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[kgtiger]

I take my hat off to you for doing your own fab work.
As a guy that has work with fabrication of steel and ali for over 20+ years I have found that it does take a guy with a good healthy set of “tools” to back himself and just go for it.
As for Charles’s love of fluid, cutting fluid/coolant I mean. He is spot on, it's a must. Even if its just water in a spray bottle, sprayed at the cutting tip every few seconds it will extend the life of your cutting bit and give you a cleaner cut.

Best of luck, back yourself and go hard at it (after you have measured twice)

Keep us posted with lots of pic’s

[Xion X2]

I think it's great you're going to do your own cutting. You might want to consider the jigsaw base attachment like CaptDreadFlint has - the one in your pic is a bit flimsy and hard to hold to a straight edge guide IMO. The other thing is to spend all the time you need setting up good cutting fences/jigs.

Which bit are you planning on using? With the right bit, a rotozip produces an outstandingly clean edge with Aluminum - meaning minimal filing.

What I've discovered is that aluminum is so soft, the cutting friction heats it really fast and it begins to melt instead of cut cleanly. Cutting fluid helps but you need to keep dumping it on like crazy. I know I go on about the fluid but you'll see what I mean.

Just practice on some test pieces and you'll get the hang of it - you'll do great!

I'll look into getting a better attachment. I wonder if just any jig attachment will fit or does it have to be one special made for the RZ?

This is the complete kit that I'm getting which comes w/ the 3 Xbits which looked to me to be much larger than the bit that is attached in the pic. On quick glance they looked more like the bit that you were using to cut the Orbital windows. Did you use one of the standard Xbits or an aftermarket one?

I take my hat off to you for doing your own fab work.
As a guy that has work with fabrication of steel and ali for over 20+ years I have found that it does take a guy with a good healthy set of “tools” to back himself and just go for it.
As for Charles’s love of fluid, cutting fluid/coolant I mean. He is spot on, it's a must. Even if its just water in a spray bottle, sprayed at the cutting tip every few seconds it will extend the life of your cutting bit and give you a cleaner cut.

Best of luck, back yourself and go hard at it (after you have measured twice)

Keep us posted with lots of pic’s

Thanks, man. 20 years.. wow, that's a lot of experience. I may be coming to you or Charles if I have any questions.

And I'll certainly document everything with photos. I spoke w/ the shop yesterday that I'll likely be having the waterjet cut done at and asked if they'd let me document everything with pictures. The person I spoke with is checking w/ the boss.. I think it's a matter of keeping wraps on certain technology that they have. I've been told that supposedly the shop owner built their machines himself and actually developed this technology in the 80s for use on titanium in the Air Force before it became commercialized. I'm hoping that's true as it would mean I'm in good hands.

[kgtiger]

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me, I am more than happy to share knowladge and idears.

On that line of asking questions. Does anyone know where you can buy the rotozip RZ20-4500 in Australia?

I have only looked on line, however without any luck.

[Xion X2]

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me, I am more than happy to share knowladge and idears.

On that line of asking questions. Does anyone know where you can buy the rotozip RZ20-4500 in Australia?

I have only looked on line, however without any luck.

Great to know, thanks.

Have you tried locating an RZ on ebay? Sometimes sellers will ship internationally.

Alright, I have some more updates. None of this is sexy stuff. No power tools or pretty renders. But let's not fool ourselves. Putting together a nice build is not all glitzy and glamorous (or the adrenaline rush that you get from drill presses, jigsaws and rotozips); sometimes it's just good old-fashioned elbow grease that gets a certain job done. And that's what you're going to see here.

I showed a few pictures in the last update of the solid panel that I received from Cooler Master for the waterjet graphic. When I pulled it out of the box, to my great dismay, it had that dreaded foam soundproof material covering most of the panel.



I knew I wanted/needed to remove this to prep it for the waterjet cut as well as removing the square frame which is used to mount the panel to the support rod interior latches that I showed before. In fact, I plan on modifying the panel even further by swapping the frame that was on the stock panel with the frame from the new panel. Why do this? Well, as you can see here, the frame on the stock panel is actually cut into 4 sections whereas the new panel frame is in one piece.



Since I want to relocate those support rods closer to the roof of the case, it would be much easier to simply raise that top portion of the stock frame an inch or two. I couldn't raise the entire frame because then the bottom groove would not line up on the panel.

In this shot here where I'm detaching the new frame, you'll see what I'm talking about. Notice the bottom grooves that are cut to allow the bottom of the panel to mount easily to the case.



If you're keeping a case stock, this is a very trick and seamless mounting solution. Works really well. But if you plan on modding the case extensively, it's a pain in the padded *#^. I've already spent more time than I'd like trying to work around this mounting mechanism, but I digress.



Ugh.. this won't be fun. I had to peel pretty hard to get just that corner up, and it's leaving a lot of residue and padding behind.



I can't tell at this point whether this is beginning to look like a kindergarten fingerpainting or a greasy mechanic's welcome mat. Either way, I've spent about 30 minutes by this point trying to peel this crap off.

There has to be a better way...

And there is. I know the exact tool for the job (just wish it'd hit me 30 minutes earlier..)



Goo Gone. For sticky situations where you'd like to keep:

A) Your fingers in their joints
B) Your fingerprints
C) A few hours left in your day.

And as you can see, it's doing the job much better. The trick was to spray the padding repeatedly at its contact point as you peel the foam away, and as you can see now it's peeling away in one piece and leaving little residue behind to clean up later.



Almost there...





And, it's finally off. That's the good part. The bad part is that there's a lot of glue and residue left behind.

I began looking around for the right tool to remove the glue with, and what better tool for the job than a straight razor.



With this, I'm able to slice right underneath the glue and pull most of it off in sheets.



Halfway there. It's been about an hour and 15 minutes and I can actually see the finish line by this point.

The rest went by fairly quick, and here's the finished product. A nice, shiny aluminum side panel, foam-free and waterjet ready. If you're wondering about the inserts, they're used to hold in place and screw down the mounting frame. I removed the bottom two at the top tonight to make more room for the side panel graphic. Shouldn't pose much of a problem, from what I can tell.



A look at all the glue that I had to remove...



And into the trash that goes.

Some time after that, the case was stripped down and the legs and outer shell were removed.







In the next few days, I'll be drilling out the rivets and prepping it for some cutting. I received notice today that my RotoZip is on its way, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it arrives before the weekend.

Thanks for checking in!

[duckbillclinton]

For certain glue, using a hair dryer or pour boiled/ hot water (if parts are water proof) on it might be the easiest way to remove it without making a scratch. Not sure the type you worked on though, but worth a try.