Project: Clockwork

Time for another build. This will be another scratchbuild, mostly wood with some other materials as "accent" pieces. Try as I may, I seem to be unable to simply modify an existing case. Here are some pics of the materials to be used:

Old 2x4 lumber that has been drying in my attic for about eight years now.

Three pieces of some very nice birch plywood and a small coil of 1/4" copper tubing.

A block of hard maple and the motherboard tray out of the generic case from my very first computer build.

250mm fan scavenged from my current Enermax Phoenix case. I actually ordered one from our friends at Xoxide, but the one that came on my Enermax is reversible so I swapped them for this build.

Cool on/off switch from Ebay. (More on this later...)

The gears from five clock movements scavenged from various sources.

Not pictured (as I do not have it yet) is the motor to turn the gears. Still deciding on the size, speed and orientation. Anyone interested in this kind of thing should check out solarbotics.com.


I am going to try not to go as manic with this build as I did with the last one, and this promises to be a more challenging project, so updates may not be as frequent (for those who care). The above-pictured motherboard tray is the only factory-made case part I will be using. This will be a transplant of my current system, so no hardware will be needed. Wish me luck!

As it turns out, I am going to have to mod one of the parts I bought to do the mod. :) The on/off switch I bought it very cool, perfect for this build, and is a momentary switch as needed. However, it is a normally CLOSED on/off switch. Not viable for a power button. So I had to make it a normally OPEN switch. Here it is again:

And disassembled:

Trouble is, there is a small copper contact in the middle of that red board between the large contacts. That closes the circuit while it sits. When you press the button it forces the red board down and the small contact slides under the bends in the larger contacts, breaking the circuit.

I had to make it so that it was normally open, so I first removed the red board and threw it away. Next I put a small piece of heat shrink on one of the larger contacts:

Now it's normally open, but I have to be able to make a momentary connection when I press the button. Notice I left the very top of the contact uncovered by the heat shrink. Here's the solution:

I screwed 3 machine screws onto a long #6 screw then cut it off. (They are screwed together in the pic.) Then I used 5-minute epoxy to secure them inside the hollow metal cap that you press to activate the switch. Done. Now when you press the switch in about 1/2" the two copper contacts touch the machine nuts and make contact. When you let go the spring pushes the cap and the contact-making nuts away. Perfect. :D

ok this should be interesting

should make the gears turn ever so slowly

not sure where they are going but hey

I have been waiting for your next mod mate. You last one was excellent. Can't wait for more on this.

Oooooooooooooh...clock gears. I'm a fan of gears. I approve of this project.

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Originally Posted by The boy 4rm oz

I have been waiting for your next mod mate. You last one was excellent. Can't wait for more on this.

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Thanks very much. :D Might I say that Lexa is coming along VERY nicely! :up:

Thanks mate. She is almost done now.

yea i cant wait till we lan lexa and moditor the high rollers.... :P lol

love the idea for this mod..

indeed the last one was great. cant wait for this one. love the gears.

Just a parts update, got the gear motor I ordered from Solarbotics.com:

Rated at 78 rpm at 5 volts, still trying to decide the diameter of the main drive gear, and thus the overall speed of the geartrain. I'll probably wire in a rheostat to make the speed variable, probably run the shaft of the rheostat through the side of the case near the geartrain and solder a single gear onto it to hide it. That way I can control the gear speed externally by turning that "control gear". :)

Since the geartrain and the big fan will both be on the left side of the case, and the fan is 12 volts, I think I can wire the gear motor and the fan into a single Molex plug, making cable management much easier.

Also, I have all six sides cut out for the case. I learned from my last creation and decided to dry-fit them on my desk to get an idea of the shape and size. It's too big. Again. Some rethinking is in order to minimize this thing's footprint.

Cool idea. Can't wait to see those gears moving.

I finished the drive mounting system. Since the right side of the case will be permanently attached, I had to figure a way to get to the right-side mounting hardware for my optical and hard drives. I decided to build a self-contained drive mounting "tower" that can be easily removed as an assembly:

Here it is mounted with an old DVD and hard drive. You can see the wooden spacers I built to mount the 3.5-inch hard drives. This pic shows the back of the assembly, as will be seen from inside the case.




Here is the front:

The plywood edges are ugly but they will be mounted flush against the inside of the front panel and therefore invisible. The horizontal piece on bottom is to help keep it all square, and will also be anchored to the bottom of the case. I had to cut it short to leave room for the front 120mm intake fan.

Here you can see the extra holes, I am planning to mount two DVD drives and two hard drives inside it. Once assembled and in place, it will mount with two screws to the bottom of the case and with four screws through the front panel, so if I have a hardware failure :( or get an upgrade :) I can just remove these six screws and pull the whole assembly out.

cool nice work man

This looks cool

Nice work on the drive tower. Looks very cool.

