Scratch Build – In Progress T.R.O.N [V4]

Cheers! Looking forward to seeing the finished product too, more so for getting some long over due gaming in, lol

I thought static would have been an issue too, but having done a bit of research at the start of the design, this doesn't appear to be the case. There are pleanty of cases out there (and have been for some time) that are completely made out of acrylic with no reported problems of static. As this case is a hybrid and has an aluminium internal structure, that all of the equipment sits on/is mounted from, they should all be earth protected anway. Any static from the acrylic will conduct into the aluminium which is earthed via the psu casing, plus the components are earthed in the same maner as well as via the system ground (wire), so I don't envisage any issues. EMI emmissions are a bigger concern, but wont really know till it's built.

I did toy with the idea of a removable MB tray, but due to the design (frameless) the aluminium plays a key role in the structural strength of the case. Making it out one thick piece/sheet couldn't be avoided. Plus I dont go into the case often, once a year maybe for a change out/upgrade in a part or two. Next time however I might look into improving the design along the lines of your suggestion.

 

About the possibility of static, I've had enough sheets of acrylic where once the protective plastic is pulled off the sheet is full of static, it usually fades away over a bit of time but theres a shortcut, you can buy an anti-static cleaner .

http://www.theplasticpeople.co.uk/anti-static-cleaner-p-85.html

 

Good point, I haven't bought any cleaner yet, though I'm bit off the completion date (no thanks to my recent headaches with this build). Should be back on the case (boom boom) tomorrow night (out for dinner with my father in'law this eve so no time to work on it).

 

Loving this, if i wouldnt of been doing my m3 mod that i had in planning i was going to go down the tron route, love this.

 

Thanks for that!

Yeah got to love TRON, anything to do with computing and tron gets the thumbs up from me including the recently showcased Recognizer case by thechoozen, great work there

 

After a few days break, I'm back on the case . Tonight was mostly spent planning the work ahead for the rest of this weekend. I did however manage to get a little bit of work done on the aluminium.

I finished off most of the remaining bends (only one left). Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos of the aluminium on its own detailing the bends, but will make sure to post some tomorrow once the last bend has been completed.

I then drilled and pop-riveted some aluminium angle to the MB tray and base plate. The inner shell is now fully formed and is pretty rigid. Once this is glued and bolted to the acrylic it should be rock solid... fingers crossed.



With the MB tray being fixed to the base plate, there was slight overlap of base plate, which jutted out the back of the MB tray. This was filed this down as the MB tray is to be glued flush to the acrylic side panel. I also made a start in filing down the MB tray edges to match the shape of the acrylic main body. This was a bit hit or miss and took quite a while as I had to keep unclamping the aluminium from the work bench and testing it out for size against the acrylic. What makes things more difficult is that though the acrylic looks pretty good in the bends, it isn't quite circular or exact to my intended measurements (radius from sketch-up model). I gave up in the end with the filing as it was getting quite late.




Tomorrow I will hopefully complete the last of the filing, bends & pop-riveting, then mark up the MB stand-off holes and I/O back plate. With a bit of luck Sunday will see the cuts completed and filed, and the aluminium sanded down at last for a brushed finish before painting. Based on previous experiance, sods law however will dictate that only half of the above will actualy be finished by the end of Sunday fingers crossed Mr Sod will sod off and give me a break for once

 

To hell with Mr. Sod! Nice little update. But just in case I'll cross my fingers too

 

Cheers! The fingers crossed worked, well for the most part. Unfortunately I broke my mates jigsaw now as well, and will now have to buy him a replacement plastic housing . Typically the new part for my jigsaw turned up late this morning, had it been a couple of hours earlier I would have stopped using my mates and wouldn’t have broken it...


Anyway, the build went pretty well today. I managed to get all the tasks done and some. The first task was to finish the bends and pop-riveting.






Then marked up, cut and filed down the MB I/O hole, PCI slots and the PSU hole. This aluminium chassis is a couple of mm smaller than the last attempt; this meant the bottom PCI slot would just be above the PSU and no more. So to avoid weakening the back plate I decided just to drill some vent holes in place of the bottom two PCI slots. I then started to sand the shell down to get the brushed finish, will revisit this tomorrow to make it more uniform.







