Lean and Green - modular dual PC scratch build

[Waynio]

yikes! Must be quite the knife you use to cut bread!

Global knives & he keeps them sharp but the bread knife that's just sharp with teeth shouldn't have tried cutting the last slice so carelessly, went through with some force too.

The piece was just about hanging on so cleaned it up, disinfected & pressed it back down & wrapped up to hopefully let it heal, just hope I didn't damage any nerves, need the feeling for control.

[AmEv]

WHERE did you find that smiley!

[Waynio]

WHERE did you find that smiley!

I modded the 1 from bit-tech in ms paint.

[Stonerboy779]

Soooo good looking

[Waynio]

Soooo good looking

Thanks Stonerboy

Been letting my thumb recover & had some life stuff to sort out.

I was going to get modding again but spent most of Saturday designing so it can support a fan controller & a 92mm fan with grills to keep the controller cool, I like the solution.

Had to tweak the already cut front gamer panel in a way that I will be able to mod it & keep it looking good, the fan controller has black with coloured display with temps & speed readings, this should be a nice addition.

Under the 92mm fan view from the HTPC.

Full view

I will get the designs printed & stuck tomorrow & hopefully get on with this again.

[Waynio]

Long stupid story short, it's been a bad month not for the project but with my bro but things are straight again now other than a couple of injury's I picked up.

The past few days I've spent quite a bit of time getting everything spot on & ready to print including mounting points on some parts already made just so I have a very solid plan to follow where my efforts won't be a waste, all the curved bits & the fans needed extra design work so everything is ready to go forward now but the roof of it I still might put some extra work into as it's the only part that hasn't had much thought put into it, just been putting more into the internals & thought why just do 2 custom fans & why not the lot.

Decided to use clear acrylic for this now & also made the fan duct use acrylic also so the custom fans aren't hidden & kinda looks like they float, will be a mix of 1mm & 3mm acrylic so I'll make a gripping piece so the 1mm stuff isn't prone to getting damaged, the plan is so the duct piece easily slots tightly in/out of place with enough slack wire to allow putting it aside when doing any maintenance.

CPU cooler will either be a Zalman CNPS12X because it cools nicely enough, is a triple fan out of the box & looks awesome or I'll just mod my prolimatech megahalems so it doesn't need the fiddly wire fan clips which I don't like.

The curved cover piece for the front of the HPTC I had no idea how to accurately do it in real life or make the cut out bit accurately in the design so knew it was 1 of the bits I was very unsure about, during the process of getting the fan cut out in the curved panel I learnt a few new skills so I'll be able to design patterns into curved panels from now, took me a while to figure it out but could do it nice & quick now.

Also started using plugins on sketchup after cheapskate mentioning about them when I was trying to get accurate measurements of curved pieces, very handy 1 called flattery for flattening out curved panels, does it in segments of wherever the different angles are which makes for a totally accurate printable design of a curved piece with patterns inside it, so it all depends on my execution now.

Shame nothing was done during May so far but there is still just over a week left of it where I could do quite a bit & the little extra time I spent getting the design right also gave me a bit more recovery time, but I'd say I'm about as recovered as I'm gonna get for now, could be a long time before it's fully recovered & not so prone to extra damage.

So today I'll get toasted in the sun & tomorrow a cram packed week of modding.

Lastly for this last concept update before the modding continues a look at how it was in February & how it looks now, I'll update my first post with the revised one also, the design has been a work in progress from the start even though I thought that's it with the first update.

[Aldersan]

Been waiting for an update! Looking good, but can't wait to see the real thing!

[Waynio]

Been waiting for an update! Looking good, but can't wait to see the real thing!

Thanks Aldersan, I know it's been ages since my last real update of progress but things are starting to move now.

And I can't wait to see all this fixed together ASAP.


Me & my running ahead of myself due to me getting seduced by the nice weather again I'll be stronger tomorrow to make sure I get well into this but I got as far as getting all the fan designs & curve pieces printed, cut, aligned & tacked together ready for sticking to materials so I'm right back where I was about 3 weeks ago but a few steps ahead ready for continuing tomorrow or later rather.


Printer friendly prep, all the fans & fan holders & all curved pieces converted to precise flat versions which will require me to be highly accurate on doing the curve pieces which should be fun doing correctly.

Aligned & tacked together.

More.

Close up of a tacked together section.

Remains.

Result.

Wooo Hoooooo the rusty wheels have started moving & this thing is rolling forward again at last, the past 3 or even 4 weeks have felt like absolutely ages.

[Aldersan]

Again, TONS of prep work, but it shows in your build quality!

[Waynio]

Again, TONS of prep work, but it shows in your build quality!

Cheers Aldersan & that's still not everything, man what a mod I went & designed.

This was a tough additional template to place perfectly on the front gamer panel but managed it.

Cut out the tweak & just needed to add the bevel for the LCD on the fan controller, if only I could rewind to this point.

Taken a big step back, screwed up the front gamer rig panel, stinger but my mistake was not using files for the bevel which would have been easier & quicker but instead used my scroll saw, up/down cutting I'm used to but angles ugh, need more practice, much more, just didn't use my noggin enough this time or I've got rusty at modding with the time out.

It's a kind of an advanced bevel though because it's acrylic bevel joining up to the aluminium all while being flush fit so maybe it was just a bit difficult to do mixed with mod rust, already got the tweaked design of the panel printed again to re make it right after this post, got to have a modathon through the night & all tomorrow so I'll be leaning into the progress zone where I feel happier, neighbours are away for the weekend so don't have to worry about noise, I'll be aching tomorrow night but it'll be worth it.

Two good things though, all the templates are stuck to materials & got 1 new panel made.