Case Rebirth: [Complete]Generic Simple Techbench - Overclock.net

K10 · 09-13-09

About a month ago a friend of mine gave me his old Packard Bell case that looked like this after I painted it and riveted it and such.

Day 1: Intro, most cuts done.
Day 2: Sanding partially complete.
Day 3: PSU bracket and rear IO
Day 4: Primer, grinding, sanding, and frame.
Day 5-9: Primer, base coat, assembled

Final pic with sig rig

It looks decent IMO but my room is getting crowded with crappy comp stuff so I decided this case and a few others needed to go. Prior to throwing it away I thought it'd be cool to make a techbench out of it.

I made these rough models in cinema 4d prior to doing what I did today.

K10 · 09-13-09

PAU

I failed. Apparently I measured wrong so my PSU only has 2 screws drilled into it. AND I didn't take optical/hard drive size into consideration so my techbench is too big to accommodate both.

Here's a final pic of it with my sig rig excluding optical drive and video card. I rarely game anymore and I'm gonna be trading my case away so I'll just use IGP until I get my friend's case.

.

K10 · 09-13-09

DAY 1
I then removed the front bezel..and cut myself.

I had a brief outline in mind of what I wanted to do.

Modeling before the deriveting

Decided to use this side panel as the base of the techbench

I should state that I am in college and I still live with my parents. My parents are bakers and our garage is our certified kitchen so I can't really work in there hence me working on pallets. They get the job done though.

Deriveting is done

Short prep

First cut

The excess is removed

Drilled holes for front I/O crap only to realize that there will be none...lol

Camera batteries died so I took pictures of Day 1's work later on.

photonmoo · 09-13-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by K10

DAY 1
I then removed the front bezel..and cut myself.

I had a brief outline in mind of what I wanted to do.

Modeling before the deriveting

Decided to use this side panel as the base of the techbench

I should state that I am in college and I still live with my parents. My parents are bakers and our garage is our certified kitchen so I can't really work in there hence me working on pallets. They get the job done though.

Direviting is done

Short prep

First cut

The excess is removed

Drilled holes for front I/O crap only to realize that there will be none...lol

Camera batteries died so I took pictures of Day 1's work later on.

Looks interesting so far, keep it up

K10 · 09-13-09

Please don't quote a bunch of images next time.

Also, thanks. I'm gonna sand everything down to bare metal and straighten the edges so it will look much better than it does now but probably nowhere near as nice as the plans.

Oh, and I should add that I have little to no experience with the tools I'm using. I've only cut out those holes on that case and one hole on my Storm Scout so this modding is a bit new to me.

K10 · 09-13-09

DAY 2

Pieces ready to be sanded

Paint made my hand all black

Partially sanded

Bare metal

I would've kept going but the rear I/O still needs to be cut and I need to buy new sandpaper.

Dylan · 09-13-09

Looks good. Keep up the good work

K10 · 09-19-09

DAY 3

Here's the rear I/O and expansion stuff. Just needs to be sanded down. I messed up but I can't really fix it without either welding a new piece(not possible for me) or gettign a new rear I/O.

I bought a 12x8 piece of galvanized steel today at Home Depot for 97 cents and made a PSU bracket out of it. I started by taping down a template but I taped it crooked so I just traced the PSU bracket from the original case.

Detached from the full piece

Ground the rough edges a bit

First bend

First bend from another angle

First bend complete

All three bends complete

Straightening the bottom of the techstation with the top part

Some RAM keychains from old RAM for my friends

2 coats of primer on the PSU bracket

That's all for today. Hopefully I'll do some more tomorrow.