Project Stealthlow

[Waynio]

Holy sheet I've developed a muscle in my forearm I never knew existed & it aches a lot, filing total for yesterday & today rounds up to about 17 hours, gahhh I feel like a zombie.

The brass thread inserts are meant for acyrlic but I must have miss drilled the bottom right side holes for the helicoils so were not a good tight fit so I used a 4mm drill bit for the brass inserts, placed them in the hole.

Hammer time

Put masking tape over it to keep it in place & whacked it in with a hammer, then fine tuned the whacking with a small hammer so it was in flush, good stuff , seems I clipped the back panel & it made the right panel not go on correct so whacked the excess off with a chisel & it goes on fine now.

Fan mount bars.

Cut the main 6 bars to required size & was only gonna do these 6 & the other optional 2 or 4 tomorrow but done the lot today.

Many hours of this.

Test fit

Panels on with an extra bolt near the top back of the side panels & the front 2 fan mounts, top fan mount & bottom fan mount filing done.

[AmEv]

Lookin' schweet!!!

+r

[Waynio]

Thanks AmEv

Just taken the mobo tray out & going to use the rest of today to get it measured & marked up for the motherboard & fan mounts.

[Waynio]

Knowing people are following the log & commenting really does give me that bit more drive to keep moving forward, without the comments from people I'd still be doing slack efforts lol so thanks for that & last but not least thanks to every other modder who do amazing projects who have inspired me to do better .

I marked up the mobo panel for the fan mounts & where the pci/io piece will go during the night but need to make the pci/io piece before I can mark the mobo mounting holes so I'll work on that tomorrow, had a crazy long sleep waking up at 2 pm yesterday after the filing so I count that as 2 days worth of sleep , I should have been up all day too which should mean a decent update by the end of today but I nodded off the sleep so wrecks the acceptable noise time levels so tomorrow it is .

LOL I can't figure out why I didn't draw the pci/io lines on the materials when I drew the mobo tray layout last night as it's taken near 3 hours & it's ready for taking to the garage to be cut out which with it being near 8 pm I'll leave until tomorrow now but a little more rest won't hurt .

This was inspired by an aluminium billet pci/io piece I seen a while ago here on bit-tech but the guys price was I think nearly 200 euros (about the cost of the aluminium on this project), I was in love with it but the price ended that lol so I decided to make my own solid pci/io piece by making layers, the theory is spot on, just hope it turns out the same taken precise measurements from a lian-li piece, made the sketchup model & now it's time to make it.

I'll be using 2x 5mm acrylic sheets, 2x 2mm aluminium sheets & 1x 1mm sheet to make a 15mm thick piece, only the 2mm inside sheet will have slots, all the rest will be plain cut out area, always wanted to make my own & figure this will be the easiest way to do it compared to bending a sheet of alu.

[Waynio]

This was going to be an update earlier but got cracking on with an alternative so it wasn't a wasted day .

LOL didn't go to plan the metal work did but the 5mm acrylic pieces didn't it's just soo brittle so came back in to get my thoughts together & as usual came up with an alternative which is all aluminium & if that fails then I could always go with a pci/io piece from another case & admit defeat on making my own but I'll give it another try but yeah that means loads of marking up again which takes a while to do right.

So the new plan is 5 3mm pieces bolted together, got 1 done & checked the IO cover from my last mobo & it won't go in easily because of it being 3mm instead of 1mm thick so to fix that all I need to do is give it a bevel on the last piece so the notches of the IO cover can click on.

Anyway the marking up will be nice & fast actually as I have 1 of the pieces made & it's spot on so it'll make a good template even for the 1 with the slots so back to it I go included the failed acrylic pieces for a laugh, the 1st 1 when drilling ripped a corner off & the 2nd 1 was going ok & cut out the IO piece but the reciprocating saw melted the cuts so wouldn't fall out & with already being frustrated with the 1st piece I whacked it out & it ripped it in half lol.

Hopefully I'll have some more pieces done by the end of the day, especially the 1 with the slots.

Started off positive.

Metal work went well.

Hmmmm acrylic pieces :lol:.

Last try but this time all alu .

Alright, got the needed pieces marked up in about 15 minutes thanks to the piece I already made, time to cut these out & even with getting them done as fast as possible it took 4 hours to cut all these & they require a lot of filing, I'll just have to remember it'll be worth it lol.

Yeah they look rough as I don't know what but that will change after heaps of filing .

[Waynio]

Started at 9:15 PM, finished 4:40 AM lol, managed to keep the noise quiet by clamping heavily & holding the pieces so they don't make any vibration or high pitch noise, then came in & cleaned the kitchen, made a coffee & started putting this together while parking my rear, ahhhhh .

They still require some more work but nothing major .

[msmrx57]

Holy bung load of filing batman!!!! Looks like some good progress though.

BTW love the mug.

[TheMainMan]

Impressive. You're going to have Popeye sized arms by the time you're done this project!

[Waynio]

Holy bung load of filing batman!!!! Looks like some good progress though.

BTW love the mug.

The filing I'm hoping there won't be much more of it .
My modding drink of choice is cappuccino with 3 sugars, really keeps me going, well that & my mp3 player .

Impressive. You're going to have Popeye sized arms by the time you're done this project!

LOL Thanks MainMan .
The grade of the sheet aluminium is much softer than the bars but was still a fair bit of effort.

[AmEv]

You.
Are
Amazing.
Wow.