Lean and Green - modular dual PC scratch build

[Waynio]

42 days left if including today, need to push harder.

Micro update but it's an update.

I cut 4 little pieces of the same aluminium I used for the hdd trays to make spacers for while I stick them together, the adhesive does it's initial setting fairly quick so I managed OK with just 4 pieces to do the spacing, would have been easier with 6 more but I didn't fancy cutting more, I need a new band saw blade, current ones are well past useful & was not nice at all to cut with.

Upper & lower hdd slide rack.

Fan perch stuck together, weighted down & is almost 20mm thick, I'll cut the shape, slim it down to 19mm & on next session get these parts mounted.

42 days sounds like a fair bit of time but it soon comes & goes especially if you goof off playing games & have some AFK to slow you down.

Tweaked my camera sharpness & contrast settings a little too & picked up some good photography tips from Paul Tan but none of the lighting tips will be used until I'm past the main workshop stuff.

[Waynio]

40 days left since it's just crept past midnight.

OK the HDD slide panels have cured for a while, you can see here the holes that need completing.

Completing the holes.

Then I had to dismantle some of the HTPC to get to the level on top of the optical section for adding a few mounting holes.

Was tricky to align this template spot on, new holes & the ones the drill bit is pointing at was tapped, all the rest was countersunk.

Back to the acrylic & placed brass inserts in the holes.

Pressed in with soldering iron.

Reassembled & had to take about 2mm off the width of all the HDD trays so they would fit in, I also mounted spare HDD's & an SSD to them to see how it looks.

Full.

I'll do more today after a sleep & some food.

[Fuganater]

Thats nice!

[jdbnsn]

I love your style!

[Waynio]

Thats nice!

Thanks Fuga they slide in/out nicely.

I love your style!

Thanks jd

HTPC Fan perch 20mm 4 5mm layers glued together.

Basic first cuts.

Used the modded band saw blade but it was causing it to melt when doing the smaller curve cuts, the blade got completely stuck in there.
Had to saw to the blade & file to the blade to free it, those curves are ones that will be visible too so I had a big drum sanding session to clean them up, was a PITA.

Used a sturdy fret saw blade for doing the bigger curve & did it very slow going forward 3 millimetres & going back about 6 over & over & it prevented it from melting, also did that on half speed instead of the slowest, worked a lot better.

Installed brass inserts to the fan perch.

Filed the optical plate to represent where I need to round the corners.

Used the hack saw to cut down 7mm so its down to 3mm.

Put it in the cross vice & set it up to drill down so 3mm would be left to make filing a little easier.

My arms got Popeyed ugugugugug.

Aluminium shortbread.

I filed down far enough to let me finish it off with a mill bit in the drill press & cross vice, it worked quite nicely really.

Smoothed things off more with a file.

Cut the optical tray out.

Installed.

Optical plate & fan perch installed.

That turned out to be a big session but was one of those where I just wouldn't call it a day until I got what I intended to do done, I'll make my next session a small one to balance things out again.

[Fuganater]

Drive bay will be nice but I think you should have went with a slot load. Would have look much cleaner for this build.

[Waynio]

Drive bay will be nice but I think you should have went with a slot load. Would have look much cleaner for this build.

Know what you mean but I prefer full speed optical when I need to use optical but not aesthetically but I'd rather have the good function & cheaper price full size gives some thought the optical on stealthlow was a slim one & some didn’t even know it was an optical drive until I pressed eject, plus I've not designed the tray cover for this one yet.

Was going to switch from optical media to HDD’s for backing my media collection up & use a good external optical drive whenever I need one but just as I was going to the floods hit the HDD factory & the prices shot up crazily high & I wasn’t willing to pay that much for something that is no different than normal HDD’s, prices have come down but still not as awesomely cheap as they were & they have shorter warranty's now also but I will try to cram in 4 3TB HDD's into the HTPC as the final storage but my current drives will do until I raise the money for them.

For an SSD on the gaming rig I'm unsure about putting the latest firmware for the corsair force 3, it was driving me mad with completely random BSOD's & it happened when I was almost done on a new design & knackered my OS but thanks to Linux on a usb flash drive I managed to salvage a good chunk of it so because of that I highly value stability on SSD's more than speed, Samsung 830s look great to me, I know they have released 840 series but they are more expensive & have slower writes.

I'll have a go at doing the first custom fan next.

[Fuganater]

I'm still all about the Curcial M4 series. I have several 128GB ones and I'm thinking about getting 1 or 2 256/512GB ones.

[Waynio]

I'm still all about the Curcial M4 series. I have several 128GB ones and I'm thinking about getting 1 or 2 256/512GB ones.

Good drives from what I hear or read rather.

[Beta-brain]

Great work, your devotion and patience on that scroll saw deserves a medal +rep