I also counter sunk some holes in the base of the acrylic main body to allow the aluminium assembly to sit flush on top (the pop rivets used raises it slightly leaving a small gap).




So slightly ahead of schedule, just as well as I'm going to be out of the house for a wee bit tomorrow to help my dad out with some DIY at his place. Hopefully tomorrow I'll finish the back plate (the V4 vent cut out, for the second time), drill the MB stand-off holes, and complete the remaining sanding and filing of the aluminium, pretty much concluding this stage of the build. I might even be able to get some primer on there if have the time

 

Back on track & looking good mate .

 

Thanks Waynio!

That’s the tough part over and done with at last

Today was spent finishing off the last of the cuts and bends, mainly the V4/CPU vent, which was a little time consuming. Thankfully my jigsaw was back up and running and was able to cut a lot closer to the line this time which saved a lot of filing in comparison.





The PCI card bracket was an interesting task, being in the middle of the case the bend method I’d used before was pretty much useless here. I used the dremel to cut the edges and fashioned a wooden wedge that was sized to fit into the hole (that would left over from bending out the bracket).


A gentle tap or two with the hammer and the bracket was done.




A quick sand to get rid of those nasty scratches, lol, and voila one finished inner shell.



I think next time however, will try to avoid making the shell out of one peice of aluminium... though it is handy to have the strength and rigidity without the need for a seperate frame.



A tester to see how it would fit in the acrylic (and to see what the case would roughly look like when done).






Tomorrow night I'll drill the screw holes on the PCI bracket, the mounting holes for the MB, cut and glue the mesh for the CPU vent and counter sink the last of the holes in the acrylic for the rivets. I’ll also need to head to B&Q to get some primer too at some point. Will probably start painting on Tuesday eve and should it be ready for final assembly by the weekend.

 

Aluminium construction completed

.

 

Excellent! Least it wasn't nothing major with your mates saw. Nice progress made. Cheers

 

This is true though it's still an expensive part to buy. The model is about 20 years old, but thankfully they still sell spare parts. Lol, Cheers!


That's the spray paint bought. Was undecided on what type of paint finish to go for but ended up going for black satin.

One of my mates is going to lend me his tapping tool, but will be Wednesday before I can complete the MB tray and test out the MB mounting.

Think I might take the night off, will cut the mesh and internal mesh mounting frame tomorrow, and drill the standoff holes ready for tapping on Wednesday. I also need to make a start on the fan mounting frames and main vent screen at some point. Then it'll be ready to put together to watch the loading... screen whilst windows bursts the memory banks trying to calculate the ever increasing load time

 

Outstanding , really well done on the one piece bending work, certainly not an easy way to do it & you've done it well .

 

Thanks for that Waynio, appreciated . Yeah, it was a tough one hence the two attempts, one I wouldn't want to repeat unless I had to. It is advantageous for the strength retained through the bends, removing the need for a separate frame or angle for bracing. It essentially means you can afford to cut the PSU hole etc closer to the edges of the case as there are no bars in the way, reducing the overall dimension of the case... but it is a pain to do!


I wasn’t able to drill and tap the MB holes as planned this evening so instead decided to start work on the CPU vent grill and frame. I could have just glued some mesh to the inside of the case but felt that the rough edges of the mesh would look messy and wanted a neat finish. So I decided to make a frame out of acrylic which would hide the rough cuts (mesh would be sandwiched between the frame and the case).

I marked and cut the grill frame with the jigsaw. To add extra support to the mesh I mirrored the V4 from the case vent hole onto the acrylic. I routed out a 1mm recess, 5mm in from the edge of the frame for the mesh to sit in. I then bevelled the outer edge on the opposite/exposed side to make it look a little less plain. I've yet to polish it to neaten the edges and get rid of a couple of scratches, but it’s pretty much done beyond that.






