--- r e f l e X i o n ---

[Xion X2]

Another idea would be to drill holes in the acrylic on the front if it would match a little better.

Looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

That'd probably be the way I'd go if I decided to vent the PSU out of the front of the case. Perhaps even install a 120mm fan just behind the front panel to help exhaust the PSU and heat off the pumps.

Hay Xion X2 I feel that if you are pulling cool air from the bottom of the case for the bottom rad, then you should also be pulling cool air up from the bottom for the PSU and exhausting out the front, as hot air rises it want be sucked back in from the bottom. You would just need to inclose the PSU in the custom drive cage with only a hole to allow your cables through. That way you could put a chrome ring around the hole like the ones you are going to use for the tubing.

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I like the idea of exhausting out the front more, instead of the bottom. My philosophy in case modding has always been never to exhaust from the bottom of the case as that's where all the cool air sits.

As for the challenge with the custom drive bay. "By the way I should let you know that I know nothing about this case" But I have work with steel fabrication for 20 years.
Do you really need to keep the section that crosses the HHD bay?
Would three locking latches be enough to hold the door on tight?
If so you could remove this section along with the mounting bracket that the standoffs use. Hope you understand this next bit.

If the custom drive cage is say 150mm wide, then cut the support bar down by only125mm. As the support bar is a channel you will need to cut a piece out of the top and bottom edges, just mark where you want the bend to be, e.g. at the 150mm spot that lines up with your custom drive cage.
You will need to give yourself say 1mm more than the 150mm mark for the metal to stretch and give you room to put the custom drive cage in.
After you have cut the edges out and before you bend the support bar you should drill a hole in the support bar, (actually you should drill the hole before you cut anything, this will give the support bar strength and stop it from moving around).
One all cut and before you bend round off edges then bend to 90 degrees with pliers.
Now you can mount the support bar to your custom drive cage and have room to boot.

Hope this all makes sense Xion X2, and keep up the good work.

Thanks for the suggestion.

The problem I see with that is I hadn't planned on the bay cover running the full height of the case. What I mean by that is there will be no mounting support on either the top or bottom like there will be on the drive cage. The bay cover is simply a slide-on piece that will mount to the drive cage with a few screws on the side. Since it wouldn't be physically mounted to the case frame itself, I don't think it'd be a solid structure to mount the support bar to.

In addition, this case has probably the thinnest gauge of aluminum I've seen to date. It's very thin, and I would say that shortening the support bar in addition to mounting it to a piece not held to the actual frame would probably be risky in terms of structural stability. I am going to move both support bars up closer to the roof of the case to try to remove them from plain view like they now. This should keep them from interfering with that top window that will display both the pumps/res and SSD drives.


An update on the side panel and metalwork--

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the estimate today because I have to modify something within the cad file. I should be able to get the estimate either tomorrow or Monday and have the side panel cut some time next week. I'm going to speak with the shop to see if they'll let me document the whole process with photos.

I'm picking up a 4'x10' aluminum sheet from a guy tomorrow morning to cut the bay cover, new mounting frame and drive mounts from. I hope to have some cutting done by the weekend, but it may not be until next weekend. Will just have to see how it goes.

[Xion X2]

Hey guys, just wanted to provide another update.

I have some tools on the way.

This little bugger will help me cut/shape the windows on the bay frame and cover.



It's the RZ20-4500, 5.5 amp. I found it new and for 33% off retail price on ebay:


I also have this on the way to help me do the bending on the bay cover. It's good for 30" wide aluminum (14 gauge) or steel (18 gauge):




Oh, and my side panel also arrived. As you might remember, the original side panel was already cut and had a mesh installed, so I needed a solid panel for the custom waterjet graphic.








To drill the tube routing holes in the custom bay cover, I'll be using these babies to get a nice clean radial cut:




While I'm still waiting on some of the tools to get here, I've finished taking measurements of the radiators to see how much room I have in the roof of the case. I knew from some others that sometimes it can be a tight fit to get a rad in the top of the Cosmos...



It's going to be really tight up there. It doesn't look as if the motherboard will clear with both the radiator and fans mounted inside the case. I have about 3 1/4" of space to work with. The RX240 is 2 3/8" thickness and the thinnest fans I have are about an inch thick. I'll need to get creative to find a workaround.

