is that the acrylic is 1/8" thick due to laser dependancies. It can do 1/4", but I like the 1/8" better. 3M tape comes to mind, but I'd run into the same thing as the glue...
Hmm, yeah, that is problematic with the 1/8" thick acrylic. That type of attachment would be much more difficult (if not impossible) to try and attach it without it going through. If you really wanted to use that idea to attch the side panels, you could get some strips of 1/8" thick acrylic and drill and tap some holes in the acrylic strips (that are as wide as the aluminum frame) and then cement the drilled/tapped acrylic strips to the inside of the acrylic panels all the way around the edges. The only problem with that is that the panels will stick out another 1/8" and I'm not sure how that would look or how much you would like it. Just an idea...
Well, the front alu/acrylic will be wider/taller than the exact outside measurements of the frame to cover up the sides of the side pieces of acrylic. Looks like it's nuts/bolts for me, unless you have another suggestion.
Well, all I can add then is what I will be using for my project (which is similar to yours). I was also looking for a low profile type of fastener to secre my side panels and I decided to use Button Head Socket Cap screws. The one I chose can be seen HERE at McMaster-Carr. the head is only 1.5mm thick and nice and round with an unobtrusive, symmetrical socket type slot so it is relatively inconspicuous.
Oooh, and inexpensive too. What nut are you using? Or are you just threading it through some material without a nut?
I'm actually running the screw into these acrylic corner cubes from FrozenCPU.com. But in your case, I would just dril and tap a hole directly in the aluminum frame. But I'm sure it would also work just fine with a nut, it would just be a little more time consuming/messy to assemble and disassemble... It's up to you.
I C. I noticed that the thread is M3. I'll have to see if I have that tap. Man, you've been great with suggestions. Thanks!
Of course man! That's why we're all here right? Live and learn Anyway, McMaster has a very large selection of lengths, threads, colors, and materials available in the button cap screws. Just go to their site (www.mcmaster.com) and scroll toward the bottom and find the "Fastening and Sealing" section (second from the bottom in right column). Then click "Socket Head Cap Screws" (10'th option/bullet). From there you just start selecting your desired thread size, length, etc. It takes a minute to figure out how to navigate the site, but once you do, it's extremely easy to find what you need and what they have to offer! Good Luck!
