Ahhh. Now the fun stuff.
For the frame, I'll be mainly using the 1/8" thick 3/4" leg aluminum angle I purchased.
A jigsaw was the tool of choice to cut these. After I finished all pieces of a given length, I would stack them up and file them to the same length to help insure everything stayed square later:
For the four uprights of each section, I needed to do a little dremel work to create a flush corner:
I filed the dremel cuts for a clean fit:
Here's the various bits needed for one section of the case (this collection is the main mobo module):
The plan is to use the 3" aluminum angle to join all elements of the joint together, but they need a little more work:
There's still some more to do on these, but this is enough to show you the principal behind the construction:
That's the gist of how I'm holding this thing together.
The rounded off 3" pieces will be used to tie together the three legs of each corner with epoxy and countersunk screws. These pieces will vary in shape, depending on what else may be attached to them no or possibly in the future (upgrades) These double quarter round pieces pictured will also serve as anchor points for the tubular module connections, as well as the case feet.
You can also see my first attempts there at achieving a clean brushed look on the extruded aluminum pieces. The last picture above displays the fruits of some hand labor with 80 and 150 grit emery cloth on the curved 3" corner piece.
Once I refine the process (which will probably include power tooling) I'll share the details of my methods. More on that later.
Once I finished up the basic bits for the frame, I started tacking them together with glue:
(the next several photographs detail a process I ended up not using later in the project, but it was a viable technique, so I'll leave it in here)
This is a time consuming process, but it will insure all my tapped holes will be aligned perfectly later. This glue tacks pretty quickly, but doesn't fully cure for 24 hours. For the first 8 or so, it remains fairly flexible, much like silicon adhesive. That should give me just enough give to make sure every thing is square before I start drilling for screws.
The bonding process is taking all day, and is turning out to be more complicated than I had anticipated. I probably should have just used super glue:
I let it dry overnight, and it came out nicely solid, and more importantly, nicely square:
I got the holes drilled for my screws (all 48 of them!) and got a start on tapping them:
That isn't the hardware I'm going to use, (that's on the way at the moment from McMaster-Carr) I just thought that was kind of a cool picture.
D'oh! 10 holes in, I snapped a tap. I have a feeling this isn't the last time I'm going to be seeing this during this project ( I guess that's one less screw I'll need.
) :
(Cutting oil turned out to be the key here. A tiny drop every hole or two is all you need, and I haven't had a problem since.)
New tap and some cutting oil and I was back in business, and my hardware arrived to boot! Loving this effect. Can't get any lower profile than this:
The flush mount of the set screws will allow for a clean mounting later of the exterior panels. They're actually countersunk just a tad. Here's a closeup playing with the macro function of my camera (which I finally found):
That pretty much sums up how the frames for each section of the case are going to be constructed.
(fast forward a bit)
The setscrews are trick, but the reality of their effectiveness eventually set in. Joining two flush pieces together with two threaded holes is tricky business anyway, and without a "head" on the screw, the bond just wasn't that strong. Strong enough probably, but I figure if I'm going to build it myself, I might as well do it right.
So, I went back to plan A. Countersunk screws:
Much stronger fastening method there. I'll still probably use the set screws, especially in really tight spots. I'll also likely order up some hod rod allen head machine screws instead of these philips head eventually as well; but these standard ones are available locally in bulk, and they work fine for now.
(If you want to see the process behind constructing the case using the countersinks, check out this post, here.)
All of this will be hidden when the case is finished anyway.