Case Mod - In Progress Project: HEAVY Water

It's been a while since I've put a project on here. Actually, I still haven't really finished my last one. Still looking for the perfect mesh to finish it off. Anyway .... here's another project. I hope no one's in a hurry to see it finished. Coz it's gunna take a LONG time!

Introducing: HEAVY WATER

I know, not a very original name, but it will be water cooled and VERY HEAVY. I will be using an old chasis from a Hp 9000 D Class server which I aquired for the bargain price of 2 for $0 . In their day (1993 i think) these were pretty serious comps, and worth a fortune. It will eventually house. My new comp (hardware unknown for now), a 1/2" water cooling system with a 3x120mm rad, a PS1 LCD, 4 HDDs in zalman coolers (Hot swap style) and 2 PSUs (probably about 500W each, don't really need more). The watercooling gear will mostly be Swiftech (MCP655 pump, Apogee GTX CPU block, STEALTH VGA Block, MCW30 Chipset block) the Rad will be a Asetek Black ICE Pro III. I'm hoping that all this gear makes a reasonable water cooling setup. As this is my first water cooled comp, I don't have a great deal of experience with it. If anyone can see any problems or make suggestions for changin things, please do. The only thing that is sort of fixed is the pump (coz it fits where I want it to go).




To begin this project I made myself aquainted with SketchUp (it's soo cool, lol)

Here's the design for my case. It's not entirely complete. There will be an interior panel from the end of the mobo to the HDD rack, covering up the empty space and acting as a bulkhead that I will pass cables and hoses through. The overall look I want to go for is "smoothe". No screws showing on the outside of the case (except for the back and bottom), or on the inside of the case, and no wires showing (as much as possible anyway):




I also scavanged a removable mobo tray from some sort of random tower case. This was given a little work to tidy it up:



Comments and suggestions are most welcome

 

So now the real work starts...

First the old chasis is stripped down completely:



All for the mounting points for the old system were removed, with some gentle persuasion from a hammer :



The first thing I'm gunna do is widen the internal top panel. To do this I'll cut it in half, then weld 2 small spacer pieces in the
gaps to give it it's final width (one benefit of using heavy old cases, it's made from 1.2mm steel plate, so it's not too hard to weld). The space that is left will form part of the blowhole for the radiator:






Today I got onto some more fiddly work. The outer panels for the case will be switched around from the standard version. This will make the main panel like a Gull wing door. This door is really big and will be quite heavy, so some heavy duty hinges are in order. Here's what my sketchup design says they should look like:



Now on with the manufacture. It all starts with some 32x3mm flat steel bar. This will be cut up into a zillion pieces and welded back together again. Hopefully looking a little more like a set of hinges. Unfortunately, I forgot to take any pics before I welded most of it together, so you'll just have to believe me that there were a zillion bits Main hinge support done:




A couple of small holes were cut into the backplate and top plate. Here's all the pieces for the hinge assembly so far. The pins are courtesy of an old laser printer (just happened to have a nice hard 6mm axle in it).



And here they are temporarily installed, hopefully you guys can see how they'll work. If not, you'll just have to wait a while:

Door Closed:

Door Open:

From the Back:



Only one painful injury today. I stuck a pop rivet into my thumb, not even sure how, but it went in about 1.5cm (and I set my jumper on fire twice ):



And that took pretty much the entire day, more maybe next weekend.

 

Thats one big mudda of a case.

 

Nice Mod YARRA, cant wait to see whatcha do next

GO THE CROWS!!!

 

Nice I love the big ass case like mine.. Lets mod the servers casess

nice work good luck buddy

 

-Suggestions, you say?

CHROME IT!

Just the inner frame, but chrome the CR*P out of it!!!!
Just once I'd like to see a rig so shiny inside, it looks like it's heating up. -Think E-Z Bake oven...

 

nice SketchUp

 

So, looking at the Sketchup, the wheels are gonna steer? Progressive steering, no less?

