very cool way of marking ur fans mate!
rep for being a smart bottom. :P
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very cool way of marking ur fans mate!
rep for being a smart bottom. :P
I love cube cases. Very nice design, it is looking great. I can't wait for more.
Late update today, been busy with other things.
Thanks DF & b4o :).
Got my new diamond dremel cutting disc, not tried it yet also got very little done today.
Been in a bit of a pickle about what to do with the top ends of the side panels and how to mount the top panel, the flush rivet nuts I have do not mount well at all infact they are terrible I tested on scrap, and the flanged rivet nuts would raise the top panel by 1mm so not good.
So I searched the net and eventually found rivet nut bushes, or clinching nuts lol in size M3 18 & 20 swg, these I have seen on some retail cases including lian-li cases, I have always wondered where the hell would I get those from so I have ordered some, here is a pic of one of them.
I have cut to size & placed angle bars on the inside at the top of the side panels, I'm going to put 1 bolt into the side panel and have the top panel countersunk & bolted up from underneath so I can just remove the side bolt, remove the top frame bolts & the top would slide off, any of the exposed bolts will be covered with dome nuts when I get some except for the side panel ones which have to be removable.
Now I have thought up a plan I should be able to push on forward without scratching my head so much lol.
And here is 1 of the psu stands stuck together with silicone, it is 6 90mm long x 20mm wide x 3mm thick flat bars, filed & sanded, I will be sticking them down rather than bolting them to the bottom panel, want to leave space for the case feet.
And this pic is from a guide I came across which got me interested in polishing the case.
Credit due to Jani 'Japala' Pönkkö for the pic.
Original article
wow... polish it! will look insane!
Yep, go with the polish.
The polished look will be excellent, just be aware that if it looks anything like that example above every fingerprint, smudge, hair and dustmite will scream at you. Be prepared for some upkeep. (This from the guy that made an all-plexiglass case (black, no less) and put a plasma ball in it. Nothing attracts dust like shiny plexiglass except shiny plexiglass in a large static field.)
rofl..
/\
Yeah, that will be the main con about it being polished, needing a bit of a clean more regular but it should be worth it :).
I doubt I'll have an update today, I sprained my neck the other day and has got worse today so unless it gets better over the day, I'm just gonna relax and hope it is a bit better by tomorrow, I can barely move my head without pain but I'm gonna draw my cut outs for the front fan grills so they are ready for trying out my new dremel diamond disc :).
Looking really good. getting closer and closer, can't wait to see it finished!
Been relaxing today as I sprained my neck the other day and was really bad today, could barely move my head but got a design made for the front fans thou :).
Used a fan grill to make a circle on paper and tried a few ideas and thought Yep that looks good for a 120mm fan hole, I'll go for that and alternate the cut out bits, this should take a while to do & be hard to polish later :).
Snow flake flower type thingy :).
More tomorrow my neck is a fair bit better right now :).
Why couldn't you polish it first, mask it with tape and then cut it out? Just a thought, because I can just picture the polishing wheel catching one of those fine areas :eek:.Quote:
Originally Posted by Waynio
looking good mate!
and yea agrree with msmrx
Good suggestion msmrx but I don't have the polishing supplies yet, so I'll do around the grills by hand when it comes to polishing it, be a lot more effort and time but I don't really mind.
Had to take a break while the drill charges back up.
The diamond coated dremel disc is no where near as good as I was expecting it to be:(, It must be meant for other materials, it would take me a week to do the grills with that bit, just does not cut 1.5mm aluminium good and the disc overheats so I doubt I will use it again, I switched over to a reinforced disc and they just sink into the alu real easy.
I'll be using a combination of the smallest drill bit I have as there is no disc small enough for cirtain areas, the reinforced discs for initial cut where I can and the easy break discs to catch the fine detail.
I used the reinforced chunky discs entirely for doing this, Just needs filing & sanding smooth now, took hours to do.
Oh wow. I don't doubt that at all. +rep for the perseverence!
That's interesting about the wheels... I wonder if it's because they are a cheap brand or something. I like how thin theyy are though, I may have a use for them anyway
Mark the diamond disc were dremel branded and cost me £15 with delivery, I could have ordered another big bag of reinforced discs from america for the price of it, I'm sure the diamond discs are good for something, just not 1.5mm alu or thicker, they do cut but takes much longer and they get very hot.
1.5mm has been like re learning using my dremel almost compared to 1mm but is definately stronger.
I'm definately going to buy a good face mask respirator for any future projects as I got alu dust all over me while doing the fan holes, I'm seeing a good respirator just as important as goggles now cheap ones are no good as they steam up the goggles.
that looks great man!
LOL, it took 2 hours to get 1 of them to this point and still needs a little more work, my creative zen mp3 ran out of juice so micro update while it charges back up, can't do this without my music :D, forgot to charge it up last night.
