Project - Air Cube v2

[Waynio]

Well my dad did not use the garage so I thought why not get back at it .

Here is roughly how the psu is going to be mounted.

Well I went for it with trying my own mesh lol, the drill press was getting hot so had to have regular breaks from it so I would not damage it, these pics are spread out over quite a few hours, I used a 6.5mm dewalt drill bit, I think it turned out pretty good .

1st marked the hole which the drill press could reach to and then made marks every 6mm down and across.

On with the drilling .

I'll replace the final pic with a better one tomorrow when I have good day light, was getting dark when I finnished.

[Waynio]

Thanks for the feedback m8s it was a gamble doing the mesh I know, but I have to say it looks damn good, so relieved .

Tried using a hole saw I bought a while ago, I was had as it is for wood not metal, price for a good near 120mm metal cutting hole saw is close to £30 I paid £10 so my fault really.

So had to go back to my dremel for doing the fan hole, got about a 3rd of the way round and it was too hot to hold, so thought ok I will make a cooler for it right away with a couple of noisy high cfm fans and a bit of scrap aluminium, it works very nice , it takes a minute or less to get it nice and cool again, where if I just let it cool off by itself it takes up to an hour.

And here are a couple of shots with the plastic pulled back a bit .

Only the edges need sanding so it is nice and smooth then the back panel is done and ready for painting or pollishing, Woohoo .

[Waynio]

Thanks for comments everyone .
On the google sketchup the frame alone was 360mm wide, 360mm deep, 423mm high but I decided I will be mounting 3 120mm fans on the front so had to make a simple change of width to 390mm which will give better space for hdd's also.
I just measured the form of it now and it is 387mm wide, 365mm deep, 442mm high. That is with panels on.
But I will be putting an extension on the front also like my last case only better I hope .
After I made the frame, it is mostly all freestyle pretty much althou I am also thinking what will be best before I actually go for it.


Here is my method for marking a mountable piece, I used this method for the front of my last case. Mark around the piece and cut Cotton buds to size and push them into the holes on the piece I want to mount and put a blob of paint on the ends, then carefully press it against the panel and we should have perfect marks for working on .

Here is my psu stand wip, since this pic I have siliconed the bars together and I'm leaving them clamped until tomorrow and then sand them down and mount.

And here is a few shots of the 3 fans mounted (not these fans, akasa apache's are going in the final build), I'm yet to cut the holes for the fans, I found out about the Dremel 545 Diamond Wheel and is supposed to be awesome, long lasting and is nice and thin for detailed work so have ordered 1 and just after I ordered it I seen 1 on ebay for £6 so ordered that too .

Just about perfect fit for 3 120mm fans, ultra close.

And finally I have decided not to paint it and try to polish the whole case to a mirror finnish, should be quite a mission .

[Waynio]

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

[Waynio]

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 .

[Waynio]

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 .

[Waynio]

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.

[Waynio]

I used the reinforced chunky discs entirely for doing this, Just needs filing & sanding smooth now, took hours to do.

[Waynio]

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.

[Waynio]

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 , 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.