photobucket bandwidth exceeded!

I was about to say that

Dude I'd recommend attaching the images to the posts or getting some free webhosting.

Photobucket is free but limited to 10gig a month....would be nice if they warned you before exceeding the limit instead of after.

I suppose I could open a couple more accounts upload everything again and edit the post to point to the new location but what a pain in the a##.......and I don't have the time to do it right now so it might be a day or so.

Edit: Time is money and I don't have the time to fool with this silly kind of cr#p so after paying the extortion fee......I mean membership fee it's back up and running

7,342 views... good lord

that's like one of the most viewed threads on the whole of occ ever... and you're not even done yet

i dunno if this is gonna help or rub salt in the wound, but FileDen.com gives you 600MB space, 20GB bandwidth/month, free... not really that much more bandwidth than Photobucket but meh, i'll stop babbling

I'm sure digging it helped contribute to that...

Yeah I guess I shouldn't complain about Photobucket too much....that's quit a few hits in 2 to 3 weeks.

Lookin good man! I wish I could shake your hand, you've got some skills.

What was 3 Word Story time up to?

it didn't have as many views... cos who wanted to read through a bunch of nonsense really? hardly interesting reading... modding worklogs and overclocking threads get a lot more attention

very nice clean build!!! very impressed. have you thought about your Hdd LED's and on and off push buttons. i was thinking maybe you could mount each mobo's *bits and buttons* in the left and right of the front of the fame. may seem a lot of work now to drill and feed the wires though the box but it would keep the tidy and hidden. maybe its a silly idea i donno lol!!

No.....I don't think that is a silly idea at all, especially since that is almost exactly what I had intended to do with the Power and Hard drive LED's

Back to the build (sorry about the delay) I finished the front panel...as I said in the original plan it is completely void of any switches or drives. It is made from 1/4" thick acrylic which I painted on the back side with gloss black acrylic lacquer and then cleared with acrylic lacquer. This made a very high gloss black panel when viewed from the front but I didn't want a black panel on the inside of the case so I decided to coat it with a product called "Killer Chrome" from Alsa.



You can change the way this product looks by the surface that you apply it to. It has to go over a black basecoat but you can change its gloss from a mirror finish (like chrome)to a semi gloss (like polished stainless steel) by how you prepare the surface. I was looking for a more dull stainless steel type look so I wetsanded the clear on the backside but did not buff it so that it retained a dull finish then coated it with the Killer Chrome. Here's how it turned out.



Next I started on the sidepanels....I had originally intended to use 3/32" acrylic but after my experience with it on the back panel (it took 8 screws to hold it flush to the frame) I turned to "Lexan".



It costs four times as much as acrylic but it cuts like butter, is easy to machine, sands like wood and most importantly stays flat as a sheet of iron even though it's only 3/32" thick.

Fun Facts:

1) Lexan is what all the scratch prone iPod bodies are made from (so I need to be careful when I clean it)

2) Lexan is the molecule that was flashed up on the Apple computer in the third StarTrek movie and dubbed "Transparent Aluminum"

Now pay attention to this next picture because there is something very wrong with it.....you see that vicegrip at the far right side?....you're not going to find that under the "Approved Clamping Devices" section of the "Machinist Handbook" but when you have to fit a piece of material that is physically bigger than the mill bed.....well....I did what I had to do and just stood back and prayed it didn't let go



From underneath you can see that it is quite a distance between the clamp points and it really doesn't matter what material you are trying to cut it is going to flex when you try to shove a 1/2" mill bit through it. To make cuts like this you have to use "Parallels" (the two thin bars) to support the material you are trying to cut.



Because of the way this PC is built the cpu on the left side sits at the top of the case and the cpu on the right side sits at the bottom. As thin as I managed to make the lit up "OCC" logo it still was not thin enough. When I installed it on the right side of the case, with the sidepanels on, the cpu on that side ran 12C hotter than the left side....it was just too close to the cpu fan. I tried cutting additional vents in the bracket but that still was not enough so I removed the device from the right side bracket.




Here are some pics of where I am now.









At this point at least 90% of the fabrication is complete.....to finish it I need to completely tear it down then reassemble it.