Thanks for checking in!

[shazza]

Would the Swiftech MCR 220 fit? Performance shouldn't be an issue.

Keep the updates coming - looks like you're not that far away from starting the build.

[kgtiger]

Would love to have a play with one of those Roto zips

[millertime359]

The Swiftech rads fit just fine in the top section and the bottom section.

Can't wait to see that panel.

[W34513]

Oooo! real-life parts! keep em comin

[Mabyboi]

yay! physical parts!

[Xion X2]

Would the Swiftech MCR 220 fit? Performance shouldn't be an issue.

Keep the updates coming - looks like you're not that far away from starting the build.

Nope, not far away. Should get some cutting done this weekend. I've sent the side panel graphic off for an estimate, as well. So before long this project will finally move from renders to life.

Would love to have a play with one of those Roto zips

Yea.. should be fun.

The Swiftech rads fit just fine in the top section and the bottom section.

Can't wait to see that panel.

Yeah, I agree w/ you and Shazza. I think mounting a MCR220 in the top would probably be the easiest solution.

Symmetry is a key theme w/ this build, though, so if I use a MCR220 in the top I may do the same on the bottom. If not, will probably create a radbox for both radiators to keep them looking similar.

Oooo! real-life parts! keep em comin

yay! physical parts!

Yeah, yeah... you guys..

Trust me. No one wants this project to move forward quicker than I. This is, however, my most ambitious build by a mile and so I've had to invest in a few tools along the way to help fulfill my lofty design goals.

I probably could've had everything cut already if I'd let a machine shop do all the work, but I don't want to be the guy that hands his metalwork off to the nearest shop every time. Despite all the pretty renders, I do like to get my own hands dirty and do my own grub work.

Thanks for checking in. More updates and photos tomorrow if I have time. Nothing too sexy right now.. just prepping the side panel for the waterjet and breaking the case down.

[charles_h]

Awesome stuff!

You take your time and enjoy the process - no pressure here - just enthusiasm and support.

Just be careful with that rotozip and be sure to apply cutting fluid while using it... especially with Aluminum.

Looking forward to your next update!

[Xion X2]

Awesome stuff!

You take your time and enjoy the process - no pressure here - just enthusiasm and support.

Just be careful with that rotozip and be sure to apply cutting fluid while using it... especially with Aluminum.

Looking forward to your next update!

Thanks, Charles. I appreciate the kind words of support. It's been difficult not to rush this thing, but I think in the long run it'll be well worth taking the time to make sure it's all done right.

Thanks also for the helpful advice about the cutting fluid. I had seen your infamous warning to shazza about it on her log, but it never hurts to have a reminder.

Obviously, I'm a big fan of your work and especially the most recent project that you did for Daniel. The work I have in mind for the Rotozip came from seeing your success with it in enlarging the Orbital cutouts. I had thought about having them laser cut beforehand, but I think I'm going to try this first along with plenty of filing to see how clean I can get them.

Wish me luck. I may need an entire habitat of zen frogs to make it through.

[charles_h]

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!

[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!

[millertime359]

Yea, that foam stuff could not have been fun to mess with. The Cosmos does look a little intimidating to tear down till you jump into it, then it turns out to be pretty easy.

Looking forward to seeing some cuts made.

[aka_GK]

This foam sticky stuff is really horrible but you've done it nice and clean. Great!

[masska]

oh
brings back memories when I had to rip the sound proofing of my case.
your finish is nice and clean

[josk1]

remins me of the "good all time"... hum hummmm

at least I didnt' have the foamy thingy, but it was hard to get my 1x120 black ice rad at the back of the case because of the closing bar system
'had to cut part of it, and now it's knida ty to open... but ya ain't doin this every day so...

good luck for the rest
(the painter who powder coated the case told me it was a real pain in the ass!)

[Xion X2]

Yea, that foam stuff could not have been fun to mess with. The Cosmos does look a little intimidating to tear down till you jump into it, then it turns out to be pretty easy.

