Scratch Project: Veritas

[NFC]

THE FOLLOWING EVENTS TOOK PLACE IN A REAL LONG TIME, BETWEEN 01:00 AND 240:000 HOURS, BUT MORE TOWARD 240.




So after Eldritch I swore I would never do another mod again--this coming from trying to get my crazy loop working inside 7 inches of cubic space in a parking garage in Seattle with a pair of chopsticks with 60 hours of sleep for the week and five hours before the BYOC at PAX.

I'm pretty sure there are a few run-on sentences in there...anywho...it wasn't long before the itch crept back on me, and I started sinking into deep planning sessions for my next build. For hours at a time I would slip into my lab, planning, thinking, and mostly playing the SCII beta while generating piece by piece the perfect mod:

SHUT UP, I KNOW ALREADY


Until it hit me--PDX was three weeks away and all I had for plans was part of a napkin with "veritas" scribbled in red ink...or ketchup...but probably red ink:

I can't afford a notebook. Don't judge me.

Since I was this far along, there was absolutely no reason to panic.
Que panic.

I actually own one of these and mash it frequently.

PANIC HAS BEEN QUEUED.

So I got to planning. I spent the first week planning:


NO, not that kind, the REAL kind of planning. I wanted a mini-itx system that wasted no cubic space, looked interesting from all sides, and made people wonder (by looking at the outside) about the orientation. I finally came up with these:







While I could easily spend the next few pages going over the pieces that went into the design, that would be boring, and also I seem to have misplaced the pictures associated with them. Instead I have put together a one-half second time lapse of the process:


one-hal

OK done, wasn't that great?

Moving on. I knew that I was not about to build another system on the floor in my room, so I got to work setting up shop. Literally:











Yes, it happened just like that--all in a few blurry pictures. But seriously I was surprised how quick I threw the bench together--and even more surprised it didn't fall apart, then burn down. In that order.

With the workbench out of the way I was free to begin my craft....

...but I will continue my thread tomorrow... Also lemme know if the pictures are too big, and I will re size them.

[anachlores]

oo goody, another NFC masterpiece

she looks devilishly top heavy though

[Geezer]

Rule #1 of putting together a workshop: Never, never, NEVER let a cactaur near the workbench.

(Looking forward to seeing how this one takes shape ;D)

[NFC]

she looks devilishly top heavy though

Just how I like 'em

Rule #1 of putting together a workshop: Never, never, NEVER let a cactaur near the workbench.

Too late. Anymore rules I can break? Seriously I'm going for a record on this on. =D

Mkay, so where were we. Ah yes, the PSU. So I knew I needed a custom solution for this system--something with enough power for the 9800GT and the 860 but much smaller than a micro PSU. I decided I could hack up micro-atx PSU and do some soldering and call it a day. Boy was I wrong...

See, the first lesson I learned is if your design isn't on paper, then it's going to cost you. Sure, I had some good ideas along the way that weren't planned, but they weren't structural...

Let me guide you on my journey of five PSUs, as I delved into aluminum for my first time, and had to fall on my face and do a few barrel rolls.

First PSU:



I've used these before in the past, and Silverstone started using them last year confirming that they probably don't blow (I will eat these words later, I promise you)

PSU warranties are for sissies.


You can fake a sticker, but this is harder to explain to the RMA department. =)


I bought a 12"x12" sheet of this stuff. It was $35 and I thought it would be enough for a single PSU. Hah.

I should have done this throughout the mod, it would have saved on sanding.

I will use these later in a different part of the case.

Just like preschool!

Wood, not just for bonfires anymore!

Ok so the wood didn't work that great...but maybe drop forged steel...

I wouldn't lick it, just sayin'

...but maybe I would after some filing =D

This is going to be a trend, I can feel it...


Are the pictures too big? I figure most of us are running 1920x1080+ these days.

[NFC]

Doing them in 800x600 from now on...


makin the tabs...

good old fashioned dremeling

sideplate is cut, and I hate it.

going to drill out the tabs for screws anyways...

at least this is awesome

This teaches me I should glue the plate to wood or something before drilling

At least it works...

my choice of firewater

I was planning on using an acrylic base (for electrical resistance) and top that would make contact with the board. Then I was going to light the insides with LEDs, and do a frosted design on the top. I wish this worked out...

Getting the edges sanded down

At first I decided to make my own spacers...

I realized I needed to shorten the heatsink (as soon as I opened the PSU)

FATALITY

Set my air compressor to 200PSI and nuked the cutting particles...almost took off a few capacitors too. ><

As you can see I gave up on my own spacers and used some acrylic cubes I had...

I needed to shorten the posts, which did not happen easily...

[NFC]

I might need to put warning notes before filing pictures...

