Scratch Build – In Progress Project : eye-tx 29th Mar -Third update today and it looks like a case .... at last.

So while my other project , Zotac Rebox is under going a bit of a rethink I'm making a start on another project

Inspired by a few of the itx builds on here and the realisation that not all cases have to be square boxes I thought I'd have a go at something more ambitious ....

End of the long PAD process .



First former , from 4mm acrylic . I'm going to us it to cut the main former from 10mm .

 

Routing the 10mm former . The big piece of mdf is to stabilise the router .





Shiny new former

 

While waiting for some glue to dry I thought I'd post a quick update

As I've got a lot of fiddly routing to do I made up a router table .

First job was to true up some bits of acrylic .



Seems to be a good fit



I'm going to use my first template to make two more , one for the bottom and one for the top parts of the case . Where the top and bottom parts meet there is a mitre . I made up another template to cut them so I could get them all exactly the same .



Three parts of the top template glued together and the lower one cut .

 

So cut cut a long story short , after a couple more templates I have these .



Then these .



An finally some parts



And they fit

 

I'm gonna go out on a limb here, and say this is going to be EPIC!

So very very subbed!

 

Thanks for the comment & the rep Angel and thanks to the other people who have left rep too

Can anyone recommend an internal ir receiver , smaller the better .

Something like this would be good , although I would have to remove the receiver from the board to fit it . This one comes with a remote that I don't really want . I would have a go at a kit if it was cheap enough to throw away after I'd broken it

 

here is one i've been looking at. though i dont think its small enough.

http://www.hd-plex.com/remote.control.html

where did you find the one in your picture?

 

Thanks for the link talladega . That looks a better bet than the one I found , it was on the American Ebay site and was $30 inc the remote . The HDPLEX one is $12 and supports power on from complete shutdown . Only thing is it seems to be out of stock .

Having looked a bit more I don't think I'm going to find one that I can use without rewiring the sensor so the pcb size isn't so critical .

 

So now that Rebox is done and Raspberry Rebox is waiting on the hardware I though I'd make some progess on this one

I want to fit the front rear formers to the base with some machine screws so that I can take it apart to work on the various bits as I go along .

The formers need a 3.5mm hole in them for clearance on the 3mm screws I'm using but the base needs 2.5mm holes for the thread . I didn't want to drill a 2.5mm hole all the way through and then try and drill it out in the former after as I find the acrylic tends to splinter when doing that .

The other problem I had was holding everything true and square while drilling the holes , I don't have a milling machine just the pillar drill .

So I came up with this contraption



I set the depth stop on the drill to go just through the former and leave a little mark on the base , you can just seem them with the former removed .



Action shot , drilling out the 2.5mm holes in the base



Bit of tapping .



And countersunk and screwed together .

 

Awesome build! Great craftsmanship!

 

nice work mate cant wait to see more

 

This shows a lot of promise. The amount of skill that has gone into just the few parts so far is impressive.

 

That is really cool. Very original idea, and a great start. I look forward to more, to see how well you pull this concept off!

 

Looks great, i hope you can keep up the good work. Also a nice workplace to do some modding.

 

Looks really interesting! Love the low profile.

 

Going by the quality of your build I'll take that as a compliment and a bit .... love the mouse by the way , as Homer Simpson would 'mmmmm shiny '

Thanks

Thanks Cheapskate I decided it was worth spending the time to get these bits spot on as the quality of the whole build rests on how well they fit .... even though none of it will be seen .

I had a bit of a geek happy moment when I realised that the bits of the formers were interchangeable the top from one fitted perfectly with the bottom of the other

Thanks KidMod' no pressure then

Thanks I'm going to take my time with this one , make sure I can keep the quality up . Having the workshop is a definite plus

Thanks went through a few drawings to keep it looking low and still clear the cpu fan etc .

 

Little bit of progress today

Running around the curved parts of the formers I need a series of strips of acrylic ( set inside like the base ) to support what ever I use to cover the top and undersides with . When I was truing up the base I made it over length that gave me an off cut the same width as the depth of the base . The idea is to cut thin strips of about 12mm and true them up using the table router landing up with a 10mm square section that is exactly the right length.

To do this I need some jigs ... two reasons , 1 so that I've got something straight to follow with the router and 2 some way of holding the rather small strips so that I don't remove my fingers while doing it

Here's the first jig / holder .





For the second on I need to cut a profile into the aluminium . For some reason I can't remember now I decided that it would be nice if the acrylic strips weren't just square

 

This mornings progress

Finished the jig with the profile in it and cut the blanks .



Blank held in the jig with a bit of double sided tape .



Lots of routing later





I don't mind admitting that these were a real pain to get right . They were really difficult to get square . The first pass on the non profiled side worked well enough but the problems started on the other side . Because they had a slightly smaller area of the tape to grab on to and I was removing slightly more material the part would move in the jig meaning that they came out a touch out of square . The solution was to turn the router speed up to full and run the part through more slowly . This meant less pressure on the part so it didn't move

Took me a few goes to figure it out ..... squint ones .



How they will work with the rest of it .



Next is some wedge shaped bits for the ends .

Got myself a new router bit you'll see why soon .

 

So wedge shaped bits

First blank in the jig .... I've run it through the band saw already to take some of the excess off .



Being routed .



Finished bit .



You can see it a bit better if I cover it , they are symmetrical to about .5mm just the camera angle .



Where they fit .





The next thing is to figure out how to fix them in place , I can't decide between screwing or glueing them probably land up as a combination of both

 

I love the design, and the manufacturing is very well thought over!