Disassembling a case isn't usually that difficult, but for whatever reason this one was a pain. Even after removing all the screws, there are a lot of small plastic clips that were clamped into the aluminum frame that would only come out with sheer brute force.

I don't usually like the "brute force" approach for things like this because often things break. Everything appears to be ok, though.

This foam sticky stuff is really horrible but you've done it nice and clean. Great!

Thanks, aka_GK! She's nice and shiny now with not a scratch on her. The straight razor worked extremely well for removing the glue residue.

oh
brings back memories when I had to rip the sound proofing of my case.
your finish is nice and clean

Thanks, masska! Yeah, even with the Goo Gone it was a tedious process, but all is good now and she's ready to be sent off to the waterjet.

remins me of the "good all time"... hum hummmm

at least I didnt' have the foamy thingy, but it was hard to get my 1x120 black ice rad at the back of the case because of the closing bar system
'had to cut part of it, and now it's knida ty to open... but ya ain't doin this every day so...

good luck for the rest
(the painter who powder coated the case told me it was a real pain in the ass!)

Yeah, I see that I'm not the only one who hates that cursed support bar.

Like I said, it works well if you don't plan on modding the case. Of course, in our cases we do. I do think that it can be moved closer to the roof of the case and out of plain view which is what I plan on attempting to do.

looks good. really digg the idea with the pump windows. and you should be able to hit some crazy speeds with thoose ssd´s

doesnt max have a soft interpolation funktion like cinema 4D so you wont have thoose hard edges on the logo?
like:
http://tosed.dk/billeder/randompics/bend2.jpg
to
http://tosed.dk/billeder/randompics/bend1.jpg

and just for the fun of your renders, want a precise copy of the ddc pump?
http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...&postcount=500

Thanks, p0pe!

Wow, nice render! I love the look of that pump. I really didn't spend a lot of time working on the base of the MCP350 and would love to have it.

Out of curiosity, what "hard edges" were you referring to with the logo?

[Liderc]

Grats on getting the foam off, I've been there before and what a mess it becomes. I'll have to get myself some Goo-Gone for future jobs. Great job with the worklog, keep it up.

[shazza]

Perhaps not a "pretty" update, but definitely an important one. Great job on removing the soundproofing.

[Armitage]

Looks great That foam peeling makes me cringe. I think everyone has removed something sticky before, that just looks awful.

Progress is amazing, thanks for keeping me interested.

[kgtiger]

Well done. That Goo gone stuff is a real time saver. Looks like all the time and effort was well worth it.

As For buying a Rotozip of ebay from the states. The main challange is that hear in OZ we use 240 volt mains power and I think power tools from the states run on 110 volt.
I would need to also buy a step down voltage converters that was designed specifically for US 110 volt to use it. Just not worth it.
Thanks any way.

Keep up the excellent work and the updates comming

[Xion X2]

Grats on getting the foam off, I've been there before and what a mess it becomes. I'll have to get myself some Goo-Gone for future jobs. Great job with the worklog, keep it up.

Thanks, Liderc. Goo Gone definitely saved the day on this one.

Perhaps not a "pretty" update, but definitely an important one. Great job on removing the soundproofing.

Thanks, Shazza!

on this pic, your logo is made of a large numbers of straight lines. its not that visible beacuse you made so many of them i just tryid to show a way to do it easier without having to dream about max in the night:P
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/5017/vertexcity.jpg

ill pm a link to the model in the morning. late hour here

Yeah. That's a nice tip, but I'm not certain that it would've worked in this case since the graphic is not uniform. The perspective of it changes depending on the distance that it is from view which is why it was created with vertices.

Looks great That foam peeling makes me cringe. I think everyone has removed something sticky before, that just looks awful.

Progress is amazing, thanks for keeping me interested.

Thanks, Armitage!

Well done. That Goo gone stuff is a real time saver. Looks like all the time and effort was well worth it.

As For buying a Rotozip of ebay from the states. The main challange is that hear in OZ we use 240 volt mains power and I think power tools from the states run on 110 volt.
I would need to also buy a step down voltage converters that was designed specifically for US 110 volt to use it. Just not worth it.
Thanks any way.

Keep up the excellent work and the updates comming

Thanks, kgtiger. I hope to have more updates soon.