I read somewhere online this would help the aluminum make a nice neat bend.
]
The internet is full of truth!

Here is one of the sides, all bent in shape.

I was young, and reckless! Also I didn't realize how fine the sandpaper should be for that brushed look! This paper made it waaaay too rough.

So I did the only thing I knew--busted out the wire brush to make it rougher!

meh

MEH

Wasn't about to give up...still needed to cut vents for the air to flow right...

Some more cutting...

Using Harbor Freight hole saw...


After I filed it...

Not so bad, if you like CRAP

[NFC]

I hated that attempt. So it was on to #2:

SECOND PSU:






Preparing for filing, oh, and I should warn you...

Don't say I didn't warn you =D

I made a quick return to this sink, and finished it up.

Then I started filing this perforated piece...

Filing it round....

I wanted this design to fit so perfect that the top would be secure without any screws, so it required...more filing...

The thing I love second to filing, sanding!

The finish turned out rough, but I was confident I could polish it.

Not bad for 200grit =P

Yeah, again, before I discovered that the grit numbers went above 600

I had the right kind of machine screws, just not the right length...

Fan vibration dampeners made for some nice spacers...

Shes's in!

[NFC]

I wanted to mount the board right to the PSU chassis...

So after drilling I tapped it with a 3.5m tap

It's starting to look like something...

I needed to file the hole I cut earlier for the GPU and HDD wires...

I also needed to make a cut for the 24 pin...



Some of Bill Owen's molding...moulding...rubber edge stuff...

Eh

Eh..m..hmmm

It's snug though...

Needs polish...

It is tight enough so screws aren't needed, like the origional plan.

You guys can see the gap:

Plenty of clearance.

AND THEN OCCT FRIED IT. It popped so bad that it left scorch-marks on the aluminum. I was pretty frustrated, but then again that is why I stressed it. I knew I could do better than that attempt anyways...

Attempts 3, 4 and 5 tomorrow night. Sleepy time now. =D

[Geezer]

You might be able to get a small metal bending brake to make the 90 degree angles a little easier. I was looking at one for shaping the back panel for my case that would have been good for making fairly straightforward bends like the ones you were making in the attempts you showed and it was about $30. (This guy. )

For light duty work if you're doing enough mods/full case designs involving aluminum or mild steel, it may be worth looking into. (For more complicated stuff you could look into something like this, but it's a bit spendy for occasional modding.)

[anachlores]

sounds lieka n ordeal. I want to see what happens next to PSU 3 ^_^

[NFC]

You might be able to get a small metal bending brake to make the 90 degree angles a little easier...

Thanks for the links Oh how I wish I bought one of those before this project, but I was foolish and ended up making my own (after all the sheet metal bending was done ) because I couldn't bear the thought of ever working with aluminum again--even if I was doomed to.

sounds lieka n ordeal. I want to see what happens next to PSU 3 ^_^

Then I shall continue!

(and when are you going to finish your project?--I'm excited to see how it turns out! )

PSU THREE:


Since I destroyed the other PSU spectacularly with a pop that I heard through three walls, it was time for another--the Diablo 380!:

Specs:

Yummy, another PSU's warranty gone:

Whoa, a removable fan pin! Classy!

This interior will make it difficult to route wires, luckily the heatsinks are facing the right direction (sarcasm):

I like the color of this female end better, so I'll use it:

I decided it would be easiest to use a jigsaw to cut the shape out, so I drilled a hole for the blade:

I ruined the piece with the jigsaw, so I busted out the rotozip instead:

hehe, easy as cutting out a shape with a Rotozip:

Everyone's favorite part, filing:

This is looking hopeless...

I had an idea on how to cheat and get out of filing:

Whoa, being lazy paid off:

done filing: (I love saying those two words together )

Making marks for round 2 of cuts--by the way, for future reference, this should have been done AFTER the bending!!!:

Piece subtracted:

Ok, so I am missing about a gig of pictures on this project. My camera has been sleeping around with various hard drives, but I cant find a certain folder anywhere. This makes me a sad face, because some of the really cool parts of this project (a whiles away yet) are missing. I'm wondering if they are buried on my sim card somewhere and if I should use recovery software to find them...

Don't get me wrong, I still have many, many pictures of me filing things to make up a decent worklog. =) I'll just have to narrate where some work occured and hand you a picture of the finished project, and an Ice Cream Cone*.

Ok so here is what it looked like all filed and sanded:

These pictures speak for themselves, I don't know what they say, but here they are:



Ok, go go gadget bender:




Theeennnnn I ruined it. I made a bad bend and hammering it out resulted in marking the piece bad and I couldn't sand them out. I decided, conveniently, that I hated the design and I could do better. Notice a trend?

