contruir caja metrakilator

8/8/2019 contruir caja metrakilator

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David meets Goliath

When a company like Intel approaches you and asks you to make them a cool PC for

the launch of their latest CPU, what do you say? Well duh! YES, of course.

That is exactly what happened here and so project "3GClear" was conceived. Theproject was a team effort. The case was designed by our very own MrHazwho alsopurloined the system components. The Case materials were cut and edged in America

by Linear, VFD graphics coded by Cheese and the machining and assembly done bymyself and MrHaz.

The case was to be made from Acrylic and be in two sections. A dark smoked bottom

half housing the PSU and drives and a clear top section to show off the motherboardand 3GHz CPU. The idea being to showcase the new Intel processor at its World

launch.

The project was beset with one major problem, that of time. We had one month toproduce the goods. The first week was spent on the concept and basic case design. The

next few weeks were spent waiting impatiently for the case materials to arrive. I ended

up receiving the parts on the Wednesday night prior to the case being shipped to Intel

the following Monday morning. This gave me the grand total of four days in which to

finalise the design, cut the holes, assemble, iron out any design problems and produce

the "modding extras" to make the case sparkle. (Actually 1 evening and 3 days). I

should also mention that since the Acrylic was being shipped to the UK from Americaand we only had enough for one shot, one mistake and we were stuffed! Hmm, I love a

challenge!

The photo record of this project is a little thin in parts, due to the pressure we wereunder to get the case finished in time. (Don't forget we had to install XP and test the

system as well!). So any questions you may have can be answered here in the forum.

And here it is...

System specs:

CPU - Intel P4 3.06GHz

Motherboard - Intel 850MVE

Ram - 512MB 1066RDRAMGraphics - GF4 4600Ti XP GS

HDD - 60Gig Seagate Barracuda

DVD - Pioneer 16X 106s

PSU - Hiper SF-350TS

Display - VK204-25 VFD


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But let us start at the beginning. This is how it looked at the onset. A set of cut and

edged pieces of 1/4" thick Acrylic sheet covered in thick protective paper. The secondpicture shows what we were aiming for.


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The first thing to do was sort out the drive mounting. I used a cage from an old disused

case. Before starting, I sprayed the DVDs beige facia with black vinyl dye so it would

blend in behind the smoked Acrylic. Because the DVD drive used was a slot loader,

marking the slot position on the front of the case posed a problem. You see the bottomsection of the case which housed the drives was smoked, not to mention covered in

protective paper which I did not want to remove until absolutely necessary, so cutting

the slot in the Acrylic in exactly the right position was not easy. I had to devise a way to

mark its position on the case.

To do that I stuck a piece of clear sticky tape over the DVD disc slot with the sticky side

facing outwards. The clear tape was held in place on the drive with low tack masking

tape.


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Here is a close up of the clear tape with the sticky side facing away from the drive. A

marker pen was used to mark the clear tape, (on the sticky side remember), along the

centre line of the DVD slot at each end.


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The drive was then offered up to the case front and positioned exactly. Pushing the

drive so the sticky tape made contact with the paper covered Acrylic made it stick in

place. Allowing me to peel the masking tape away from the drive and leaving the clear

tape stuck to the paper with the slot centres marked in place. Neat eh?


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It was then an easy task to set up the router to cut out the slot. Because I had marked the

tape at the ends of the drive slot, it was just a matter of routing from one dot to the next.

The router was also used to bevel the edge of the slot which was finally polished to give

a professional finish. A brief word about routing the Acrylic would be in order here.Routers by their nature are high speed cutting tools. High cutting speed = heat = bad for

Acrylic, (it melts or fractures). Routing on a lower speed to reduce the heat generated

results in rough cut edges. To get around the heat problem we used water, sprayed on

the Acrylic. This worked a treat!

WARNING: Water and power tools do not mix! The mains supply used was

protected with earth leakage protection and the water was not applied with the tool

running. Spray water, make a cut, spray more water.


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A clear 10mm LED and its chrome holder was used as the eject button. Fitting was

simply a case of marking out the Acrylic panel, drilling the hole, screwing in the holder,

(after cutting the threaded part to the right length), and pushing in the LED from behind.

The LED legs were obviously cut off flush first. MrHaz liked the tactile feel of theswitch so much I had to tell him to stop pressing it!


