Project Open Air Mk 2

Welcome back, TBCS!!! :banana:

I've been asked to come along with decryptedtech.com to CES 2014 to help cover the show (yay!), and thought it would be cool to put together an open-air case that's a true showpiece for the hardware it uses. Hopefully we'll see it at the show in Las Vegas with some awesome new gear mounted to it.

This project will be an evolution of my last piece, Open Air, with a few improvements to draw the eye and really showcase what's in it (or on it in this case). That was the idea then, as we all know that modern enthusiast-grade hardware is made to be seen.

I'll start with a huge thanks to my sponsors!

On to the build! I'm blessed with an excellent local hardwood dealer, and started with a long thick block of rock maple:

I was amazed at how much that chunk of wood was bowed, given its thickness. My bench isn't perfectly flat but it's better than THAT. I'd say it was cut before it was properly dried but I can work with it. I'll be cutting small pieces out of that chunk, I can get them flat square and true.


One small piece of leftover walnut:

Add to the stockpile a 2x2 piece of 1/2" birch plywood to fill in the base. I hadn't planned to use plywood at all but this piece will be completely invisible once the project is done.

And the requisite acrylic sheet. I used gray translucent acrylic for the last project because I had some left over from another piece, but since I ended up painting it black anyway I just went with solid opaque black on this one. I'm really interested to see how the edges look after machining and polishing.

Those are the pieces that will make up the entire case. System parts are being put together now.


Check back for updates, thanks for watching

The base of this project is going to be the most complicated part I think, but I've tried to keep even that fairly simple.

To start, I had to cut that chunk of plywood to make the core of the base. One thing I learned from you modders who work with metal (hat's off to you guys, don't know how you do it) is using masking tape for cuts.

Even the best plywood can splinter and ruin an edge, this really helps!


This piece was cut 1/4" overlength on both sides, then I got the chance to use one of the most useful tools ever devised: double-sided tape.

That's some really good stuff there, once the acrylic is in place it won't come off without tearing off pieces of the plywood. This piece was also cut oversize and taped in place, then the whole assembly was cut to final size to ensure the edges were perfectly aligned. It has to fit into a hole exactly the same size later.

There was a lot of work done cutting, jointing and planing that bug chunk of maple down to the small pieces I need for the base frame, and pics were taken but somehow lost. These are the finished pieces:

Once those were assembled into a simple rectangle big enough for an ATX motherboard and at least one accessory (the top layers will follow this same size pattern), the intricate work started.

At this point the base is all but finished, just have to drill and counterbore screw holes for the uprights. I'm happy to say it is turning out very well thus far.

Uprights are next, hopefully the next update will see them in place and I can start cutting the acrylic.

Good start already, I loved your last one. Can't wait to see this one!

Thanks! As mentioned, this will be very similar to the last piece but I wanted it bigger, plus there will be an additional top shelf that's tilted outward toward the front of the case to really say "LOOK AT ME!". The middle and upper shelves will be topped with black acrylic also. Those changes, along with the inlay work should really make it the showcase I'm wanting it to be.

Dang. I love that woodwork. Looking forward to this one.

Got the uprights mostly finished today. First off, apologies for the graininess of the images, had some trouble with the postprocessing.

The easiest part was drilling and counterboring the holes in the base for the mounting screws:

Nice and clean, I love this wood!

The columns are made from simple square maple blocks 1 1/4" on a side and 7 inches long:

I ran them across the table saw a couple of times to give the corners a more interesting profile:

The plan is for the two acrylic panels on the front and rear of the case to be fixed, and the two side panels to be removable for access. To keep a clean visible edge and improve stability in the whole unit I needed to cut slots in the inner face of all four columns. I happened to have the perfect tool for the job, a 12mm carbide square-nosed end mill. In my router table it cut the perfect slot for the 3/16" acrylic.

Unfortunately, I had a mishap. The end mill wasn't chucked securely in the router and slipped during the pass on the third column. This is the result:

I had hoped it was small enough not to be visible when the acrylic was in place, but no suck luck.

%$$#^&*^*!!!

Yeah, that's not going to work. Honestly I'm really lucky it didn't come out of that router at 25,000 rpm. Luckily I've got plenty of maple so I was able to make another column and finish the slots.

The side panels posed another problem. On the last version of this case, I glued stop blocks to the inside of the columns like this:

Then I glued tiny magnets to the stop block and the back of the acrylic panel. They snapped in place fine but you have to use a suction cup to get them off. Also, if there is *ANY* variation from 90 degrees in the columns you have to cut the sides of the acrylic to exactly the same angle to avoid visible gaps. I went through four pieces of acrylic on the last one getting one angle right.