=P


*You will not get an actual Ice Cream Cone. Sorry.

[NFC]

PSU 4


This is one of the sections I am missing pictures of. Luckily, it just looked like failure (if interested in seeing what failure looks like, please scroll up).

[anachlores]

Holy cow, 4 down.... We need to write a song!

As for my project, it's almost done actually. I have been a bit lazy with the pictures but within the next few weeks, the case will be done. I'm not sure how long the actual transfer of components will take though. I'm going on vacation next week so it cuts into work time T_T

[NFC]

PSU 5


Whoot! I stayed with this design because I was running out of time and was sick of rebuilding PSUs. Although not as neat as I wanted, installed in the case it looked great. Anywho.


These are the 3.5m anodized screws I used in this PSU attempt, and throughout the case:

I was sick of thin aluminum, so I grabbed a chunk of 5mm thick stuff and made a base:

There was a bunch of filing to do, so I did it:



Whoot, flush pieces, that almost never happens:


I drilled the edges for the pins I was going to use to connect them:

In with the pins, just like voodoo...oh snap now I have David Bowie stuck in my head. =(

WILL IT FIT? OH THE SUSPENSE:




I didn't have the right bit for this job, so it took some work:

This hole, btw, was for the cables which are routed on the sides:

Seriously, you have to glue thin material down to wood to cut it right with the jigsaw. Unfortunately I did not have wood, so I used a combination of pure ivory and sea-turtle shells (not pictured):

eah, I used the rotozip in the end. =P



Using the dremel to make a notch for the bend:

Closeup of the rounded edge, to aid in the bend:

I almost broke my drill press cutting these holes with cheap hole-saw pieces from Harbor Freight. As I would learn later, do not skimp on good cutting bits. =(

Filefilefilefilefile

All the pieces to cut!

I had pictures of the painful wet-sanding process, but they are gone. BTW, I jumped from 600 to 1000 grit paper, and as such it shows (looks bad). I couldn't find 800 or 900 around town, so in the future I have to order some online. For later pieces I had 800 and 900 and I was able to achieve a mirror finish on parts.


Oops, I missed an edge...back to the 200grit:

There we go:




I decided it would be clever to use a straight-edge to assist with the bend for this material, as I shaved off quite a bit in the sanding process:

Applying heat, cause it looks awesome:

I wanted the edges to be PERFECT, thus, the filing:

And it fits great:

Let's glue!

I needed to drill and tap the front panel for the screws:

Here it is before I got the angle sorted out:

WHOOT! Something that doesn't suck. Now it is time to sleeve!


BTW, in case you guys were wondering, I drilled multiple holes to make the cables look spread out--and I used black and pink for the different holes to give it a cool look as the randomness went into a pattern.

[NFC]

So the sleeving process was pretty complicated as the wires had to be routed and in some case re-soldered back in place, and the heatsinks had to be cut and drilled so the wires would work. All the wires were custom cut to length, and measured so that when they made the bend, it looked like a neat loop.

You can't see this in the picture, but stick around for the end and you will see the effect:


The non-sleeved wires got sleeved eventually--and power wired for the female AC plug were routed under the motherboard.

Here is a screenshot of it on my "test bench" ...lol



I want to thank Nil for his amazing sleeving and even more awesome tool! I had been using the Frozen CPU tool in the past, and while that tool was very good compared to the others out there, Nil's blows it away. The secret is in the filed tips which let you slide it right in--no hassle. Thanks Nil!

[anachlores]

WE WANT MORE!!!!!!!

and did you put a acrylic cover over the metal of the PSU? I cant tell if it is acrylic or the bare metal with the lighting in that picture. But I love the etc/design. Excellent work, as usual.

[NFC]

Sorry to take so long, I didn't think anyone was really interested because this is a really BORING worklog. If I continue it I really have to speed things up.

Also, Sapphire asked me to do a build for quakecon, so I was working overtime to get them a rig--now that Quakecon is over I can get back to posting here if you would like. =)

As for the PSU, I take really terrible pictures cause I have a 100 dollar camera and no skills. It is just bare polished aluminum and I used cabinet laminate for the angel:




What I did is I made a stencil and used an Xacto knife to cut out the angel, then I stuck the angel on the PSU. =)

I am missing ALOT of pictures from this worklog, which is really frustrating me....

[anachlores]

Well, even if it is just contact paper, it still looks awesome in that lighting.

keep up the god work and keep posting in this "boring" worklog.

[NFC]

MKAY

So like a hundred pictures later, and all we have is a power supply.
BORING. I wasn't really going to do a worklog for this case as I have some more interesting PCs, but I thought I would have time. W/E I'm pretty deep into this one now, so I will go fast and try to finish it in a few posts. =)

Anywho...

