Exoframe Mini Project

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Next step: mount the radiator/fan.


First step was to locate my bottom fan, which will be an exhaust pulling air across the radiator.













No holesaws big enough for the 200mm fan, so I cut this with my scrollsaw.












Fan and grill.












Mounting the fan and grill and radiator all took a fair bit of planning, because you have screws to hold the fan to the panel, the fan to the radiator shroud, and radiator shroud to the radiator, and the grill to the panel.

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Next, I located my drain port:












Used a ⅞” unibit:












With a short length of tubing, plus a bulk head adapter, now I’ve got a drain port:











Time for the final fitting:


Fan and grill:










Radiator:












Feet:











Hard drive units:













And mount it!

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Next goal, work on the plastic back panel. This panel is going to need cutouts for the power supply and the motherboard.



Started first by tapping some mounting holes:





Most of my work, I use 6-32 threading. Its a acceptable threading for ⅛” thick materials. M3 is probably a more appropriate size (finer thread), but 6-32 machine screws are cheaper and available in more varieties.






Then I cut the panel (⅛” gray acrylic), and fitted it:












I went to work on mounting the powersupply:









To locate the exact position of the cutout, you can do a lot of fancy and precise measurements, but whenever possible, this is my approach:




I mounted up the panel, but pulled off some strategic portions of the protective coating:











Then I placed my psu where I wanted it, and If you shine a bright light, you can actually locate the mounting screw holes of the power supply. Mark these locations and you actually have the exact location for the cutout.











Placed my psu bezel, with the mounting holes lined up:











Traced the outline:












And cut out my hole:













Mounted it up!

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At this point, I received an awesome gift in the mail!


Top panel arrived courtesy of Delvie’s Plastics (delviesplastics.com). ⅛” gray acrylic, laser cut fan grill. Basically I passed John sketch with some dimensions, and it turned out perfect:












I’ll need to add mounting holes, but it was too tempting to just slap it in place and take some pictures:

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Next I cut my front angled plastic panel.

Cut them with a beveled edge so that they would sit in place properly:





















Located my switch holes:













Always important to test your switches while you still have got easy access:





Left button is Power-on with a white ring for Power.

Middle button is Reset with a blue dot for HDD activity.

Right button is a toggle for lighting effects.







And here is the panel mounted up:











And from the inside:

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Next task I tackled is a bit of a signature of my exoframe design cases. Since the frame is made of tubular aluminum, I’m going to run a lot of my cables within the frame itself.




To get my switch panel cables from the switches to the motherboard, this is my planned route within the tube frame:










Next I started generating the entry holes into the frame.

Here’s the piece right below the switch panel.


Mark my location:












Drilled 2 large holes to remove material:











Squared it off with a nibbler:












Finished the rough edges with some trim:














Also important to file down edges (this is the hole between 2 frame bars).

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Next, I put together my cables.

I needed the following leads: Power switch x2, Reset switch x2, Power LED x2, Lighting switch x2.












Threading the cable thru the tubing is actually pretty easy, as the framing is completely disassembleable. Here I started the run:
















And now I’ve got it pulled mostly thru:













And here it pulled and reassembled.





Actually doesn’t look like much, but that’s the point--that’s 8 leads run across the case.

I’ll come back and finish the sleeving.

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Time to start on lighting.

As I had mentioned previously, I planned on going with UV lighting. I picked up this roll from Amazon for pretty cheap--UV LEDs on a strip:














Every third LED set has a spot where you can cut the strip, exposing + and - terminals.





I’ve soldered on 2 blobs of solder to the exposed terminals on the flexible pcb, and then soldered lead wires to the terminals.












I terminated my leads with a 3 pin fan connector, and heatshrink wrapped the ends.















And here is the functioning strip:














I put together 4 strips:





Each strips has some triangular mounting tabs--this is so the LED strips will sit deep in the hanger brackets, but shine their light out at the proper angle.






A lot of people get lighting in computer cases all wrong--by sticking in lights to shine at the viewer. Most of the time, all this does is blind the viewer. What I want in this situation is to have indirect lighting--I want the very bright UV LEDs to be seen as little as possible--however, I want their light to shine onto my UV fluorescent objects, thus causing them to light up.



And here is a tease of the results:












And a video with this test lighting:



(click to play)

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The wiring of the LEDs is pretty intrinsic to the case, so I’m going to also run the wiring within the frame.




The cables are small enough to run simply thru grommited holes:




























Ran the cables thru the tubing:














Cables all terminate here, where I’m using wire nuts to make my connections. We’ve got 4 pairs of leads from each set of LED strip, leads from the 12v line of the power supply, and leads to the switch panel button.

[n00b 0f l337]

Skip the wire nuts for your own sanity.
You might find it easier to simply strip sections of a wire and solder your connections, then pull over a piece of heatshrink.

Project looks great man

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I may go back and do that once I am 100% sure all my wiring is correct--I have a fear of permanent connections. The nuts do seem to work just fine especially for wrangling 5 connections at a time.




One of the last pieces I needed to fabricate was a face plate for my USB/audio front panel.

I purchased a Lian-Li unit, and planned out my holes:












Hand cut the holes into slots on my scrollsaw:














Mounted it here, front and center for access:












As seen from the inside, the cables run right under the Blu-ray burner, hiding them pretty well.

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This project is gettin’ there! Time for a final pre-assembly. Make sure everything fits and looks good before the final breakdown for finishing details.








Yeah, looks a bit like a cardboard box with all the protective paper still on!








































































Once again, special thanks to my plastics supplier and custom laser-cutting, Delvie’s Plastics.




And, it was finally time to decide on my finishes. After visiting my local aluminum anodizer, Chico Metal Finishers, I narrowed it down to 2 choices:





Orange and Gunmetal.






Well, altho it may not look it in its cardboard box statuts, this case is NOT about subtlety, so, brushed orange anodize was the choice!

[lowfat]

Looks good so far.

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Everything looked good so far, so time to disassemble and prep for final finishes!

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And here are all my unfinished metal parts. The finishes are going to be: anodized orange, anodized black, and powdercoat black.

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Time to get a little rough!


Generated the brushed aluminum look by running my sanding block across the metal bars, first in 180 grit then 220. Its important to run the whole length in one smooth motion.



























Here?s a comparison between unbrushed and brushed:







That was some hard dirty work to get a nice finish.

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And here we were after getting everything back from finish work.

Special thanks to Chico Metal Finishers for the flippin awesome orange and black anodizing.

The creation of the metal corner brackets is documented in this thread, thanks to Mione Solidworks and Norcal Laser for fabricating those, plus kwikky from the raptor pit for professionally welding the units. And thanks to Platinum Powdercoating for the black powdercoat.









Here is closeup of the anodized orange bars. It looks fantastic.















And here are all my parts for this entire computer--system on a table!





Having all this laid out--its like Christmas!










I forgot to mention a crucial previous step during the breakdown period. In order to quickly re-assemble in exact formation, I used my dremel and scribed the inside corners of all the bars. Bar number and corner letter. Let’s me quickly re-assemble each piece in the exact configuraiton.















And here was my assembly table, ready to go, complete with diagram of all the bars and corners.

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I started rebuilding the system.

I went after the bars that had wires running inside them, as it was easier to work the wires piece by piece.

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More reconstruction!

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Next, I tackled finishing off the bottom panel.














Looks a little more special with all the protective paper removed!














Mounted up:




























And taking a moment to paint its fan grill black:

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Mounted these back bars which will support the component trays.
















It’s a little hard to see, but next I mounted the black hangar brackets that will mount all the plastic paneling:


















Next, the powersupply tray:













And finally, the motherboard tray: