Lean and Green - modular dual PC scratch build

[Waynio]

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

Thanks Beta

Planning, lots of extra planning.

Pedestal
Pricing of MDF & plywood at local DIY stores is a bad joke unfortunately.

18mmx1220x2440mm MDF £18 or plywood £29 but I'd need a big van to transport it, this 1 piece covers what I need so this is an annoyance plus I'd rather use 25mm thick but they don't offer it.

6x 18mmx1220x606 £93 in MDF at £15.50 each & £221 in plywood at £36.82 each, plywood at half the size near £8 more expensive LMAO yeah that makes sense.

Veneer on top about £25 for each flavour so between £150 & £300 so too flipping much, so wood work is officially an insane choice of material for me.

So now I know I should just make an all aluminium version would be far cheaper & lighter weight too, flipping heck the amount of aluminium I could order for the cost of that basic wood LMAO, it's an absolute no brainer.

Bars & sheets of aluminium simply making the aluminium order a little bigger, biggest challenge will be making it not resonate any vibes but yeah it will be a lot cheaper than using sheet wood & veneer & instead of nice looking woods I'll just make it nice some other way, plus making it as a frame & covers it will be very highly moddable in the future, think it might actually be nicer too.

So I'll just work the design change to see what material I will need, add them to the order I was going to do for extra materials I need to complete Lean & green, get it ordered with some spare bits to hopefully cover extra bits I do making it up as I go so I won't have any delays running up to the deadline & get extremely busy, gonna need a new screw order too, there will be many used on the pedestal & it has to be as strong or stronger than the one I designed but it will be lighter.



Lean & green, main current topic.
Worked out a design to make the joining cover nice & sturdy between the 3 pieces, it's a mix of 15mm acrylic & 3mm & 5mm aluminium rods, the curve & bend panel won't be fully fixed on until it's been anodised though because it's fixing on permanently with JB weld but the cover piece will be removable, just the cover will be stuck to the frame support.

Ordered & received 5 shades of silver metallic, black metallic & green metallic, white plastic primer, white primer, 2 cans of clear & worked out the paint job I'll do on the plastic fan blades, the blades on the akasa venom are quite different to the ones pictured in the model & will be a bit of a challenge to do this nicely but very much worth the effort.

2 of the shades of silver seem really similar so I'll have to do a faint quick haze of the darker ones for 2 of them so they work as intended together.

I had to do this bit of extra planning ahead to make sure the materials are here & ready for when I get to later stages else I wouldn't have a chance of making the deadline, November is all out gogogogo, fun times, but don't worry about it being rushed & compromised, it won't be, just the volume knob of dedication is going to crank up to maximum, big difference between rushing things & just applying yourself properly.

[Waynio]

Sorted the design change to support all aluminium instead of wood stacking so now have a lot of hollow space so more difficult to make strong & get nice curves & bends, took me all day yesterday & thought what the heck can I do to make it work & then light bulbs started flickering.

Old vs new

Internal support & I might add an extra support near the front, I'll also make a few rod drilling jigs to speed up perfect rod drilling because only the top & bottom ones will be using countersunk screws, the rest will be grub screws.

Couple more shots.

Figured what I need to complete this & bit the bullet ordering the aluminium last night, I'm broke again lol, received the aluminium rods today which I ordered on Monday though so I can complete the HTPC & fans now but because I was at the computer until I passed out last night I need a bit more rest lying down for a few hours to recover.

But I'll be constantly pushing forward at it as soon as I recover from the natural hangover.

It's hard to believe but I still have some bits to design when I get to further stages of the gaming rig.

[Fuganater]

"Keep moving forward" - Meet the Robinsons.

[Waynio]

"Keep moving forward" - Meet the Robinsons.

This update will seem feeble I know but I've not been slacking, just not been in the workshop much.

Got the extra rods & cut them to size & made a template for placing them correctly in the front corners but with the rods being 3mm & not 2mm I had to change design a touch again else it just wouldn't work so instead of 4 2mm rods I changed it to 2 3mm rods, the rest is the same, think I prefer it with just 2 rods instead anyway.

Now with 2 3mm rods instead of 4 2mm rods.

Thought I'd see how junior hacksaw blades do on the scroll saw because they are a cheap alternative to band saw blades, snipping the ends off with the metal shears which only seem to get used for things like this, the hacksaw blades do the job of cutting 10mm aluminium but they are more prone to snapping if you push them hard unlike the band saw blades, none of those snapped so must be made of a better material or processed better but as long as I stick to the limit before they do snap they will be good, they do a cleaner cut though with being a finer TPI count.

