Project Open Air Mk 2

[TheMainMan]

This case is truly a work of art! Your hard work definitely shows.

[blueonblack]

I'm running out of time to get this thing done, but making progress!

First off, PSU mounting. For this build I'll be using a new EVGA 500B power supply. Not a tremendous amount of power but this is really a lower-power system and the 500B is very quiet and fairly small.

Pretty thing isn't it? Everything EVGA makes is pretty if you ask me. So anyway, this is where it has to sit:

I can't mount it in the usual way, with the four mounting screws in the rear. The back wall of the case is just acrylic and I have to make this thing UPS-resistant. (Nothing is UPS-proof.)

I decided to mount it from the side and bolt the mounts to the floor of the case with some angle iron I had left over from another project:

In the end it will sit like this:

In order to make mounts I had to get it open. There have GOT to be screws holding it together but I'll be damned if I can see any.

I learned the hard way a couple of years back that these labels that the manufacturers use are usually very thick and hide screws very well. If you run your thumbs along the sides pressing hard you'll uncover them with a dent in the sticker over the screwhead:

A little time with an Xacto and there that little sucker is!

Take out four screws and the top lifts right off.

If you do this, be careful. It's easy to forget that the fan is still connected and yank something loose. There is usually some hardened resin material on the connector itself to hold it together, you may have to cut that loose with your Xacto also.

Once that was unplugged I pulled the fan off to get the fan grill out of it. That grill isn't needed inside and is way too cool to hide.

Ok, so I got the PSU wide open and I'm planning the mounts. Since I'll be mounting it from the sides, I had to be careful the mounting hardware isn't going to touch anything it shouldn't when I'm done.

Locations chosen, I turned the outer casing on its side on the bench and drilled four 1/4" mounting holes:

I chose button-head bolts for their low clearance.

Installed:

Once the bolts were very firmly in place I put the whole thing back together again (remembering to plug in the fan, I've been down that road before too):

Unfortunately, when I placed the angle iron beside the new bolts to check the fit, the bolts were too high!

Honestly, this probably would have worked fine but I wanted them in the middle of the angle. No problem, small piece of scrap acrylic under each one raised them just right.

After that is was just a matter of drilling matching holes in the angle iron, sliding it over the bolts and locking it on with nuts.

I drilled four holes through the floor of the case and four matching holes in the lower part of the angle. Four Nylok nuts later and this PSU isn't going anywhere.

I also managed to get the rear acrylic panel cut. The fit was tight enough that I had to cut off the edge of the stickers on the PSU to slide it in place.

------

Ok, the PSU is in place and as solid as it is humanly possible to make it. Now for the DVD drive.

For this I used two pieces of oak, 1 inch square and 18 inches long. Drilled through holes and mounted them to the bottom mounting holes on the DVD drive with long M3 bolts.

Now I needed something to mount those to. Earlier I realized I was going to have a problem with racking, side-to-side or front-to-rear motion, since the weak points in this design are the tops and bottoms of the columns. To eliminate the front-to-back racking I had to eliminate the fancy magnetic-retention setup I had for the side panels and glue them in. After that I cut two pieces of 3/4" oak and glued them to the inside of these panels and then screwed them in from underneath. One racking problem solved, plus it gives me a perfect anchor point for the DVD drive stringers.

Done. I can literally pick up this entire case and turn it 90 degrees in the air touching nothing but the DVD drive. That should do.

----

After a lot of measuring, drilling and some time machining on the router table the front panel is done also!

As it's a very high-visibility piece I'll leave the paper on it for the time being.

---

Only one more thing for the front: the power switch. I bought a gloss black Bulgin switch and I love it, but I figured out it would get lost in that big gloss black front panel so I wanted a way to make it stand out.

Thin strip of maple:

On the drill press to cut out the switch hole:

Swapped the Forstner bit for a hole saw, without moving the drill press table or the wood, so that hole stayed centered on the spindle:

That got me a rough maple circle:

With a little time on the router table and some sandpaper it makes a nice switch ring:

In a piece of scrap just to see what it will look like:

That's it for today but that was a lot. The entire bottom portion of the case is done except for a couple of trim pieces (DVD drive cover and eject button).

Now I have to mark tap and drill for the motherboard standoffs, figure out how and where I'll be mounting the SSD and come up with some kind of anchor point for the expansion cards.

*Then* I get to sand on it for pretty much ever and put a finish on the wood, all so I can take it back apart, ship it UPS to Las Vegas, put it back together again and reverse the process a week later.

If you had any doubts, modders are crazy.

[OvRiDe]

That's awesome. Nice mounting job with the PSU, and that wood trim ring is perfect!

[TheMainMan]

I love how this build still looks delicate even with all the structural overkill you're adding in. To me, that speaks of great planning and craftsmanship. Looking forward to the end result!

[blueonblack]

I love how this build still looks delicate even with all the structural overkill you're adding in. To me, that speaks of great planning and craftsmanship. Looking forward to the end result!

Thanks! While it *is* coming together to look exactly like I wanted it to, I cannot claim good planning. For some reason when I started I was planning it like I did the previous version, where it was meant to be made, gently carried to its final resting place and left there indefinitely. Remember the magnetic retention on the side panels?

I am glad I came to my senses and so far have been able to retrofit it for more severe duty than I had initially planned. Now that the front and rear panels are cut I don't see any major obstacles that would keep it from being completed on time in good shape.

