The Intelligence - Day 13
Ok, so the silly switch dilemma... Turns out if you sort of grip the thing on both ends and give it a little wiggle, the thing unsnaps and bingo, separated
now I could begin testing in cardboard for the hole sizes etc. 1 inch for the game switches
7/16 x 1 1/8 for the rockers...
finally I settle on a plan for making and mounting the black switch panel for the case. since I had a few different ideas, and settled on one, I wanted to test it out without using the actual black acrylic, so I did some quick (relative) tests on some scrap clear acrylic I had in the shop. Began taping it up and marking out the sizes
I used a spiral blade in my scroll saw, with a makeshift fence to guide the parts for super straight cuts. And yes, I mounted my saw stand to a caster-frame I made a few weeks ago. Amazingly all of the casters are angled in such a way that they are not visible in the pic - it looks like its hovering
the plan goes like this, two rectangular pieces, one the size of the opening's interior, this piece will have the cut outs for the switches and dials
a second piece, slightly bigger, to act as a cap or frame that the smaller piece will be bonded to
I didnt snap a pic (like an idiot) but that upper piece squares over the other and will keep the lower piece suspended, but this piece's entire center portion will be cut away (1/4" in from all edges, interior cut) so it ends up looking like trim, like in the actual in-game pic in the first post. I will round the outter and inner corners to make it look sex
well, after I figured out the acrylic stuff, and stored my notes and test pieces, I decided to knock out another major thing that has been bugging me and torturing my sleep (well not really but it sounded dramatic) the HDD mounts...
I grabbed 4 left-over L-Brackets I had and did some fiddling. In this pic, if I stacked the two drives up against each other, all of the holes in the drives would line up
perfectly with all of the holes in the brackets! I was like woah! but then that wouldnt leave any breathing room, so a bit of drilling was necessary
I decided to hide the L parts that will be bonded to the case lid by facing them under the drives, thus saving space, and hiding them from sight. Again the L brackets impressed me by having about 1/8" clearance between them when faced inward (put a check in the Win column)
here's the "cage"
since I am lazy, and didnt want to remove the brackets just to sand them, I modded a piece of cardboard and slipped it in between the brackets and the hdd's, then I sanded the case area and hdd rails, and cleaned it all with isoalc 91%.
slopped on a bunch of jbweld (need to get some more soon) and basically just plopped the hdd cage into its place in the lid (the bottle is there for a little more weight but the drives themselves helped)
The dual drive thing definitely interferes with the pci slot area but I am hoping it will clear the video card, especially since the stock shroud is gone and the the zalman thing is a bit smaller and tucked back. If worst case occurs and the rack conflicts with the video card I can cut off the brackets sticking down to hold only a single drive. A single drive will definitely clear all of the pci cards/slots area
more soon, thanks for watching
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