Tomorrow (Sunday) my son and I are going to the "NHRA GatorNationals", Monday I leave for Alabama for the next five days so it will be a little while before the next update....sorry

Nice job Fueler, have you been folding with it any yet?

Great progress so far. Enjoy the Gator nats.

Yea enjoy the Gator nationals they are a blast. They will be here next I guess. 2007 O’REILLY NHRA SPRING NATIONALS, MARCH 30-APRIL 1, HOUSTON, TEXAS 2007

Yes






There's nothing like a bunch of Nitro Burners pounding the pavement to get you're spirits up

You have got to go if you can.....it's one of the "greatest shows" on earth

sweet looking front panel there man! I like the idea with Lexan, it is really easy to mod, I made a couple of RC ship bodies out of that stuff before.

That is one awesome rig and is an inspiration to me but NO WAY I'm gonna mess around with the PSU wiring.

Yea I'm with ya on that tenoX, that's quite a mod. A bit too much for most of us I assume.

is that so you can stain the wood?

Yeah...to stain and clear the wood, polish and clear the aluminum frame and some other misc. things I need to do to finish it up

What is the lexan? Is it the black front panel?

Think the front is the 1/4 plexi and the two sides are the lexan I am not sure they might both be though. Hey are you going to do anything about the adhesive to hold the sides on? I might be mistaken but I swear I can see it. Is that how you are going to leave it? Looks like its only visible on the four corners. Not sure just something I noticed.

looks like double-sided tape to me... like a temporary test-fit solution for holding the side panel in place... i'm sure Fueler has a more elegant solution in that crazy head of his

Yes there is a couple of pieces of double sided tape holding the side covers on.....no it will not be there when it's finished the front panel and both sidepanels will be held on magnetically

Looks hella sweet. Can't wait to see the finished product.

In my job I'm constantly meeting new people and learning new things.....just this last week I learned that there are still dry counties in MS but that everybody in those dry counties knows where the closest liquor store is, that when you get driving directions from somebody in MS "drive a little bit" does not mean several blocks but about five to ten miles, that in MS taking four lefts in a row does not bring you back to where you started but is in fact a straight line across the state border to AL where the liquor store happens to be and finally I learned that in the little town I was at in MS if you want to find the local sheriff you need to look for his cruiser parked behind his girl friends house.....his wife doesn't know he's there but everybody else does.

And I thought I had seen it all

Back to modding....today I began addressing the "doublesided tape" before I started the disassembly of the rig.

The pictures here are not pretty but they will give you an idea of how the panels will be attached (or at least how I hope they will be attached)

The first thing I will do after pulling the rig apart is epoxy the magnets into the four main aluminum tubes at each corner of the PC case frame (two magnets per tube...one at the top and one at the bottom of each tube) Something like this: (this is not one of the actual tubes)



I made four small thin steel plates that will be permanently attached to the back side of the front panel....they will look a lot better after they have been painted.



For the side panels I chucked up a piece of 3/8" steel bar stock and wacked out eight "T" shaped plugs that will press fit through 1/4" holes milled into each corner of the side panels. I had to use a mill and milling bit because a 1/4" drill bit (even mounted in a drill press) was just too inaccurate....there is just too much play in the spindle and I couldn't drill the same size hole twice. Using the mill I was able to make eight holes all at exactly .255 inch. I made the outside diameter of the plugs .256 inch for a .001 inch press fit (I was afraid to try for a tighter fit because it may crack the corner of the Lexan panel.







Here they are pressed into the panel.






The magnets mounted in the two front aluminum case tubes will do double duty.....holding both the front bezel and side panel in place.




Time to tear this thing down

That is AWESOME dude!!!

that kind of precision together with the innovative custom fabrication are what i am really enjoying about this project...

i wish i didn't have pieces of my how-the-hell-long-is-it-going-to-take-Chieftec case all over my room so i could egg you on a bit without fear of some form of backlash lol

keep up the good work sir

I like what I see cant wait for more. careful with those magnets

Looking great so far. will be even better once the wood is stained

I'm assuming you won't have any "handles" on the front/sides, so how do you plan to grip and remove the panels once they're attached? Are you going to be able to use the vent holes to pinch and pull them?

I'm sure you've got a plan for this, I'm just curious what it is

BTW, it's looking great. I too am excited to see the stain.

Yeah the vent holes make a pretty good handle, once the side panels are off its easy to grip the edges of the front bezel

I never stated it at the begining of all this but one of the main reasons I wanted to use aluminum tubing for the frame was because it is lightweight. The steel framed PC I've made are ball busters to move around.

I also went with thin acrylic (later switched to Lexan) for the side and rear panels to help keep the weight down. There's not much I could do about the electronics that went into the case as far as cutting weight goes (although I did ditch most of the steel case around the power supply). I also used aluminum for all the mounting brackets and the mobo tray. I do however have two weight offenders in the case, the first was a design choice, the oak end caps and the second is because it is what I had laying around, the steel bars that hold the castors.

I learned a lot about shedding weight building Drag Bikes in my younger days. If it's made out of steel then remake it out of aluminum, if it's made out of aluminum then remake it out of magnesium, if its a body part acid dip it and if all else fails then drill holes into it till it looks like swiss cheese.

I used the swiss cheese method to lighten the wood and the steel bars.

Here's the oak caps after the treatment.






Here they are stained....can't clear them for at least 24 hrs. I struggled with which color to use but I finally settled on "Golden Oak" because I thought it would compliment the green lighting best.




I didn't have a scale to weigh anything but I can tell you just by picking them up that the two steel bars weighed more than the aluminum frame so I gave these the full swiss cheese treatment.

A before and after.



After paint.



Next I went to work on the Powersupply and hard drive brackets.

A before and after of the PSU support brackets.



You didn't think I was going to leave them the way they were did you?

Still working on the HD support brackets.

looks like big boy's meccano

how did you get the textured inner section on the psu mounts did you mill it slightly, then mask it off and bead blast it?

Nice work



Edit more more!!!! lol

Keep up the work doing good man. I still want to see the end result. OWWW I CANT WAIT!!! HURRY lol

Yep that's exactly what I did, it's milled about 1/64" deep. The bracket's already feather lite so removing a lot of material was not a priority.....just trying to make it more presentable

Ok more stuff.

Here's a view of the bottom fully assembled with everything painted, stained and cleared.




Next I scrubbed the frame down first with 320 grit then 600 grit sandpaper and cleared it with Acrylic Laquer. The reason I cleared it was so the metal wouldn't tarnish when handled. The oil from your fingers leaves marks all over buffed aluminun, the clear eliminates that problem and can be wiped clean with a soft rag.



I drilled four holes in the front lower part of the frame for the power and hard drive LEDs.



Then I drilled four larger holes on the backside (just big enough to fit the LED body), inserted the LED and a rubber grommet to protect the wire from getting cut on the frame.



Here's a couple more pic's with the frame attached to the bottom endcap.





I knew from the very begining that I was going to have problems with wire management so I had convinced myself that it was ok if wires were running all over the place as long as they didn't obstruct airflow. But when I started the final assembly those wires started to drive me crazy and the more I tried to convince myself that it was ok the crazier I got.

I took it back apart and spent the next three or four hours with soldering iron in hand and tried every possible wiring route I could think of to clean up the mess.

This was the best I could do but under these circumstances it's better than it was.









Almost finished

Finished.....except that I'm waiting on two green LED fans that I broke down and ordered (the freight's more than the fan) so it will be a few days before any night shots.

EXCELLENT JOB FUELER!
*2 thumbs WAY up*

nice job Fueler

That is awesome. I am just blown away.

WoW awesome work,

WOW - this is just beyond awesome Fueler! Actually, I'm kind of sorry to see it come to a close as I have enjoyed following your progress so much and was constantly awed by your design and skills!!

For those of you who have enjoyed this even half as much as I have, please take a moment to if you haven't already.

OK Fueler - I'm ready for your next masterpiece!

what a magnificent folding beast

also, i like the plant under the table! hehe

I think I'm going to have to rest for a little bit....this project about wore me out

Don't forget the accent candles as well - what a nice Martha Stewart touch!

Just ribbing you a little Fueler - nothing to take away from an incredible build!

It isn't normally there I just thought it would make a nice contrast to the case

Aren't you worried about the magnets and the hard drives you have in there? Are they just small enough not to cause any problems?

You're my new idol.

Unless you place them on the harddrive or have a HUGE magnet then it shouldn't bother them...