I’m away from home again tomorrow, off down to Glasgow to see the Walkman and Black Keys play . And on Friday it’s my wife’s Birthday. With a bit of luck I’ll be free and back on the case on Saturday. Hope to have the aluminium painted and fixed to the main acrylic body by the end of the weekend. I’m off on Monday too and will try to spend some time working on the Fan frames and main vent screen... fingers crossed.

 

It's been a wee while since the last update, since then I have drilled and tapped the MB tray, though I could not find any 8mm stand-offs, but instead found a pile of 6mm ones with 4mm M3 threads. So as a workaround I cut some 2mm thick aluminium plates, placed them over the MB holes locations, glued them in place with araldite metal bond then re-marked, drilled and tapped. The combination of the 6mm stand-offs and 2mm aluminium met the 8mm requirements and as the 4mm thread had to go through the new 2mm aluminium pieces and the MB tray I didn’t have to cut them down to size. This also helped to keep the new plate bits on as extra support to the glue!





On Sunday I spray painted the aluminium assembly. Had a couple of small runs of paint unfortunately . Was a little impatient and tried to fix it before the paint was 100% dry (was still wet underneath even though it was dry to the touch), however this resulted in the paint rolling/bobbling increasing the area to fix , . I had to wait a good few hours till the paint was completely dry before attempting to rub the area down again with 800grit wet & dry. This took a couple of attempts to do, spraying primer then rubbing down again as the first round of mistakes resulted in a pitted surface from the rolling/bobbling. Eventually though I got it near enough right. The finished results :





Yesterday I drilled some holes in the acrylic and aluminium to bolt the two together. Alas I have little faith in glue alone, so drilled on the visible (top) side of the acrylic where I counter sunk two bolts which fixed to the bent aluminium tabs (at the top of the back panel of the aluminium). It took quite a bit of time to align everything together, drill, remove and deburr, align again, counter sink the acrylic for bolts and also for the pop-rivets to recess into (which was a complete pain), more drilling and at last glue the lot together and re-align/locate the assembly using the bolts and then clamped the two shells together with spreader beams too apply even pressure. 24 hours later...






Next I need to build the main vent screen which will then allow me to construct the fan frames and locate the bulgin switch. Then it’s the side panels and polishing/tidying up before installing the PC components.

Looking back at my overly optimistic views of completing this in a few weeks...., I should have known that all the best laid plans n’all ... Just started week 6 and prob have another week’s worth of work to go before the final unveiling, though I’m not sure if that’s being optimistic or not again .

 

Excellent workaround with the standoffs, it's coming along nicely & looks a lot closer to completion .

 

Wow, looks awesome! Just a suggestion, the mesh behind the V4 grille would be slicker if it could be painted the same shade as the el wire (I know the wire isn't paint, just if the color could be replicated in paint.) Or if you are doing something else amazing, don't mind me.

 

Can't believe I missed this - looks great!

 

It's been a wee while since I last updated as I've been too engrossed in building the case + had my one and only power supply out of my present case for test fitting in the new TRON one, lol. Think I had better get on to uploading some photos later this evening so that you can see some more progress/eye candy!!

Thanks to bit-tech for the nomination for MOTM and to all for your votes, very much appreciated, also a big congrats to the other nominees!!


Apologies go to Waynio, Paradox and Stonesurd for my crummy lack of response, the power supply is back in my Cosmos for the time being, so have no more excuses.

Thanks for that Waynio, slowly getting there, pretty much 90% complete now (just waiting on some acrylic bar to be delivered to me), all will be revealed later with my latest progress report!

Cheer for that, I thought the coloured mesh was an excellent idea, however having spent an afternoon going round all of Aberdeen’s DIY stores, Halfords etc I couldn’t find the colour I was after. So will have to make do with black as any colour bar teal/turquoise blue wouldn’t work.

The main vent (slit down the middle that's lit) has an acrylic screen behind it for the light tape to reflect off. I chose black gloss translucent acrylic for this which should reflect light as well as shine through, lighting the inside of the case which should also shine out the holes in the grill.

Thanks! Will hopefully have some more shots for your viewing this eve!