Here we go again:

[NFC]

I had intended from the start to use those cool, anodized, purple, screws (ADJECTIVESPLOSION). With this intent I decided to bend my own L brackets using a clamp and drill press:



Then, after what seemed like hours (because it was), I managed to finish with the top plate the radiator would bolt to using a drill press, jig saw, roto-zip, and dremel. Please thank me for sparing you with about a hundred pages of filing :



After attaching two planes together with the screws It became apparent this would be nowhere near sturdy enough to survive the final sanding and polishing I intended to do:



So I switched to rivets, which worked amazingly well. To get the holes lined up to attach the L angle aluminum I used a jig consisting of two $16 dollar drill press vices I found at the Home Depot. This ended up being about $40 dollars less than the pre-made solution Sears tried to sell me, and far more versatile:



The back aluminum plate would screw in no problem to the acrylic after I tapped it, so I wasn't worried about that. The screws would not hold the L angle though, so again, I had to use rivets. The trick here was countersinking the acrylic so I could mount the aluminum back panel flush with it.

First I glued it down with superglue, then clamped it:



Then I drilled out the screw taps, and countersunk the holes for the rivets:



Here is what they looked like on the backside:



On the inner side:



Next it was time to make the HDD bracket. I needed something that could hold both the SSDs I was using in a very small space. I have pictures of the prototype I made for this, but not the final version that had cleaner edges (except in the final photoshoot). Keep this in mind for the next couple shots.

First I had to measure the aluminum (EXCITING!):



Then I used my Seagate "paperweight" as a stencil =P:

[Geezer]

How do you find riveting things to acrylic? I read somewhere that it was a no-no because the pressure on the acrylic would cause it to crack/craze, but obviously your results seem to be the exception to the rule. And are you using cast acrylic or extruded?

[NFC]

Cast--I am pretty sure extruded would explode

Yeah, it was an experiment for me. I tested it out on a few pieces and even the 1/16th didn't crack (though I would NOT anything that thin for structural).

With the 4.7mill thick stuff I used, it worked fantastic and would have no problems recommending it for structural applications.

One word of caution, do NOT use steel rivets--use aluminum.

[dualbrain]

Beautiful action documentary

[NFC]

Beautiful action documentary

Why thank you, Nils!

This one is nowhere near MDPC quality, but it was unique as y'all should see here coming up. My next build (already done) is closer toward your standards =)


Now for the next ACTION PACKED sequence:

Shiny plate with bend scoring:


All da markings:


Various cuts and holes made:


First bends--again, this piece I ended up throwing away--the piece I ended up keeping was similar in design, just executed better :



Here is the test drive, fitted in the first attempt:




Mkay that was boring, but more interesting stuff to come in my next post, which I will work on later...

[NFC]

Lovely.

So I am using a friends PC for the weekend, and all he has installed is IE...which logged me out of XS for some weird "security" reason after I clicked my submit post. No biggie, except I had spent an hour working on it as it was the biggest update so far =P I learned my lesson and am using Notepad for the weekend!

I'm not going to spend alot of time redoing this tonight so I'll just talk about one picture, so you guys can LOOK at the picture, and not read anything I type. =)



So there was about a hundred pictures to get to this point. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and a thousand times a hundred is probably a billion (I don't understand maths) that means I have alot of words to type. So here goes...

First I had to come up with a design/pattern for the interlocking parts. I did this in photoshop rather quickly. Then I needed to cut the pieces out, so I began to sort through the huge pile of scrap I aquired over the past week due to my poor measurments or lack of talent in cutting. When I had taken inventory, I used the jigsaw and alot of clamps to cut out the rough shapes. Then I did something so stupid that I just have to encourage you all to do...wait...no, the other thing...BEG YOU NOT TO TRY. I removed the shield and fence from my table saw, and using my delicious fingers, guided the pieces and trimmed them just right. I can't stress enough how stupid this is, I only attempted it because I am an angel cyborg with regenerative properties, and I have too many fingers in the first place. Also an extra arm.

After the pieces were cutout I drilled, countersunk, and tapped the holes for the screws, and did so ALL the way through to the acrylic so they would line up correctly. I used clamps to secure the pieces while I did this.

Then after two days of sanding they were shiny.

The hardest part was attaching the side panel to the chassis. I did this just like the last version of the power supply--with pins. I measured very carefully, and by the grace of God the holes ended up matching somehow--then I glued pins on the chassis side, and drilled four more holes for tiny magnets. This way the side panel can be removed and put into place and stay there using the power of magents, which is like any other super power only less awesome.

After I was done with the side panel I am pretty sure I had a beer. Not sure if that is relevant.

More tomorrow. Probably. =)