More pics of the drive tower, got it mounted to what is going to be the bottom of the case. Used these wonderful little jewels:

Threaded brass inserts, wonderful little inventions for fastening when you plan to remove and reinstall the fasteners repeatedly. Wood screws will only come out and go back in so many times. :) They make a T-shaped driver for them, but I'm way too cheap to buy one, so I use the machine-screw-and-two-nuts method:

Tighten the nuts against the insert, screw it in, back the nuts off and pull the screw out. Works like a charm. When they're inserted correctly, they sit flush with the surface, or slightly below it:

That one is in the bottom of the case, there will be two of them there to secure the drive tower to the base. Putting them in the edge of a piece of plywood is a little bit harder, as plywood likes to come apart when you do just about anything to the edge. But if you drill a slightly larger pilot hole and are very careful, they do work:

Got four of them in the edges of the front of of the tower, then mounted the front plate with four screws. Obviously, when it's done these screws won't have anything to do with the front face, as it will be permanently in place, but for the sake of checking my work I went ahead and secured them all up.

And here is where I stand on the whole as of now. I cut the motherboard tray I had down by about five inches and cut a hole in the rear panel to fit it. Just sitting loose in this pic to see what it will look like. :)

That's it for now, next step will be to get the maple corner blocks and the edge corners all cut. Still puzzling over how to cut the top maple corner blocks, but it will come to me. :D

nice work

im thinking of working with wood for my next majour project

I love working with it, love the smell of it, the feel of it, the look of it. Makes me curious, what kind of wood is used for furniture/woodworking in your area of the world?

That is looking really cool.

those gears will make a sweet mod. can't wait to see how you make them turn together!

I got your header done, for now anyway...

Dude, that is excellent, thanks!!! :D

i love cases based on wood great start

i love insides of clocks... i could stare at that cogs and gears all day. can't wait to see this!

great header

jdbnsn does it again

oooh, this is going to be a very cool mod! I can't wait to see more. :)

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Originally Posted by DonT-FeaR

great header

jdbnsn does it again

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Yea no joke, fantastic work once again jd!

I mentioned in my first post that this would be a transplant of my current system, and no hardware would be needed. As most of you know, this doesn't always work out. I am currently using a Sigma Shark PSU:

I could not in good conscience put this sleek aluminum hardware in this new build, as it would look really out of place. This one will work MUCH better:

The Kingwin Mach 1 800-watt modular PSU, I just ordered it from Xoxide yesterday, look for a review in the near future. The shape, the round connectors, the sleeving, and the modular support will work much better in this build, AND give me more power to boot. :D

Also on the parts front, I have scored the perfect grill for the front 120mm intake fan:

I got very lucky with this find, the distance between the outer edges of the outermost holes is EXACTLY 120mm. +Rep to the first person who can tell me what this thing actually goes on.

Got my Metal Effects paint today, hope to experiment with it a little bit tonight, wish me luck. :)

Looks like a drive gear for one of those pit bikes or min bikes. Could be wrong though.

That Sigma Shark is really cool, reminds me of the Antec Phantom. Nice new PSU.

As for the gear I was gonna say a bike also, it has the right mounting houles and teeth.

i have a psu nearly identical to that just different brand its really really great

It is in fact a Yamaha motorcycle sprocket, +rep to both of you. :D

Lol thanks for the rep.

Thanks for the rep. I can't wait to see what this mod looks like done. Anything with gears has to be good.

haha! I used a cycle sprocket in your header too! :D

You have to tell me where you found those gears! Loving the idea, I really want to see how this turns out.

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Originally Posted by Ichbin

You have to tell me where you found those gears! Loving the idea, I really want to see how this turns out.

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I bought one batch on Ebay. I bought one wind-up alarm clock at a flea market and two wind-up wall clocks at two other flea markets, and one last movement at a local clock shop (he gave it to me for free!). The sprocket was Ebay also.

+ Rep for the idea, and subscribed.

Okay, I've been thinking about the interior on this thing (more than I want to, actually), and I would like to make my hard drives match the rest of the scheme. I'll be doing this with the optical drives by removing the outer cover and painting it, but I'm understandably hesitant to do that with a hard drive.

My thought was to make a custom cover for them that sits inside the tower and hides them from view. My concern is heat. It would most likely be made of wood, not the world's best conductor of heat. Anyone have any input on this? Should I leave a minimum clearance around them for air flow? Is this not advisable at all? I saw slamaa made one for his hard drive in his Welcome to Rapture mod but it was a metal cover.

Anyone?

I would use alu regardless, you can then paint it or get a adhesive vinyl so you can get your desired effect. As for airflow, if the alu fits snugly enough it will act as a heatsink.

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Originally Posted by The boy 4rm oz

I would use alu regardless, you can then paint it or get a adhesive vinyl so you can get your desired effect. As for airflow, if the alu fits snugly enough it will act as a heatsink.

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Thanks for the input, I've started thinking about maybe a mesh cover of some kind. That would hide the shiny drive while still allowing heat to radiate. I would have to find just the right mesh, though. We'll see.

I've decided to stop worrying about the finish and the drive tower for now and start working on the geartrain. That will be the most difficult and most interesting part of the whole project anyway. :D