I like the look of the case, and the hinge is cool, it'll get the door way out of the way.

 

Yep, Twin steer. Not really necessary, but that's not the point with modding . I'm currently thinking up a way to lock the door in the open position too, might be handy and I sure wouldn't want it to fall on my head


@ Cheapskate :-- "CHROME IT":
Nice Idea! Maybe for another case though. My current ideas fro a color scheme are to make it look and feel as though you're under water (hopefully a little lighting trickery will aid in this).

I like the Oven idea though. Future project for someone "Project EZ-Bake", fully chromed interior with nice Red cathodes to look like heating elements


@The Beast :-- "nice Sketchup"
Thanks, It's probalby a little too detailed though, the file is pushing up around 12MB, and my poor old Shed comp has trouble displaying it, which means that I have to go back inside to check measurements


Thanks for the comments guys, keep 'em comin

 

to lock the door in place... why not try and find a small strut from say a small hatchback or something along the lines of that? you seem handy with a welder so it wouldn't be too hard to weld in the brackets needed for this..

just a suggestion

 

That's always an option. And I have thought of it a bit. I actually have a couple of really small hydraulic struts from the lid of an old line printer, they're about 6" long and would fit pretty well. Unfortunately I think they're a bit too worn out and might not take the weight.

My current plan involves springs and latches, not quite as high tech, but it should work

 

may i suggest changing the name to deuterium oxide, 2H2O or maybe even D2O as they're all synonymous with heavy water:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_water

 

what the hell??? there is a real heavy water...damm

 

Sounds like a pretty good idea. Originally I wasn't going to put a name or logo on it. But, 2H2O or D2O might work.

Thanks for the idea

 

The sketch looks very good So does your work!

 

Very Heavy!!

 

Got a little work done today.

I think I've figured out how to hold the door in the open position. But before I do it, I want to do some work on the rear panel. That way I'll know where the Power supplies and Mobo will be.

The first thing I did today was to take a look at the Aluminium U section that will be used as the guide rails for the Mobo tray. Unfortunately the internal space in the U section was less than the thickness of my Mobo Tray:




I figured that some wooden sliders would be a little kinder to the Aluminium than sharp steel. After quite some time spent shaving, filing and sanding. The wooden sliders fit:



They're held in place with some epoxy:



While that's drying, I can move on the the rear panel. Firstly, everything is carefully marked out, working from my sketchup design:



After everything was triple checked, I got out the angle grinder and started cutting, no going back now . A small part of the hole in the top (where the expansion cards used to go) had to be filled in. I had aquired an old side panel off an Antec case (1080B I think), and this would be my source of sheet steel . Everything is marked out and rechecked:



And it fits, yay!



(It really isn't that easy, there's about an hours worth of filing and fiddling around to get it to fit right)

Because the steel is only 1.2mm thick, I have to use very small welding rods. They're so small that my hand piece won't grip them. So I have to fold the ends of the rods over. For this job I'll be using about 65-70 Amps on the welder, any higher and you just blow holes



The filler piece is tacked up:



After welding up the rest of it, I spent a couple of hours grinding and filing so that the Mobo tray would fit in.



Since that went pretty well, I decided to replace some of the old air vent areas with solid steel.



After yet more grinding and filing, a PSU can now fit through the opening in the bottom




Well that's it for today. Hopefully I'll get a little more done tommorow. Let me know what you think so far.

 

Thank you. Hopefully by the end of it, my work will also resemble the sketchup

Indeed... I might chuck the relatively complete one on the scales tommorow and see what it weighs


On a small side note, I had a look at the RAM in it. There is actually 1280MB of RAM in this system, pretty good considering how old it is (was actually built in 1998, not '93 like i said earlier)

 

Nice! great modding You really have planned this case, and the way things fits, great job! What about the vent holes next to the PSU?

 

Was thinkin of doing them too. But there will be a mounting plate for the 2 PSUs that will cover that area, so it wont make any real difference.