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After marking out, the router was again used to cut out the hole for the PSU and a hole

saw used for an 80mm cooling fan cut out. The fan cut out had its edges bevelled round

to reduce air noise. (In fact all the fan cut outs on this case were given the same

treatment). With all the holes the pieces making up the bottom section were gluedtogether using IPS Weld-on #4 adhesive. The pieces were gently clamped and then left

overnight to allow the adhesive to fully cure. At this stage the cut outs in the clear top

section were also done with the router, as was the dividing panel between the case top

and bottom sections. You can see the partly finished divider below being used as a

spacer for the sides being glued.


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Hard drivin'

One thing which may not be obvious from reading an article like this is the fact that

building a case from scratch involves a lot of part assembly, test fitting, measuring, and

disassembly. In other words it is not a simple 1, 2, 3... procedure. With that in mind,let's go back to the drive holder. Because of it's intended position and the design of the

case, it would be impossible to fit the drives properly. Why? Well since the drive cage

was to be suspended from the section dividing plate, once the holder had been screwed

into position, access to the screws holding the drives in place would not be possible.Fitting the drives into the holder first would prevent it from being mounted in the case.

Again, some thought was needed. There was no time to make radical changes to the

case design.

I decided that using threaded mounting holes was the answer. First four 3mm holes

were drilled in the top of the holder and corresponding 3.5mm holes in the top plate of

the bottom case section.


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After cleaning the metal around the holes, 3mm nuts were held in place with screws

whilst they were soldered to the inside of the drive holder to form threaded holes.


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Here is the bottom section top plate glues in place after all the required holes/slots had

been drilled/routed. Now it was a simple matter of assembling the drives in the holder

and then attaching it in the case with 3mm screws.


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Here you can see the drive holder in place. The screws are black anodised to blend in

with the dark Acrylic. The small white holes you can see in the divider plate are

threaded to accept the motherboard mounting screws later. The second picture shows

the drives from underneath. You will notice the top section of the case has been glued inplace since this picture was taken during final assembly.


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Going around in circles

Let's take a step back in time...

As already said, being pushed for time some stages of construction were not

photographed. Here is the top section cut, assembled and fixed in place. The cut outs forthe cooling fans, VGA card and motherboard I/O panel were done with the router. Darn

handy tool that router!

Here final assembly has begun. The drives and PSU are fitted in place.


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All the cables were passed through the section dividing plate before fitting the

motherboard. The motherboard was mounted on nylon spacers and screwed intothreaded holes on the section divider. I had originally intended to use the standard

motherboard brass stand-offs but unfortunately I did not have a suitable tap to thread the

holes and time was of the essence so black anodised 3mm screws were used instead.

This proved to be a pain to keep the spacers in place when trying to fit the motherboard.

So MrHaz suggested we keep the spacers in place with Blu-tack. What a team!


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Some jiggery pokery and lots of cursing later, the motherboard was firmly in place. It

pays to make sure all your drilling is accurate. Fortunately ours was perfect!

Say hello to the "Intel Pentium 4 Processor 3.06GHz with Intel Hyper-ThreadingTechnology" it is about to disappear under the HSF!


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Assembly was starting to take shape. Hmmm, those Titan silver fans with Gold grills, I

do like those.

Here is a close up of how the graphics card was secured in place. The top of its PCIplate was bent straight so it could be fastened to the case back with a bolt. The rectangle

of 3mm Acrylic was glued in place to take up the slack space and give added strength to

the mounting.


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Flipping the case over we see,...the under side! The red arrows indicate 3mm threaded

holes, (the Acrylic is only about 5.5mm thick!). The base will be retained with screws

using these holes. Four similar holes, (the four side ones), were repeated on the top side

to retain the case lid.

Time to tidy up the wiring and...


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...fit the Matrix Orbital VFD. The display was bolted into threaded holes in small

Acrylic blocks glued inside the case front. The blocks were made up from various

thickness layers of Acrylic to be the correct height.

Notice the rubber "foot" stuck to the bottom of the PSU. That is to help relieve some of

the weight off the Acrylic rear plate. (This case is to shipped all around the World for

shows and we don't want the case cracking). Incidentally, the cooling fan is an Antec

Trilight.


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Modding the mods

At this stage of construction it was time to have some fun. Enter the HDD and powerlight. This is a modified version of my "Knight Rider" HDD activity meter. The

modifications mainly consisted of redesigning the PCB to accept 5mm LEDs and

removing any surplus tracks.

