Zds Project Log

Instead of advancing with leaps and bounds I have delved deeper and deeper into pondering different details in the project. I have also been working almost all time when awake, so not much got done. Three deadlines in two weeks is too much.

Anyway, here is the most successful design this far realized in plastic:

And here some rubber foam between acrylic supports to give mobo smoother ride:

And foamcore piece acting as MB:

On another front, I started covering the lower shroud. I will put two to three bitumen sheets on the bottom and then softer material on top of it. Here is first piece in place:

My aim is to level the shroud by adding layers of bitumen (as there is the acrylic top and then some structural flaps on the bottom) and also use it to start giving some curvature to the body.

Now that I have acceptable mobo tray coming, I needed rails that would fit it perfectly. However good the tray is, it’s of no use if it doesn’t sit nicely on the rails.

So, after lot of planning I decided to scrap the idea of gluing pieces together and instead went for U-shaped pieces between the rails and made it damn sure there U-pieces are exactly the right size.

I started with the most crucial and the most difficult ones, the middle rail spacers. I measured distance between the straightest edges of the tray grooves to be at 29mm distance, so as rails are 3mm thick I needed 26mm of spacing.

Since rails being exactly parallel is yet more crucial than having right spacing, I made a “mold” by clamping to pieces of plank to the table and going through with cardboard guide of exactly 26mm to make sure they had the right spacing all the way. To further ensure parallelism I did both U pieces from one piece and will cut it to two separate spacers only after it has been bent to right shape.

Here is the starting point: planks, cardboard measurement tool and piece of acrylic with bending points marked:

Since it’s pretty hard to get so tight 180 degree bends, I started first just making a U bend approximately the correct size:

And then proceeded to force it between the planks:

As you can see, the original U bend was a bit too wide and now the borders bend inwards:

But a little more firm and determined guiding will teach it how to behave:

Fine-tuning the last fractions of millimeter by adding enough newspaper there to make it bend back enough and then adding some heat:

Final measurements. Pretty close to the 26mm I aimed at, huh? :-]

Being properly armed I decided to throw away my old mobo tray lower layer and start all over again. After all, I am not doing modding to produce results that do not please myself, even if they are not visible. So here we go.

My first idea was to use my new toy, Dremel circle and groove cutting tool:

It was too rough to the acrylic. Back to the traditional methods - cutting disc and files:

Pretty nicely aligned around the center support line, don’t you think:

Still lots of finishing to do, but at least I haven’t screwed it up yet.

My dremel-clone suddenly ceased to work on late Saturday, so I gave myself an early x-mas present and bought a real Dremel:

Oh the power..

Since I needed some practise before going into embedding mobo nuts into mobo tray, I tried one idea I have had in mind for a while.

It’s nothing too fancy - I just need a look to the screws that fits the overall theme. One option is to cover the bolt heads with acrylic. This way:

I first drilled holes that were a bit too small and then played around with heatgun.

The lower layer is very tightly in place, I could actually screw the bolt by turning the acrylic. Upper layer is a tight fit, too, pretty naturally since hex-head has better grip.

In real use the acrylic of course would have some fancy shape and color, but this was just to test heat-combining bolt and acrylic.

Here are the rest of the images from last night.

I first rounded tray corners with modsquad method. To stay true to the modding god, I naturally chose the coin that matches 25 dollar cents in value, 20 euro cents:

And then proceeded to bevel the edges to better sit on the rails:

And then the oops moment:

I had cut the holes into wrong side. Shit.

At this point I was about to throw the miscut piece out of the window but then I figured that I could still use it - just align the sheet by the cuts and make new holes for the mobo mounting screws. This way the stiffness of the tray is not compromised, I will just have 9 extra holes there. I think I will figure out some way to mask them, but even if I didn’t, it’s just 9 holes *in the backside of the MB tray*. No one, except me, will ever see it.

So here it is flipped over and filed to match the rails:

And the ugly rail support isn’t *so* ugly now that I have slept a long night. It will stay there for now, until I can decide how to replace it:

I am beginning to think that my acrylic glue is not the best possible stuff. Some of the seams I glued earlier this week broke apart yesterday - not good. This means I will maybe go for plan B, using bent acrylic and screws to support the corners.

The alumium L-profile and screws would offer superior straightness and durability, but it wouldn’t fit my vision..

Quick update on mobo rail supports / mobo fasteners:

So lots of bending, miniscular parts to work with, only a single straight angle in the plan and bad-looking result. Oh well. Maybe I can still use it, if all else fails, I can always paint it black :-].

On another front, I drilled, threaded and screwed lower shroud parts together:

I used combination of self-made threading tool and “method Hal” to thread the acrylic:

Here is the inner side with screwcaps visible:

And the front side once installed:

I used M5×10 screws and as you maybe can see, the two 3mm sheets leave still 4mm of the screws visible. But no worries! I will add third 3mm layer there to attach mobo tray to the same screws, and in addition to that, the screws are placed in such a way that they are hidden both by sound insulation and mobo tray.

In addition to getting worse-than-hoped-for results for mobo rail stand I also almost destroyed the bottom layer of my mobo tray today but I think I have a recovery plan. Not exactly the best day of this mod.. Images of mobo tray progress will be posted once I’ve got some sleep.

As I broke already all the cutting wheels that came with my Dremel clone, I had to get new ones. Unfortunately the spare parts for it are hard to find, but fortunately Dremel tools, altough overprized, are easily available. Thus I bought 36 Dremel cut-off wheels and four sanding rolls.

Unluckily the cutting wheels didn’t fit the wheel bit that came with my tool, so I went and bought Dremel diamond cutting wheel, which came with proper wheel bit:

The bonus is of course that now I have also the diamond cutting wheel :-]. I am sure I can find some good use to it.

This one I have had for some time already, and now it’s finally used:

What is it for? Might it make more sense when cut to size (it’s *very* tough stuff to cut, I tell you):

So, it will be mobo standoffs. I browsed through Biltema to find something pipelike that would have some amount of softness, but would be rigid enough not to give in too much, and this is what I came out with. It’s maybe the hardest type of rubber I have come by and in addition to that it’s reinforced with glass fiber, or something similar. Works like a charm.

Next thing on my todo list is to get mobo rails fastened to lower compartment cover and add the pieces that will press upper edge of the mobo tray to mobo rails once it’s in place.

I resolve both these issues with same pieces of acrylic. The third function for them is to fill the gap between the bent lower compartment top cover and mobo rails you can see here:

Here is the plan for the next stage and some of the plans actually transferred to a piece of acrylic:

To get sharp corners, I cut two pieces from L-shaped alumium profile I had lying around from some long since abandoned modding project:

I found the hacksaw with brand new blade be very effective on this one. Diamond wheel would have done the job, but with a lot more noise and time. Thus I first cut a starting point for the hacksaw to prevent it from sliding alongst the edge of the metal and finished it off with hacksaw.

This is it for now, now back to actual bending :-).

The idea is that mobo tray sits on vertical rails. Chassis has protruding rails and and tray has channels that fit the rails. This way motherboard tray has even and sturdy support under MB stands and mobo tray can be easily sled out.

First I checked that all the parts fit the 1:1 blueprint within reasonable margin:

Then I proceeded to cut, file and sand the supporting pieces and cutouts:

When exact measures of the rails were known, it was time to cut fitting pieces of acoustic dampering material:

After some iterations of cutting it’s an excellent fit. I cut the rubber layer a bit smaller than foam layers, since I want the foam leave no direct soundpath there. Here is center and leftmost parts of the tray glued and sound-dampened:

And the rightmost part assembled:

And dampened:

The rubber layer in the 28mm acoustic dampening material is really dense and heavy. Even at this state the MB tray rails weight a lot and the weight is almost completely due to the thick rubber layer - the acrylic and foam weight almost nothing at all.

This evening it was time to release the upper compartment top cover from the clamps and see how my methodology worked: not bad, not bad at all. I have some small unevenness due to careless use of the heatgun and then a small depression made by clamp that was attached too soon after heating, but otherwise it’s perfect.

I do not know it the PVC film underneath helped, but at least the supports didn’t leave any marks to acrylic while there are visible marks in PVC.

Here is shot in incadescent light:

The bend is actually cleaner than it looks there, as you can see here:

And then some shots with red led lighting. The cheapest way to get bright red leds with resistors preinstalled for 12V: cheap led-based car brake light.

The images are bad, sorry, but I didn’t have tripod handy and this is a very challenging subject for the compact camera:

The lighting actually looks better in real life, and the plexiglass also looks more vivid. The light is playing nicely in the bend acrylic. I can’t wait to see how it looks once I have the top fan installment in place :-).

In order to attach the mobo tray, I will have to have the top of the upper compartment in place since tray will be attached to it. So, I disassembled the cardboard model and prepared to replicate it in acrylic.

