Normally i'm not much for wooden cases for computers, but this one is just amazing! I want to make something like this myself (the japanese style woodwork is just great) however i'm a bit short on skills, materials and money.
This project is incredible...nice work, man. I really love the idea of the buttons inside the door...keeping the front nice and clean while still being accessible. And the mix of acrylic and wood really is shaping up nicely.
this really is a fantastic project!! whats the final spec?a powerful and beautiful machine!! looking forward to updates.
hey everyone, time for another big update. first off my friend was getting on me about there not being enough air circulation in the case so i decided to add two more fans, one through the floor, and one through the back, it wasn't too much work, just a pain in the a$$. it also fit amazingly well between the psu and the other fan, it must have been meant to be: after working on the back panel for a few more hours, sanding it and drilling the final holes, it was time to finally glue it to the rest of the interior frame: this went quite smoothly, and after that was done, it was time to find the hole for the dvd drive button and drill that. , its hard to even see where the dvd drive is, but its there, without the hole yet though, more pics of that later once that was done, it was time to glue the front panel to the interior frame: once that was done, i took off the wood to get ready for sanding and finishing, and was left with the almost completed interior frame here is the rest of the dvd drive pics, i made the button out of some aluminum rod, and just primed, painted, and clearcoated it. its still a little long, but u get the idea: after that was done, my attention went to the dvd drive itself, and the hd cooler. i didn't really like all the different colors (being black, silver, white, etc.) on the backs of the drives so i decided to cover them up with more acrylic and clean up that area of the case. the dvd drive was first and it works, next came the harddrive cooler. the holes are to allow airflow over the heatsinks and together it looks like this, remember it'll all be shiny black, and not dull brown i also got my processor, and AMD Athlon 64 3000 venice and my ram, OCZ Value series DDR blah blah, so this guy should be up and running fairly shortly, that's all for now though
Stealthing the back of a drive, that just might be a first! Most of us worry more about stealthing the front of 'em. Very cool, nice to see progress reports!
Hey! You stole my idea (stelthed drive rears...) Overall your plexi work is very nice. Having worked with the dark plexi many times I know how hard it is to work with the sides. I really really hope you are planning on filing out the square back, it looks really bad in the pic. I am not sure of how the sides are in the case but the sides of the glass can look very good polished out to 2000 grit even though the sides are not clear. Do you plan on having some type of bracket assembly for the drive and the watercooling stuff? From lots of prior experience I find that without some kind of external support weld on 4 or comparative will not hold the box with the weight together. Check out my last sketches on convergence to see how I handle the problem (little bent plexi corners). In divergence I had the whole race fail about 5 times before I made it by bending plexi. I would also pay attention to some of the little lines in the cuts. I know how hard it is to get them perfect but perfect will make a big difference, expecially on the front panel. The front drive bezel looks good, a little crooked on the bottom but good. I would recomend using some type of screw there to hold the door to the cdrom also... it will make using the case a lot easier. It sure takes a lot of time and pacience to work with plexiglass like that, and your case is looking real good. Good Luck with it...
Can't wait to see all that brown horrible paper ripped off and get a view of this beauty!!! Continue the excellent work !
well hey, it is a good idea but anyway, lucky for me, the edges on the back will be hidden in the dadoes of the wood so they will be fine, and i've spend tons of time trying to smooth all the other edges, i'm gonna do more with that before the wood and the plexi are reunited again.
well i kept going after a long day of working yesterday, and i did a bit more today. first off, i decided to combine the hd cooler and dvd drive rack thing and instead of screws, i'm using rails so the whole thing can just slide, and since it fits so damn tightly, its not going anywhere. here is the hd cooler/dvd drive assembly: here it is in the case without the rails yes though: here are the rails, they're just peices of plexi and here is the whole thing with some more paper off and the drive bay assembly is in, with dvd drive and hdcooler installed....it works remember, the edges of the front and back plexi panels won't show, so don't complain about them, anything else is fair game though. i also found that 2000 grit sandpaper wasn't good enough for the edges so i used the rubbing compound after that, and the edges look great now. more to come
Complain complain... the whole case is **** JUST KIDDING The inside looks beautiful now, and that stelthed peice looks very very nice now since it is clean. BTW how did you attach the plexi door cap to the door on the CDROM? Keep going it looks better all the time!
thanks man, right now, its attached with double stick tape, that might change for some JB Weld-it or something, but right now it seems to be on there pretty good
That plexi looks SOOOO sexy, very very nice cutting job, I'm simply amazed! Could you send us a little bit of your talent? I think a five star is really deserved!
well the plexi work is almost finished and was getting kinda boring so i started working on finishing up the wood. by finishing i mean not only putting the coats of whatever on, but also the sanding which took forever. for the finish itself, i'm going to try something new for me, and since i lost the article on how to do it, it should be interesting. the goal of it is to end up with a finish with depth and a hand rubbed lustre that isn't too dull, or glossy, which works well with the wood i'm using. the main ingredients are spar urethane, and turpentine as a thinner, and wow, both of these things smell great the first coat is pretty much just a sealer, but the procedure is essentially putting on coats of the urethane and sanding them into the wood while wet with finer and finer grits, going up to around 600, so this should take a while. here is the first coat, sanded in with 220 grit wet/dry paper. only the top two peices are done, this shows the contrast after just doing the first coat the ebony is really gonna pop now too that's all for now, next is more coats of finish, and polishing the edges of the plexi, and then tons of other random work ....yay, getting closer every day though