This time I decided to put the acrylic on the *inside* of the columns. That way it can be slightly wider than the column gap and any angle deviation will be invisible. To do that I cut a notch out each column:

The panels will have to be put in at an angle and then pulled up against the inside of the notch. Since I don't have a slot to hold it I needed a retention mechanism. Magnets FTW!!

I drilled three holes in the back side of each notch and pressed magnets into each hole.

When I make the panels I'll cut a groove into the ends of each one and use epoxy to secure a thin strip of metal to the panel. When the panel is inserted into the case and slid back toward the outside the magnets will grab the metal and hold it in place. (That's the theory anyway, we'll see.)

I am also glad to say that the inlay work on the columns came out as well as I had hoped. Naturally there is some sanding to be done yet, and the finish will change the overall appearance but here's a good idea of what it will look like:

That's all for today, next up I have to figure out how to get the columns screwed to the base while still keeping them at 90 degrees. After that it's on to making acrylic shavings!

Thanks for tuning in!

Wow! The inlays look great. Can't wait to see the end result.

This is what I have been waiting for, I absolutely love the wood inlaid USB you made for me and have been wanting to see a wood inlaid case.

Long-delayed update time. I had to stop work on the bottom portion of the case while I'm waiting for a new PSU to come in. I need it on hand to continue there as I'll be modding it for for mounting purposes and the mount for the DVD drive is dependent on it as well. Onward and upward as they say.

I'm going to need two panels to sit on top of the columns I made, one horizontal to top it off and one tilted at 30 degrees to show off the working hardware. I want these two panels to be identical, and they need to be not only attractive but strong. One of the reasons for the delay in this update was trial and error. I considered making a thick frame from maple with a core of plywood like I did for the base, but the top of each panel will be opaque black acrylic, so the edges wouldn't look right. I tried a couple of different options before coming up with the answer.

First I went and bought a 2 x 4 piece of 1/4" MDF and cut two panels 1/4" under my desired final dimensions:

I discovered the hard way a long time ago that 1/4" MDF is like 1/4" acrylic or 1/4" plywood or pretty much anything you can buy with a thickness measured in a fraction of an inch: it's not. It's thinner, every time. In this case that didn't matter, thankfully. I took some of the extra maple I had and cut eight strips exactly as thick as the MDF and 1/2" wide. (Slightly less actually, just to keep up with the trend...)

After some more trial and error on how best to clamp these edges to the MDF panels I came up with this setup:

Not easy but in the end I would up with two panels of MDF with solid maple edging slightly larger than what I wanted in the end:

Since I knew the top of each panel was going to be 3/16" acrylic, and I was going for uniformity, I decided to laminate two sheets of acrylic on top and bottom of my MDF panels. Anyone who's worked with cast acrylic knows that while it really is a joy to work with given some practice, it can be a problem to glue to anything other than other acrylic. I went through several different kinds of adhesive before I settled on Loctite Super Glue Ultra Control Gel. Kind of pricey at almost a dollar a gram but nothing holds like this stuff. The best superglue in the world hands down. Here is one of the panels, with one of the acrylic pieces cut and stripped of one side of its protective layer. Looks like a black mirror, just exactly what I'm wanting.

I thought that last clamp setup was intricate until I went to glue these together. I had to work fast, and I wanted every inch of the acrylic to make contact with the MDF sheet. Good thing I have a lot of clamps!

My biggest concern at this point was gaps at the edge. The edges will be polished to a mirror shine and will be extremely visible so gaps are very very bad. Thankfully it came out perfectly!

After I had all four acrylic panels glued in place I cut the two panels to size. Flawlessly even surface with zero gaps:

Given the profile that I gave the base and the columns I can't leave these square so I made a bevel around all four edges of both sides of both panels. They're rough now from the saw but they'll polish up like glass.

Now for a word from our sponsors! The folks at Kingston were kind enough to donate some awesome pieces of hardware for this build: a 16GB kit of HyperX Beast DDR3 1866 memory and a 240GB HyperX SSD. Thanks guys!

It was the inclusion of the SSD that determined the footprint for this entire build (and thus the size of these two panels), since I need enough room on the upper panel to display the "shiny stuff". I decided on 12" x 20", here's that shiny new SSD alongside an old dead ATX motherboard I keep around for just this sort of thing:

I got it right! Like anyone else who's worked with acrylic I *really* want to peel that paper off of there and see what it will look like all shiny and black but there are two good reasons not to: I still have marking drilling and tapping to do on them and I'm working in a woodshop. Shiny black acrylic and sawdust do not a pretty picture make.

That's it for now, next update I hope to have the securement portion of the columns done and the side panels installed. Thanks for watching!!

This is going to be good and I am glad motherboards look much better now