As shown in cardboard model, the cover of the top of the upper compartment is slightly curved and fills the missing piece of the compartment. To the exactly the same curve I had in cardboard model, I traced the shape from cardboard pieces to pieces of foamcore sheet. Here I have taped all four pieces together to ensure the similarity:

Then I proceeded to press the guides between pieces of plank:

And to prevent foamcore pieces from making ugly marks to the acrylic sheet, I cut piece of about the same size from 1mm PVC film and clamped it between acrylic and the guides:

Since heating and bending requires as many hands as you possibly have and is pretty time-sensitive task, there is no pics about it. I used side panel of some ole PC chassis to apply equal pressure to acrylic and bent it bit by bit to the correct shape.

After bending I attached clamps to put some weight on the acrylic to prevent it from bending back while cooling:

And as this close-up shows, the end result is very good. The few anomalies you see are the PVC sheet underneath - the acrylic is close to perfect.

Mobo tray will be sitting on four vertical rails for easy insertion and removal. Here is the first one before cutting:

Since the acrylic is just 3mm thick, it’s possible to cut it by first using a knife and than bending until it breaks. Router would give higher yield, but I do not have access to one.

Here is a learning experience on how to not make the cutting. Hint: Clamp something hard and flat on top of the part that should not break.

Since the rails have to be exactly the same size to prevent tray from twisting, I clamped all four together and prepared to file and sand them to equal measures:

But then I realized that these pieces will not be visible except for the topmost edge, and I will anyway make cutouts to them. So clamps got replaced with bolts:

And here is yet another set, 6 pieces that will keep the rails attached to each other:

Now some sanding, sanding, sanding and more sanding. I am still in process of sanding them while writing this, got to take a break.

Today I continued the mobo tray. First I made a tool for threading the acrylic. Thanks for fellow modders on instructing on how to do it and in general letting me to it’s doable at home :-).

Then I found out that the 2.5mm holes were not wide enough and in fact some of the holes were not straight. Time to change dremel-clone to some power tools. After experimenting with a scrap piece of acrylic, I found out that 3.2mm bit was good for the job and managed to dremel and file the threading tool to work with that hole.

Threading work in progress:

Once I got each hole threaded, I inserted the M4 screwas with few nuts to keep the layers tightly together:

To keep the layers perfectly aligned I didn’t remove the M3 screws installed yesterday until I had the remaining 4 holes threaded and fitted with M4 screws:

Finished!

Next: the supports.

I started this days work by checking the blueprints and printing motherboard diagram from ATX specification:

Since the placement of the mounting holes is crucial to the success of the mobo tray, and I have an additional challenge of constructing the tray from two layers of plastic, I decided to attach the layers together before making any further cuts. And what would be a better way to attach them than through the mobo mounting holes!

So I taped them together after triple-checking their relative placement and then proceeded to draw the guidelines. After cursing half a dozen times Intel’s decision to draw ATX specification diagram in inches and not in metric units, I was done.

Here blue lines mark the borders of the mobo and green ones are guidelines for holes. Red ones are there to appreciate the wiseness of the man who uttered the legendary words: “measure twice, cut once”.

Since I do not have real acrylic drill bits and I am also still lacking the press drill, I had to do this hard way. To minimize risk of trashing my precious acrylic, I first made starting points for holes with a spike:

I drilled the holes in three phases, starting with 1.5mm bit and then proceeding with 2mm and 2.5mm ones. I reasoned that this would lessen the chances of chipping the sheets compared to going with the biggest bit at once. And at least it didn’t fail me, since I have nice holes here (and unsharp pic, but I’m too tired not to set up the tripod):

These holes are not big enough for M4 screws I plan to use, but they should not be since I will later make threads for the screws. So I threw in some M3 screws and bolts for now:

Next I will cut tracks for the tray supports and the supports themselves. But first some sleep.

As you might now, my plan is to use black round DIN connectors for connecting visible wires. The male one is ok, since it’s about the same thickness as the tubing that covers the wires, but the female one has to be covered, since it’s in most of the cases of variety that gets screwed into plate and thus has inproper looks.

I have plenty of visions about how to cover the joint between two pieces of wires, and now that I came up with something that might actually work, I made a prototype. The quality of the finish and the photos are low, but it’s a prototype, remember.

After spending best part of the evening with pen, paper, dremel-clone, needle-file and various sandpapers, here is what I have:

And the same in UV light:

Neither of the plastics are UV reactive per se, but as you can see, they still light up and look quite good, in fact, at least in reality.

Here is a quick image manipulation of how it would look like with the covered wire and if there was four of the vertical decorations:

Might work, but got to think about it. And if I go for this, I will want to have at least 6 “teeth” per cylinder. I also would like to have some more colorful plexiglass there. Maybe some bright UV reactive color for the “teeth” and smoky cover for the cylinder.. let’s see.