--- r e f l e X i o n ---

[The boy 4rm oz]

Good to hear from you. I say take your time. For my LEXA build I set a time frame of around about 3-4 months, 16 months later it was complete, you can't rush these things. As for the hardware changes, as long as your happy and you believe the components are worth the purchase then who are we to criticize your choices.

[Xion X2]

Ok, I have a whooole lot of pictures.

As many may recall, the shelving tactic I've decided to go with for the Zero-G chamber (custom SSD drive and water pump mounting bay) will be constructed with dovetailed Lexan.

To cut the dovetails, I use a combination of a handheld router and template guide. But before starting, I needed to set the depth of the cut at the router bit. I can't remember the exact depth of the cut that I decided to go with for these shelves, but it seems like it was around 4mm (?) It was very shallow, as the Lexan is strong enough that you don't need that deep a groove for a strong bond.

Measuring the depth of the groove cut or "dado" cut as is the correct technical term for it:

And then setting the router bit depth:

That depth will be for cutting the groove or "dado" for the lip or "tenon" of the shelf to slide in.

Cutting some Lexan on the table saw:

And I'll slide the unsanded shelf into my dovetail jig:

You can see how rough the edges are after the saw. These have to be sanded out with my Black & Decker power sander.

The power sander is good for getting the teeth marks out of the Lexan, as you can see. I use a rough 120, 220 on the power sander and then jump up to 400 grit on the sanding block and then wet sand the rest of the way home.

As you can see, the jig really comes in handy by allowing me to clamp the shelf in a vertical position while I sand and polish the edge. A belt sander would work better, but they're quite expensive when compared with other seemingly more complex tools, and so I haven't dropped the cash down for one yet.

After some wet sanding all the way to 3000-grit, this is what you get:

This stuff right here doesn't hurt, either. It seems to layer a gloss over the wet sanded edge to give it just a little more 'shine':

Next, it was time to mark the drill holes for the shelves. To do this, I'll use the same method that I used with the shelf brackets before by placing wooden blocks underneath to level small increments at a time, only this time I'm not using brackets. I'll be drilling and tapping directly into the shelves.

For this procedure, 'Lil', my microscopic little leveling pal, makes another cameo appearance.

(You can never have enough Irwin clamps. I have 8 of them and STILL run out occasionally...)

After this, I did something stupid. Instead of clamping the shelves down and drilling straight into them from the outside shell, I decided to mark them with a sharpie. Although this seemed like a good idea at the time, it would cost me later.

Anyway, I marked the drill holes once I had the shelves level and began to drill them:

This wasn't as easy as it could've been. My press didn't sit high enough for me to use the attached base as a platform since the shelf had to be sitting vertical to drill into the sides, so I had to move it to the side and just use a vice clamp and several spring clamps to hold the vice clamp down as a drilling platform:

"Lil" makes another appearance as he helps me level the shelf so that I'm drilling down at an exact 90-degree angle. This way, when I screw into the shelf from the outside shell, the screw and screwhole will align (theoretically, anyway..)

A few scuffs that I'll have to sand back out. This stuff scratches sooo easily.

Then I began to tap the holes. I'd never done this before and was expecting it to be a pain. But it was actually very easy.

And I'm using MDPC black oxide screws into the shelves. I can't remember the exact size of these.. 6/32, perhaps?

And here, the bottom shelf, is how these look when mounted inside the chamber shell. Look better without brackets, I think.

The top shelf was still sitting on the installed bracket from before. I think the bottom looks much better.

I haven't figured out a way to hide the screw threads yet. I thought about using an overlaying bracket, but then that would seem to defeat the purpose of not using brackets in the first place.

I could try drilling shorter on the shelf as I went too far with this one. Could probably back it off by 1/8" or so.

One more thing that some of you may notice is that the pumps now line up with the windows perfectly while resting on top of the shelves (no recess cut needed, as before.) This will clean up the look a bit as I wasn't really crazy about having to recess the shelves for the pumps.

That's it for now. Thanks for looking.. and for your patience as I know that things have been progressing slower than usual. Hope to have more soon.

[StormRider]

ZOMG! UPDATE!!!

[The boy 4rm oz]

Seriously slick work .

[Starlite KNight]

Update please and thankies!

[Snowman]

Originally Posted by Starlite KNight

Update please and thankies!

seconded

[Techno_Savage]

I have just joined and was prompted to go to this project by a friend....
words cannot describe the AWESOME that has just been laid before me,
I am in AWE and bow before your might!
+rep to you "Sir Master Modder"
+rep to the one that brought me here!

[Waynio]

Thought their was an update on this, hope alls well Xion, I've missed updates on this awesome mod.

[TheMainMan]

This is definitely one of my favourite projects on this site and that says a lot! I'm a sucker for a clean, detailed build and every update you don't disappoint. The tapped shelf looks great!