Project Anima Mundi Redux
So I started building Anima Mundi, a mATX cube built almost entirely out of acrylic over a year ago (the old project log is here, pictures are down). Life got in the way, as did having all my acrylic breaking during the painting process.
Well I found a pile of acrylic that I had cut for my second attempt and decided to give it another go! Please forgive the pictures, they came off my HTC Mogul. I'm condensing this from multiple posts on other forums, so please forgive any mistakes I made transposing all this.
New work bench I picked up from my neighbor for...NOTHING. Plus a whole pile of random acrylic pieces.
Spare watercooling gear that's been kicking around. Some of it will be used in Anima Mundi.
First cut completed. Drill press with a mill table and a bit from a Dremel. It's not the most...accurate...solution ever, but it does a damn good job considering the whole setup cost me less than $100.
Radiators mounted. Because this will come up, a 2x120MM radiator wont fit, but 2 separate 120mm Black Ice pros fit just fine.
From the back! Not a whole lot of extra space.
Cut the PSU mount out. Combination of a circle cutter that will be pictured later and the earlier mentioned drill press + mill table + dremel bit combo.
PSU mounted just to make sure everything fits. One screw hole is off, so I'm going to have to enlarge it slightly to make everything mesh.
The PSU is a bit on the heavy side, so I'm thinking it needs a support shelf or something, I'll work on that tomorrow. That's an old Antec True Blue 480 that will probably find a new home in Anima Mundi. If that's the case, each and every wire will be a custom run, so no extraneous wires.
Yeah for circle cutters! Adding a 120MM exhaust fan to the rear panel.
The completed back panel. I still need to countersink some screw holes and clean up the acrylic edges. There is a slim chance that I'll need to toss a couple more holes in there for the motherboard tray, but we'll get to that later.
And that's all I got done for the night. Not bad for only a few hours haha.
The results of the circle cutter. Will only need a bit of polishing, nothing major.
Straight off the drill press + mill table + dremel bit combo. Needs a little filing and sanding, maybe some flame polishing, but I haven't decided on that.
This is off the good side of the table saw, and will need the most work. Lots of filing to be done!
From the motherboad side of things.
Possible pump location. Assuming I add a support shelf for the PSU, I would just slap the pump on the bottom and call it a day.
NEW TOY! My neighbor is an 85 year old man who never works in his shop anymore and is slowly giving away all his tools. He gave me that little work bench I posted earlier for nothing. I went over to mow his yard for him (its small and I was doing mine anyway), and he came out and said he had a couple tools that he wants out of his shop. The drill press just happened to be one of them. The best part, it was free. 3/4 HP Grizzly. Almost brand new.
I decided that I wanted to screw this thing together instead of gluing it, mostly because I hate plexi glue, but that's besides the point. Sorry about the pictures, for whatever reason they didn't come out very sharp at all. This is the non motherboard tray side of things.
That would be the 1/2 inch acrylic I've been waiting for. This is the motherboard tray side of the case. I had to remove the paper to get everything lined up right. It's now covered in masking tape to keep it scratch free.
The new front view. Note the lack of clamps holding things together.
Motherboard side with some of the internals shoved back in. I ran into a little problem with the hard drive rack, I'll detail that tomorrow when I post my solution.
Rear motherboard side corner. Not really that interesting...
The back end, only thing new is the 3 screws on the left and the two on the right.
The removable side of things. I didn't measure two of the hole locations right, so I either have to fix the bottom left and top right holes or cut a new side panel.
Front left corner!
The sort of completed feet. Those aren't the final bolts, and they still need to be lit and the aluminum painted, but that's the general idea. 1/16 inch aluminum, two pieces of 3/16 acrylic, and another piece of aluminum all turned and smoothed on the drill press.
The PSU support. Note the hole in the middle that I screwed up. It cracked the acrylic, so when I go to do the polishing I'm going to fill it. The cloudy section has been cut down about 1/16 of an inch to allow for any fan grills that the PSU might have. I'm not quite done with the PSU support bracket, but I'll post about that tomorrow.
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Originally Posted by Drum Thumper