Made a drilling jig for rods using a bit of scrap 10mm plate & bit of a 3mm flat bar, just place the rod to be drilled in the drill vice, plonk this on top, line up & just drill & get perfect results, my favorite DIY tool & it works brilliantly, all these drilling ideas spawned from AngelOD saying how to do nice straight tapping, I just seen more potential from the idea but I probably wouldn't have thought of this without him saying about it, I'll make it compatible for square bars too, will save me heaps of time on precision drilling.

Also while doing extra design time I accidentally seen it upside down & I like it, looks so crazy lol.

I could make this happen but the fan controller would be upside down & it has digital readings so ugh nah it won't happen now.

If it weren't for that though I could, I'd need to add more strength to the gamer rig & a few more supports inside the HTPC because the HTPC will far out weigh the weight of the gaming rig, I feel it's a mistake showing this but it looks more right & I do remember voigts saying to flip the stand upside down in the early stages of this project & heat rising would usually be a problem but everything is covered by a good flow of air.

I'll be sure to post some upside down pictures of the completed rig instead lol.

Now I will resume progress & found out I now have until 9th December which makes up for the extra design days I just spent.

[Waynio]

The front gaming fan mount is 4 5mm sheets stuck together designed to hug the custom fan, it needs some love to stop it from shaking also had to make all the fans 1mm deeper, the cover support is 3x 3 layers of 5mm sheets stuck together & 3 3mm rods will keep them aligned together & screwed in place on the flat bar that keeps the stand extra rigid.

Not much to show but I can assure I haven't been slacking 1 bit the past week but I have been mostly sat on my bum lol.

Also the akasa venom fans I was disappointed to find out you can't pop the blades off like you can on the apache fans so that makes painting them a bit trickier but still doable so might just keep the stem that hides the wire instead of all 4 & might even get rid of that 1 just keeping the circular bit.

But for now I have many pieces to make & once it's all made I have an epic amount of edge & surface sanding & polishing to do, like the title currently says November is get busy time & I'll kick it off by modding all evening, night & all day tomorrow & update in the evening.

[Waynio]

Instead of sleeping last night I did this.

Figured out a nice solution to the blade heating up & melting the acrylic when cutting thicker stuff, good old copper flat bar with a tiny slit in the bar, enough to touch both sides & the back of the blade, works brilliant but they can overheat still so I made an extra & found that wasn't enough so made 3 in total so I could cut none stop, awesome.

This is part of the gaming rig front fan mount & is 20mm thick without 8mm round bar.

With 8mm round bar.

The support pieces for the cover join piece.

Loose fit.

Back to the fan mount & got that mill bit out again to mill the slot for the 10mm square bar it mounts to & it went pretty damn nicely, seems to handle acrylic a lot better.

This fan mount piece is complete but I think I went a bit overkill by using 3 brass inserts.

Now I had to mark & file down 3 15mm sections for the support piece in the stands front flat bar, then drill & countersink mount holes & because the right side of the flat bar dips down an extra 1mm I had to file that side down to make it work right.

Turned out perfect, I added brass thread inserts into the acrylic pieces & these are now solid with a nice 1mm space all along where I need it to stick the bent & curved panel there.

I took a break at this point.

[Stonerboy779]

So impressive. Every single update no matter how small still wows.

[Waynio]

So impressive. Every single update no matter how small still wows.

Thanks Stonerboy779, this will test that comment.

Joining cover piece.

Bends are the right angles but they aren't sharp enough for how I want them & I think it may have been impossible to do the curves so I'm going to use the bend & curve lines from the design & use a hack saw blade & sharp thin file to thin out the bend & curve points to make it more doable.

4 hours doing this but figured what I need to do to get it right so not a complete waste, reason it took so long is the opposing bends & me needing to figure out an alternative way to do the 2nd bend.

This was a fail update lol.

[Fuganater]

Getting sharp bends without a mechanical bender is tough.

[Beta-brain]

Getting sharp bends without a mechanical bender is tough.

It sure can be, the brake folder I bought was worth every penny and I could not have done without it on my present build, it saves so much time and instead of shelving ideas because they are going to be too much hassle I now enjoy doing it.

I bought this folder on ebay UK built by an engineering company it's heavy duty compared to most of the other cheap folders you see on ebay and I've easily folded ali up to 3mm thick with it, they have them for sale on ebay now.

If you don't want to spend that much on a folder these vice jaw benders (ebay) work well and are good for folds up to six inches wide.