The LED leads were left long and bent as shown. You will soon see why.


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The LEDs were also ground flat. The LED diameter is 6mm at its widest and they have

to sit in 5.5mm thick Acrylic! As you can see this a BiT-Tech design through and

through.


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A slot to take the LEDs was routed into the case base panel. Initially it was intended

that the acrylic, which is smoked, would be diffused to give a "light bar" effect.

Unfortunately, due to the optical characteristics of the smoked Acrylic, the effect was

rather poor. So we decided to make our own diffuser from green tinted Acrylic. I had athin strip left over from a previous project. The strip was routed into shape and the

diffused using 400 grade wet and dry paper. The LED slot was routed to size and shape

to allow the diffuser strip to be fixed in place.


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To give some idea of the accuracy of cutting involved, the picture below shows how

little of the Acrylic thickness of the base plate was left after routing. Less than 0.5mm.

Half of the thickness in the picture is made up from the protective paper on the Acrylic.

The diffuser fitted perfectly flush and was glued in to place.


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Excitement mounts

Here is the circuit board fitted to the base plate. It is held in place using self adhesivenylon stand-offs. The LEDs are sunk in to the slot behind the diffuser strip and covered

with black felt to prevent light leakage. The wires coming off the board sides go to the

lighted feet...


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The feet were made using the left over centres from the 80mm case fan cut-outs. We

had two clear ones for the front feet which would be lighted and two smoked ones forthe rear feet which would not be lit. The discs were marked and four 5mm holes to

accept LEDs were drilled. The disc edges were then diffused with wet and dry paper

and then sprayed with window frosting to increase the diffusion.


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The discs were glued to the base plate which had also been drilled to take the LEDs.

The LEDs were pushed into the holes and wired up. Power was supplied from the HDD

meter circuit board.

FYI. The LEDs were rated Vf = 4.1V and If = 30mA. They were wired in series pairs.

Each pair with a 150 Ohm current limiting resistor. A total of 8 LEDs were used in the

feet.

A final touch to the feet was to stick a disc of silver foil underneath them to reflect theLED light out. The foil was covered in black felt to make the feet none scratching. Even

against the clock we are still very thorough!


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With the lighting finished it was time to finish the assembly and remove all the

remaining protective paper. Once MrHaz and I had stopped dancing around the room in

glee Windows XP was installed and the system tested. Phew it all worked a treat!


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Because this project was going to be on public display, it was decided to place the

power switch on the rear panel, away from mischievous button pressers.


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When a plan comes together...

With construction and testing over it was now time for the finishing touches. The casewas polished with Novus #1 plastic polish. (Which is amazing stuff). We had had some

custom etches made for us by Shattered Web which we now fitted.


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The chrome BiT-Tech logo looks spectacular but you can't tell that from the picture.

The lid gets the "Intel inside" treatment.


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So there you have it. A custom case for Intels new CPU launch from BiT-Tech. All that

remains is to show a few pics of the beast doing its thang!

The HDD meter was set up so the centre LEDs were always lit. This acted as power onlight and complimented the lit feet. During HDD activity bars of red light move out

from the blue light. Looks pretty good when you see it in action.


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I had planned on fitting quite a number of other cool and unique mods to this case but

due to the limited time available and the fact any design issues had to be sorted "on the

fly", they had to be left out. They will however, appear in future projects so stay tuned.

This has been a somewhat unusual project given the circumstances but it has been great

fun and rewarding and I would like to thank everyone involved.

MrHaz for making the whole thing possible, gaining the sponsorship, his relentless

enthusiasm and for putting up with a stressed macroman.

Linear for supplying the Cut and edged Acrylic, adhesive and Novus polish. Not

forgetting his priceless and time saving advice expertise on working with Acrylic.

Cheese for the very cool VFD graphics.

All the BiT-Tech team for their support and confidence.

Mrs macro and our 3 micros for enduring 4 days of modding mayhem and carnage.

Thanks also to all our sponsors involved.


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Intel - CPU, motherboard and RAM.

Gainward UK- GF4 4600Ti 750 XP Golden Sample.

The Overclocking Store - DVD, HDD.

Kustom PCs - Fans, cables.

Matrix Orbital - VFD.

Shattered Web - Custom etches.

Comments and questions answered HERE.

Happy moddin'

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