jpz

OK, a couple pictures:


The upper(horizontal) hole is threaded all the way through and has a screw partially inserted- this was my second try. You can see my first try in the center of the front face. The rear half is threaded and my tap is still in there but you cannot tell. My camera had a lot of trouble focusing on the cube so I'm sorry I couldn't get a better picture.



This is the scrap bronze acrylic I have been practicing with. The vertical edge that is closest to the camera has been polished- you can see the table cloth if you look at it closely.

jpz

Method of Sanding and Polishing

I decided to sleeve some fans this weekend, starting with the YL fan. Here's a before picture:


But I quickly ran into problems. The sleeving kit that I bought(made by Kgear) turned out to be pretty awful. The sleeves are cheap but they aren't that bad; the problem is the heat shrink. The heat shrink tubing only shrinks to about half it's size- which is a pretty common shrink ratio for cheap heat shrink. But the heat shrink included with the kit is WAY too big to be useful for anything. 9mm heat shrink is way too large for the 1/4" sleeving(and I can't imagine what the manufacturer expected me to use with the included 1/8" sleeving) Just take a look at these pictures compared 1/4" sleeving to 9mm tubing:



So I ran out to radioshack and bought a couple packs of heat shrink. I also picked up a project board while I was there:


9mm heat shrink from the Kgear kit compared to 1/8" heat shrink from radioshack:


Here is the sleeved YL fan- I used 1/8" sleeving with 1/8" heat shrink:


Then I opened up the SFlex G fans that will go on the radiator. Before sleeving:


The 1/8" heat shrink was too difficult to slide over the 1/8" sleeving so I used 4.5mm heat shrink(also included in the radioshack heat shrink packs) with 1/8" sleeving for the SFlex G fans:


Finally, I cut all the acrylic sheets that will be used to make the case. These panels were cut on my dad's craftsman portable table saw using the special saw blade I bought from sdplastics. The cuts came out quite well:


I still need to cut the acrylic for the motherboard tray, drive bays, and shrouds, and there is a lot of other work to do.

Cubes Drilled and Tapped

cuy50

Looking good!

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Jolly-Swagman

Looking good there jpz.

A tip for you, when your using the Tap put a little soap on it will help, and cut down on friction, and give a polished looking thread.

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Jolly's Tech Bench 2010 | The Sled Acrylic Tech Bench | Smooth-n-Fold Cube Case Mod | OCZ Vendetta 2BoltThru Mods | External CMOS Reset Key Switch
Folding@home-T32

The Fryer

nice job bud. it takes time to do this but your case is going to be a very rewarding master peace for you. just be careful not to take off to much when smoothing edges because you will see it in the end. but i still think it is going to be sweet.

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ok i couldn't keep it there.. just to big..

jpz

Thanks for the tip! I've been using oil-based cutting fluid/lubricant instead of soap. It works just as well if not better than soap.

I spent two and a half hours after school today drilling and tapping cubes. It was slow work because plastic would build up in the holes I already drilled because the holes intersect at the center of each cube. I am considering drilling the holes of the second half of the cubes off-center so they do not intersect. Also, tapping 48 holes will take some time no matter what. I left all the cubes at school so no pictures.

fedex1993

Looking very nice, gosh i wanna build this badly :P

jpz

As do I! You have no idea how much I want to finish this.

Having all these parts lying around is killing me. I'm the kind of person who usually installs and plays with new hardware the day I get it.

lithgroth007

wow this looks great, I can just see this thing being absolutely enormous though. Its going to dwarf my next setup.

jpz

It's actually not going to take up much more space than my existing setup. The new case will be wider than the nzxt nemesis is long, but the nemesis has a rad mounted on the back and the face on the front of the case protrudes quite a bit. BB(BlackBox) will only be two inches taller, and 3 inches deeper than a standard atx case is wide.

So yes, it's not going to be small(internally mounted quad radiator- what did you expect?), but it's nothing compared to some of Syrillian's cases. I weighed all the panels the other night after I cut them and they weigh roughly 30lbs. I still need to make drive bays and shrouds and trays, but that shouldn't add more than a few pounds.

I have done some work since I last posted but I will wait until later to update the thread with details.