Cutting a 140ish-mm perfect circle out of aluminium?

[fragged]

Hey guys,

Recently bought a Antec ThreeHundred; without giving away any information about my mod in planning I was wondering what the best way to cut the 140mm fan grill out of the roof of the case, leaving a perfect circle hole that I could then cover with modders mesh or whatever.

I'm not afraid of hard work, however I'm not skilled when it comes to metal work, thus using a jigsaw to cut it out is probably unfeasable. I've seen those circle drill bits but can only remember seeing them to about 60mm diameter; and I dont think larger ones would be practicle because of rotation speeds etc.

So, can anyone suggest any options? I'm in a rather remote area of South Australia - About 300KM from Adelaide, and even there finding a place to do laser cutting would be hard.

Cheers,
Fragged

[Collinstheclown]

Easy.
-Put a screw in the dead center of where you want the hole.
-Tie a piece of string to the screw.
-Measure out 140mm of string from the screw. Leave some extra for next step.
-Tie marker/pencil/chalk/whatever to string
-With the string tight, trace out your circle.
-Drill a hole near the line.
-Cut with jigsaw. Dremel works too.
-Sand smooth.

:) Enjoy!




-CollinstheClown

[SXRguyinMA]

:stupid: that'd be the easy way, or get get a 140mm holesaw :up:

[p0Pe]

i he measures out 140 mm of string from the center he will be getting a 280 mm hole:P

[Collinstheclown]

Doh!

Scratch that, make it 70mm. :)

Congratz pope, you passed my test... yeah... thats it... a test...




-CollinstheClown

[SXRguyinMA]

lol

[p0Pe]

xD

[Datech]

Or, as a corollary to pOPe and Collin's *methods*, you could tie the string to a Dremel with a Sabertooth bit and the little 'stand up straight to cut laterally' attachment. If you kept the string taut it would help you follow the circle you already drew.

[fragged]

Cheers guys, they are some useful suggestions; unfortunately this weekend I dont have a whole lot of time for modding (Getting drunk instead :D) however next weekend is a 3 day weekend so I'll be sure to give it a try and drop a post back telling you all it was big success :)

-Fragged

[x88x]

Or, as a corollary to pOPe and Collin's *methods*, you could tie the string to a Dremel with a Sabertooth bit and the little 'stand up straight to cut laterally' attachment. If you kept the string taut it would help you follow the circle you already drew.

Corollary to the corollary, if you're a perfectionist like me, you could draw the 140mm hole as described, then cut a, say, 135mm hole with the dremel as Datech suggests, then chop out the last 5mm with a cut-off wheel, like I did for the bottom holes in mightyMite. I won't lie, it's a pain to do and takes a long time, but finishing off the holes like that let me get as close to a perfect circle as I think was possible (ie, pretty damn close).