I seem to have taken a smidge too much off the top piece to the left, I was trimming a bit here and there with the dremel so I could get the needle files in and seems I have messed up a little.
This pic is from the back side.
My clinch nuts came so now I can have permanent nuts in place so it won't be so fiddly.
I just gave up after hours of filing with the needle files, was driving me mad, still more to do on them, I don't mind filing but needle files on detailed parts like this is incredibly tedious, it takes forever to do.
To be honest the only way I think these grills will look good is if I fill any imperfections and paint it, I did want to polish but they would look pretty poor as they are, if only I dremeled from the other side, the other side is much better, this piece of the case is turning into frankencase II.
And here is a shot from the other side.
Orbital sander would be too big so I looked around the house for a tool I could modify and found a panel sucker for pulling out dents in panels it is of perfect size for the holes after I trimmed the edge off, I'm thinking of attaching a round piece of sand paper to it and rotate it clockwise and anti clockwise until it gets down by about 0.8mm so it would get rid of surface imperfections, because if I am to polish the whole case they would need to be as close to perfect as can be or they will stand out pretty clearly.
It will still need more filing before I can do this to get it spot on, kinda wishing I did plain old lines instead would have been cleaner, 120mm grills are much harder to do than the big ones I have previously done, so I will have a go at doing this and maybe it will look even better unintentionally with the grills being sat into the panel :), but if it turns out poor, I can just have plain holes and I think that is how this is going to go.
Just before I posted this I had an idea to put the diamond disc to use, maybe I could trim the imperfect bits off, kind of slimming it down some, seems like these grills are going to take a while before they look nice.
Maybe I'm missing something in the construction but that panel looks perfectly bisymmetrical, any reason you couldn't flip it over?
Only some of the holes line up correctly if I flip it over unfortunately and they are countersunk pretty deep into the panel so the holes would have become bigger, so I will have a go at slimming the pattern holes a bit which will let more air pass through also, maybe it is salvagable.
I still have 4 x 750mmx500mm x 1mm sheets, so should have quite a bit spare after making the front optical extension & hdd cages, I guess 2 or even 3 sheets left over, so if worse comes to much worse I could re do the front panel but with 1mm thick.
Before you go to all that work, have you actually put fans up to the grill and turned them on? You'd be surprised how much noise air flow can make through certain shapes and sizes of holes. Hate to see you go to all that work and get it looking great only to have it too loud to use. I made that mistake with my last build. Good GOD was it loud, but when I took the fan grills off, poof. Instant quiet. Just a thought.
Thanks for the info on the extra noise blue, :) thats picked me up a little after todays modding, you'll see why.
They were slight overcuts in some areas, the edge joints were weak in the left and right grills, the middle grill was very good.
here is the back side, the mounting holes for the front panel did not align 100% and would have required drilling the case making it in to a mess.
Simply too scuffed up for looking good after polishing.
When I started trimming the rough areas down, I thought I'm gonna pull this off and was looking good, But when I nearly completed filing 1 of them, 1 of the spokes broke off so I cut every other spoke off and shortly after figured they would not be strong enough to be polished so as gutted as I was I cut all of the grills out, filed and sanded the holes down to a smooth finish and that is that, just wish I chose the simple grill of lines.
I have enough spare mesh to cover all 3 holes so it is back to being basic now.
I don't drink but I think I'll have a few tonight to refresh :).
So next up will be to make the front optical extension.
oh man that sucks it broke!
Damn damn damn!! Sorry to see it, especially after you put all that work into it. Don't despair, there are endless varieties of fan grills out there, and they're not hard to make on your own, either. Now you'll be able to change them out as your mood changes. :D
Those were too damned Christmasy anyway. (j/k, they looked very good)
Sucks it broke mate but I think I like your new template better anyway.
Yes it does suck a bit, but oh well on to the next part, the front optical extension.
lol :santa::D.Quote:
Those were too damned Christmasy anyway. (j/k, they looked very good)
I'm over it already, the booze helped get my mood better, baileys in coffee :) doesn't get me drunk but mellows me out :), the lined template is the one I should have chose over the complex one, just put it in the pic as example of what I could have done.
After the nightmare with the grills I'm keeping everything else simple as possible except for the front extension, seems everything I have been doing since then has been a bit shabby, maybe I need a bit of a break from it, dunno.
The front extension
1st I made a paper version of what I wanted & cellotaped it together and lay it flat and taped it down and marked around it on some sheet alu so I could do it in 2 pieces rather than 4 for a nice clean look, but because I really should have designed it 1st in google sketchup so I could get accurate dimensions, it turned out wrong.
So for this case I will be doing the front extension in 4 pieces like my last case, I designed it on google sketchup this time to get accurate dimensions.
