After balking at this particular stage for as long as I could, it was time to take the plunge and commit myself to drilling the carbon fiber angles and the panels.
I have a tendency to hesitate at points in the fabrication where numerous other factors hinge. In this situation it was the placement of the feet, the PSU, the HDD cage, optical enclosure and the motherboard support(s).
Optical Drive: This build will utilize one of the Plextor slot-loading drives that I have been greedily hoarding…
My plan is to make the front panel that covers the optical drive be mounted with a secondary plate (like a wall-plate for a light switch) so that should I need to use a tray-loading drive, I will be able to switch the optical drive out with the minimum of fuss.
Here are some of the parts for the optical drive housing:
The optical drive mounting rails in a trial fit, and then polished:
HDD cage: In the past I have made cages that gained their rigidity from the drives themselves (the drives are the horizontal braces). This time around I wanted something a little more sophisticated in design. The particulars are still not quite clear, but here are what will be the vertical panels:
Motherboard rail-support: This piece will be part of the motherboard support structure:
After twiddling about, it was time to crap or get off the pot. After considering all the other factors again, and again, and again
… I just drilled them…. Jeez!
I ended up using the twill-weave carbon fiber angles that had a much tighter radius than the standard-weave angles that I made. This decision was based on the lower profile of the twill-set. The standard-weave angles will be used elsewhere in this project.
Once that was done, and I doubled checked that all panels aligned properly, and all angles were square; I place the feet to take a gander:
Due to the scale of this case, I am happy that I decided to go with the 1/2” black and 1/2” clear acrylic lamination. The 1” combined thickness seems more fitting for the size of the chassis.
Lighting:
After countless runes, incantations, and a couple of run-ins with some particularly foul-tempered Demons, I was able to harness this:
Tomorrow I will be spending some more time on the HDD cage, and mounting the optical drive enclosure.
I will also be measuring and cutting down the carbon fiber motherboard tray.
