Project - Air Cube v2

[Waynio]

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.

[Waynio]

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.

[Waynio]

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.

[Waynio]

Yes it does suck a bit, but oh well on to the next part, the front optical extension.

Those were too damned Christmasy anyway. (j/k, they looked very good)

lol .

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.

[Waynio]

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.

[Waynio]

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 .

[Waynio]

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 .

[Waynio]

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 .

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 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.

[Waynio]

Thanks for comments m8s .

Ahh I seem to be picking up momentum again, another day another update and I caught a little sun woohoo

Now the front extension is out the way, I started working on the sides and top panel, as I said a load of updates ago I was unable to bend accurately with the cheap metal folder I have at 1.5mm so had to come up with an alternative, well here it is .

Sides joined up to the top panel so sides and top slide off together as 1 piece, it was flimsy and tricky to get it on at 1st, but I put another angle bar underneath on both sides to keep it square so it all goes on a lot easier now .

Also the mesh I made I put a little countersink in all the holes so it will be a little easier to polish because I'm put off sanding it and there was some rough bits that needed sorting from when the drill went a bit crazy.

I tend to start off really slow and start getting really productive the later it gets, I wrapped it up at 10:30pm

So all that is left to be done what I can think of right now is filing and sanding the top pointy corners, power/reset switch holes on the front, vents on the left side so the hdd fan can get fresh air, and a window or 3 and last but not least a lengthy polishing task.

I tried wet sanding a piece of scrap from 80 grit then 240 then 800 then 1200 then 2000 grit, it got ultra smooth but when I used the metal prep stuff it got quite messy leaving dark grey dust ground into the metal and took some really hard work to get it clear, probably spent an hour getting it semi clear so I'm not so sure I want to polish the exterior now unless I settle for a dulled mirror effect by not doing any sanding so would get a mirror effect like the 1st sample test I showed, but I know for cirtain I will be polishing the interior and the corner angle bars, that alone would look cool with windows so all the parts get reflected eh , so possibly going to be painting the exterior panels not 100% sure yet.

[Waynio]

, Thanks boy 4rm oz, here is another update.

OK today I started using a tripod, wish I used it from the start, every picture is coming out nice and clear now.

Here it is just before I started.

I got the the top bits that stick up filed and sanded smooth, got the switch holes made and caught more sun .

And found that I will need to make a mount for the dvd drives 7.2mm high