I have all the parts cut to size and bent properly, I'm currently working on the angle bar connetors for holding the 4 pieces together, its not going to be easy getting this part spot on, I have countersunk rivets so they won't stick out like my last case.
Pictured is the 2 piece version I badly made with the 4 piece version I'm working on, doing all the parts are pretty easy except for the mounting brackets, rather hard to mark correctly, the normal angle pieces are pretty easy it is the different angle pieces which are hard to get right.
The metal bender I have came with 1 full length steel slab for putting on top of the piece to be bent and only allows for simple bends, I tried using 1 of the flat bars cut to a perfect size to allow me to do tighter bends right next to each other but the only flat bar I have is 20mm deep so it leaves a print of a 20mm bar but bends my piece really well so when I get a 70mm deep bar and cut to size I will be able to do this spot on.
I would even be able to make my own pci/io back panel so I won't have to recycle or source another motherboard tray and back pci/io part again except for 1 to flatten out so I can use it as a template.
The countersunk rivets are very hit and miss if they connect good, the countersunk bit on the rivets are not as deep as the screws I have been using so some of them are not staying firm, this is my 3rd attempt and looks like I will have to re do the upper part and the sides on the extension again, either I got lucky when I did this first time round on my prototype or I'm just having a bad few days, the bottom piece is perfect so I can use that at least.
New progress, seems a long time since I've been able to say this :).
My dad told me about this stuff he had after my 3rd failed attempt on the front extension, so I gave it a try and left it over night, when I went back to it today I tried pulling it off by hand, it stayed completely secure so then I tried ripping it off with pliers and it is rock solid so I went and bought a fresh 1 today.
These are the angle bar pieces bent to correct angle in vice and filed flat.
Here are all 4 pieces dry fitted after I positioned and sticking the angle bar joints together with drives in.
Here it is after I stuck the pieces together, I just used whatever I could find to keep a bit of pressure on it while it sets, I'm leaving it until tomorrow and hopefully it will be strong and ready for mounting, if this fails for a 4th time I will try 1 more time before designing a different front extension.
Also, I have ordered the polish :).
Mate, nice work, it is coming together very well, looking great.
this is gunna look good once polished! :)
Thanks boy 4rm oz and dont-fear :)
Ordered the polish just before 3pm yesterday and recieved it the next morning and it came with a bonus microfibre cloth which I was not expecting :).
I used an old soft rag to test this stuff out, this shot is what a minute of using the metal prep with a tiny blob did.
These shots is with using a tiny blob of the mirror finish, again with an old rag which is why there are fine scratches, of course I will be using quality soft new rags to apply this to the case.
1st impressions of this stuff are "ohhhh yeaaaah" :) especially since I used a poor quality well used rag and hardly spent any time on it, just a quick test.
When I ordered the switches a bit ago I bought black ones 1 with blue dot and 1 with blue ring, but with me now going for a mirror finish I decided to get silver switches 1 white dot and 1 white ring by lamptron and also got a lamptron white cathode set 1st impressions of it are it seems the best pc cathode I have seen, it has a knob on the inverter which is for sound activated sensitivity but can turn the sound sensitivity off and keep the light on, the wires are a bit short but I'll easily extend them if needed, also got 2 quad fan connectors for keeping all the fan cables together 1 for front and side fans and 1 for cpu and rear fans, the cables underneath the switches are pre made cables for the switches by lamptron so no messing about for me, I'm so glad they started doing these as I can't stand doing soldering and braiding :).
And these are the parts I went window shopping for lol, wish I had the money for them to put in this case, one can dream :).
That polish is great, very nice product. Do you mind posting up a pic of the white CCFLs illuminated? I have seen the Bitspower ones and were considering using them for a future mod, they would be much more convenient than soldering a bunch of LEDs together lol.
Here you go boy 4rm oz :).
Much brighter than any other cathode I have ever seen.
been a while since I cleaned my rig with being busy.
Show you pictures of light I will, now you know the power of the force lol :D.
On with todays update :).
Wow at last I got the front extension 99% perfect and mounted, the dvd drives fit so perfect the bezels are stopping the drives from going any further, I used the cotton bud trick for aligning, just need to put the holes for the power/reset switches in place and the front is done except for polishing, phew :D 4th attempt was worth it I'm happy to say and is detatchable whenever I want it to be without having to drill rivets out.
The extra cut outs on the back side I could use for stashing unwanted wires out of the way .
Been at it virtually everyday for close to a month now so if its sunny tomorrow I'm chilling in the sun :), been cloudy all july and so far for august, reminds me of last year.
NIce work, lookin good. May the Schwartz be with you
kickass dude ,verry nice
Glad to see the front extension finally worked out, I know how it is to do the same part over and over and over until it's right. Looks great!
looks wicked.
Thanks for the pics mate, they are exactly what I am looking for.
