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

It's great to see that you're finishing this one; it's looking awesome. The inside is looking nice and clean, you obviously took care matching the components and fans with the colour scheme. And well, the outside is looking jizzworthy as ever, night shots please!

 

Taken a while but worth the effort & wait, great job dude

 

AMEN for UPDATE

 

Congrats for your gonna be a dad & for adding some finishing touches to this .

 

Its good to see that this mod didn't disappear. I love the color scheme on this mod.

 

New Up and coming Project -NEU.TRON

A sneak peak of the next project due to start in the next month or two. Going ITX this time and challenging myself to go as small as possible for a reasonably High end gaming rig. More details on http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=226604







Comparison against a SilverStone TJ07:
TJ07 - 220 mm (W) × 560 mm (H) × 565 mm (D) = 69608000 mm cubed
Neutron - 144 mm (W) × 283/317 mm (H) × 212 mm (D) = 8639424 mm cubed

 

hmmm... is v4 done yet? haven't seen the hi res pics yet...

 

Good question, the answer is not yet . Just have one side panel to cut and fix for V4, however I've had to tidy all my tools and a heap of other stuff into the garage due to the arrival of my son (wife's orders ). Family life has taken over since then. I'm hoping to clear out the garage over the next couple of weekends to make space to begin work on the new case and complete the last V4 panel at the same time.

I have a mate who is a semi professional photographer who I've lined up to take the final shots of V4 (I don’t have a decent camera or the knowhow for taking decent shots). Hopefully I'll be able to bring this project to a close in a month’s time just as the log for the new case is being put up.


Question on the new case, the 2 off curved top/front sections and the foot plate for the new case is to be made of 4mm aluminium and needs to be bent pretty precisely. I don’t believe this can be achieved with home tools and will likely need to go to a fabricator. Does anyone know of a decent fabricator that will take on small jobs like this and at a decent price. What have people been charged for in the past and for what sort of work? Is it best for them to provide the material or for me to buy it in and ship it to them for work?

 

Joined bit-tech a while back, but not actually starting using it until now, and this was the first thread I went though properly. This is one sweet looking build mate. Can't wait for the final pics but it's already looking sweet.

One question about the lighting, in post #158 when you show the lighting up and running again from the front, one shows a clear colour interference from the gear inside, did you want that or have you found a way to mask it? I love the solid blue strip though, looks awesome.

Really makes me want to construct a custom build like this, but no time/money/experience to even think of attempting it right now :L

Congrats though on an epic build

 

i know, started 2 builds myself, niether finished... (got 2 wonderful smallies by now, 1,3 & 2,5 ) Lucky for me i didn't post them anywhere so i don't have readers mocking on me to finish them

i THINK (not sure, you should ask a alu-god a.e Attila) you can bend 4mm aluminum with a board on each side, couple clamps and arm strenght, personally i have only done it with 2 mm but that was quite easy.

(Trying to make some kind of figure below)



clamp(s) clamp(s)
board-------|------------------------------------- board
alu--------------------
pipe----> O -------------------------------- board
clamp(s) clamp(s)


clamp it on to something that has the radius that you want, (in my enormusly detailed hi-res drawing it's the O that pretends to be a round thingy (pipe, spraycan, dowel, edge of a bench etc etc, something with the right radius)) let the upper board rest on the support (as shown in pic) if you rig it as i are showing it place your left hand on the board's left edge(on top of the support) so your material can lift from the bend radius, the place your right hand as far right as you can, the further away the less weigt/power you need to use to bend the alu(the upper board can be as sturdy/heavy/long as you want, the bigger the easier it'll be to bend (car-size might be a little to clumsy tho )

you can see a vertical line in the upper board and thats because it's two borads and the gap between them should be precisely over the point where the radius start to prevent the alu to move when you apply pressure on the right side, think of how a bending brake looks, it has a adjustable support to hold down the sheet so the bend gets precise.

I hope this jiddering can be of any help at all, as i said, i have only done this at thin sheet material, so this isn't proved to work on 4mm... can save you a lot of money tho is it works and you have saom scrap to try it on..

EDIT:
HERE is an awesome turtorial with real pictures by The_gnu where he's describing the same progress

 

Cheers!! Hopefully won’t be too long to post up the final pics.

Still not 100% certain what I'm going to do with the final side panel, was thinking in cutting out "TRON" lettering as an air vent with a little paint work to neaten it up, and add some blue LEDs for a little internal lighting...

The red/yellow/green lighting you are in ref. to comes off the MSI Lightning GPU board, it's for the APS (Active Phase Switching) 12 phase LED on the back of the PCB used for identifying the loading status over it. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any literature to show me how to switch it off, only solution was to mask it off with some black electrical tape. Lol. Not the neatest way unfort!

Glad to here the build is inspirational to you; I hope that one day you get the opportunity to make a custom build, it can be a challange but it's worth it in the end.

Lol, I love my kid to bits, but agree that finding the time to get back into projects is near impossible since I can’t do any cutting at night with him being asleep, kinda only leaves the weekend afternoons which I'm usually roped in to doing other jobs. Plus you can't just walk away from it setup to get back to the next day, all the tools have to go back and dismantle it all, can’t be leaving power tools lying around. I have a funny feeling the next project will be a bit slower paced than the last.

Good idea about asking Attila, he is the master of Alu after all!

The metal being bent in the post is 1.5 which is easy to bend. I used 2mm in the TRON case which had its problems but was possible by hand. I think 4mm however will be a whole new story and be near impossible to bend. If it was a 90 deg bend I could score a V groove along the bend point to thin it out and make it easier to bend, but a long curved bend would be a good bit more difficult not only for the force required to bend but also with it wanting to spring back straight. I'll buy in a piece to try out the home method, but I have my doubts.