Sanding. I see a lot sanding in my near future.

I hate sanding.

[Stonerboy779]

You picked a great hobby then didn't you haha

However I feel for you I have always hated sanding and find it hard at times to put the effort into it that I should.

[TheMainMan]

Sanding. I see a lot sanding in my near future.

I hate sanding.

While a 3D printer would be nice, an automated 3D sander would actually be something I would start saving for...

Anybody want to make one?

[blueonblack]

Small update this morning, more to come tonight I hope.

I got to work on the upper platform, where the motherboard and SSD will be mounted. I already had the mounting holes drilled and countersunk, so all I had to do was figure out exactly where the motherboard and SSD were going to go and get them there. Simple. Nothing is ever as simple as you think it will be. :x

So far so good, both pieces will fit nicely, centered on the platform with enough border to look good.

The standoffs went very well, as did the holes for the SSD (mounting it with screws from underneath).

That's where the trouble started. These panels are pretty thick and made of cast acrylic and MDF, two materials that are very hard on cutting tools. This is what happens when your feed rate is too high for the work at hand...

Yet another case of being *very* lucky. This piece of carbide-tipped steel came off at 20,000 RPM. Just a small pop sound it looked like it just vanished. At that speed it was a tiny little invisible flying ball of destruction. I heard the initial pop and then a couple of bangs from different areas in the shop as it bounced off of a couple of cabinets and a set of shelves before coming to rest on the floor about 10 feet away. A reminder why I wear safety glasses and why the router table came with a shield over the cutting area, though of course I removed that before I ever used it. Moral of the story? Use your tools the way they should be used. This was entirely my fault.

After finishing cutouts in the upper panel for the power cables, I went to work on the SSD. Since I want to minimize the appearance of cables, I picked up this 90-degree SATA adapter:

I cut a slot for the cables, plugged it in and put it in place. Looks good from the top.

Not so much from the side:

<sigh> Turns out one end of the adapter sits lower than the base of the SSD. I really didn't want to cut the hole for the adapter any bigger, so I decided to raise the SSD to match the height of the adapter offset. It was only 1/16" so I didn't want to mess with trying to get a piece of maple that big planed down that thin. Looking through my scrap I found a big piece of balsa I had left over that was just the right thickness. Not very strong but I didn't need it to be. You'll only see 1/16" edge of the stuff and the color is perfect.

Laid out on the bench.

I used the adapter plate that came with the SSD to mark the mounting holes.

Drilled those out and mounted it oversize to the SSD.

Wrapped the SSD in masking tape to protect the finish and used a razor knife and sandpaper to cut the balsa down to the exact size and shape of the drive.

Success!!!

One more thing I got done was sleeving the power switch. The lead will come out from under the motherboard right by the pins, so visibility will be absolutely minimal, but I couldn't leave the wires bare like this:

I didn't have any sleeving material and wasn't going to buy any to sleeve one wire, so I decided to steal the very nice sleeving off of one of my XSPC fans:

Got the sleeving on and when I put the heat shrink on the end that connects to the motherboard I made sure to bend it 180 degrees as it would be in place, so the heat shrink cooled that way and I shouldn't have any problems with it when installed.

That's it for this time, more progress is being made, hope to see another update tonight or tomorrow.

Thanks for watching!

[blueonblack]

Ok, update number two for today and what a difference!

Two more steps complete. The first was dressing up the DVD drive. I had already cut a 1/4" hole in the acrylic front panel for the eject button, so all I had to do was cut a short piece of 1/4" dowel, round over the end and superglue it to the button:

Next I had to make a matching face for the drawer. In the first version of this case I used magnets, two on the drawer and two on the cover. That worked great, gave me plenty of holding power but one of the magnets turned out to be just a tiny bit higher than center so when the face was put on it was crooked. It was easy to push it down straight, but the magnets would eventually pull themselves together again and the next time I looked it was crooked again.

To avoid that this time I used magnets on one side only.

I stacked these little coin magnets up and glued them to the drawer:

Then I took some tapered-head machine screws and cut the heads off of them and ground the cut down smooth:

I bored holes in the back of the face plate where the magnets would be sitting and glued the heads of the bolts in place:

Fits just right and since there are no magnets on the face side I can move it as needed to center it and it will stay right where I put it.

So that's done. It was time to finally take this thing apart and sand and polish those edges. I've been dreading this part for a few reasons. Shiny acrylic and power tools are an excellent way to destroy many hours of work, and once the edges were polished I'd be peeling the paper off the acrylic, which means I'd have to be a lot more careful with it from here on out. Didn't want to do it, too bad. It was time.

Couple of pics to show the edge as it comes out of my saw.

I use a 40-tooth thin-kerf carbide blade that I absolutely love, and it cuts very well, but that edge is a long way from where it needs to be. After sanding each edge with 220, 400, 600 and 1000-grit sandpaper and polishing them on a buffing wheel with jeweler's rouge, I was *very* happy with the edges.

Then came the peeling. After it was all peeled and reassembled I was reminded of why I've been doing this. This thing is going to look awesome.

Pretty!

Honestly not a whole lot left to do. I have to get the tubing for the cooler cut and installed, get it refilled and bled, figure out how I'm going to cover up the mounting bolts, work on some trim in the back and put a finish on all the wood.

I think I'm going to make the deadline.

[Stonerboy779]

I love it so much

Just going to give it a clear coat to protect it all?