From Scratch -- Project :: Duallie Woodie

T

Tim_axe

Gawd
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Dec 12, 2003
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Nope, this isn't going to be a wooden car, roller coaster, or climbing wall. :p


Introduction:
Project Duallie Woodie is what I've decided will be my semester project in my woodshop class. The goal of this case (other than getting a good grade in the class) is to improve the performance of my dual CPU machine.

Right now my machine is a dismal mess in regards to airflow and interior house-keeping; my processors run hot. By designing a new case to house my components, I hope to address the wiring issues and air-flow issues permanently. Modding my current case by cutting blow-holes and ducting may solve the issues, but I feel that building something that is my own is the better solution. Especially since my current case was never designed to house such a large system (and I've had to make a few cuts to make it fit).


Ironicly, Duallie Woodie will also be quite a bit smaller than my current case. Considering that wood is much thicker than metal, this means I'll need to be creative in packing components while still meeting my goals. I may also use some acrylic/plexi-glass to make a window, although I'm not completely sure if doing so would compliment a wood case...


Concept Images:
orig_duallie_woodie_drawings.jpg

While drawing this (for the 3rd time), I realized I couldn't have the center indented to create some sort of fortress walls while keeping my planned dimensions because it conflicted with the size of the video card. So this design with 4x 80mm fans on the corners had to be tossed...

duallie_woodie_render_1.png

I went through and decided on the same basic design after fitting it in 3D...

case_rotate_open.gif

Just showing around the case concept, which is quite plain...

case_rotate_enclosed.gif

Just one idea for the top part of the case...


Work So Far:
I spent the last 2 weeks tweaking a simple design and finding a decent size. Currently it will measure 18x14x7 inches.

I just need to decide on the woods (probably a combination of soft and [H]ard woods for economy) that will make this happen, work out where I need to place fans to pull the hotair from the processors and get cooler air to them, and then build it in class. Hopefully this project will be a quick one...

I'll update as stuff happens, but I'm not sure how much work I will be getting done for a while because I still have a few other woodshop projects I need to finish up...
 
The old case's design is something I can't really work inside of. I basically get air recirculating because there is no tasteful way I can pull fresh air into the case and expel the heated air (the case can't deal with where the air is put out and how much of it needs to be dealt with, being an old P3-era "home" pc case and not an overclocked dual-cpu workstation case). By building my own case I will be looking to solve the issue of recirculating air so I pull in fresh air over the heatsinks and dealing with the heatoutput that nobody in the P2/P3 era had imagined.

There is also a lot of space in my current case that I simply don't use, and don't really need to use (and probably shouldn't be using). Making the case smaller looks like a good idea to me.

Picture of old case (Warning - Wiring Mess)
 
Thats a duel P3 mobo wow never seen one of those before.
 
I found I can get some discounts on most of the woods through a kid I know. I'll be ordering the wood tomorrow (to work on it on Thursday -- I don't have class on Wednesday), and will probably do some metal-work to prepare a few small details also. (Sheet steel to provide motherboard support...though it will be hidden by wood)


On the interior I discovered I can do a really neat felt-like coating by working with wet spray-paint and blowing some sort of material onto the wet surfaces. I'll get the details from my instructor tomorrow, and perhaps a picture or two of what it looks like. The interior of the case will be black with this coating when complete.

The structure (18x14 pieces, probably not the 18x6 and 14x6 pieces though) will either be from a ~5/7-layer plywood about 3/4inch thick, or I may rabbit-cut and glue/staple some narrower cherry/ash boards together to form the 18x14 dimensions.


Mounting the motherboard will be accomplished with a combination of steel & wood. I'll use some 20ga sheet steel from a previous project to provide extra structure/support to a thin wood veneer cover that will go over it. They'll be secured together through the ATX mounting holes, and will be secured to the rest of the case with some screws.

Cheers and thanks for the interest.
 
Here is a picture of what I plan for the paint/material job to do to the inside, except the colors I decide on may be different:

(I needed the lens cap in the photo to focus on, and with my lens's 3ft min focus distance I couldn't reach over to pull it out)


Click for 1280x853 View of this felt-like (?) stuff (312KB)


The woods I decided on were Mahogany & Oak. It was cheaper than the Cherry (even expotic woods like Purple Heart were cheaper :confused: ), and I liked their colors, so I hope they work out well together. I'll rabbit them together instead of trying to glue them on as finishing panels to a plywood...

I should have my materials to work with on Thursday, since I don't have class tomorrow.
 
My Philippine Mahogany and Red Oak are ordered and ready to rip to size on Monday. I decided to skip getting it through the friend, and went down to the shop and bought it myself with a student discount. Even though I've done a quick sanity test to the measurements by adding the lengths of the sides up, I think I ended up getting more wood than I need for this project. Oh well, if I'm lucky I could build something else with what's left...

I also currently doubt I'll paint the inside. I might just stain it at this point because I'm behind schedule...though recently I have wondered how to incorporate veneer sheets of differing woods and a vacuum shaper...


duallie_woodie_tray01.jpg


The motherboard tray is complete (except for mounting it to the case which hasn't begun yet). I built a foam cut-out so I could punch holes out at the right places of my piece of sheet steel, and it looks like it'll work. The screws are soldered in place and they're bonded strongly to the sheet of steel. The final coat of paint is drying this weekend. I decided on a hammered-textured gold paint...it's almost a shame the motherboard will hide it all though...


duallie_woodie_mobo.jpg


BTW, for those wondering about duallie woodie...mainly since no wood has been witnessed in pictures (or that I haven't really posted any pictures pictures) yet...the duallie part has to do with modding AthlonXP-M processors to work nice and fast in that 2CPU AMD board (I can hit 140x18=2520MHz @ 1.75v for a short time, but heat output is the currently suspected bottleneck at those speeds). I can't wait to take this out of my current case and put it into something else that has better air-flow / heat-expelling abilities because I'd love to run each processor closer to 2.5GHz... :D
 
It's the Gigabyte GA-7DPXDW-P. Not considered the best overclocking board for AthlonMP, but there isn't much to choose from since the 760MP/760MPX platform was prematurely stunted for Hammer/Opteron to come about. At ~$600-$650 for most of the system I'm really happy with this mobo/cpus/hsf/ram config.
 
BTW who/where is your source for the wood you're using? Are they local or do they do mail-order, too?
 
I got the wood at a local "Do It Best" store. The prices (for 4/4 thickness -- about 3/4 inch after it is finished) were $3.50 per board foot for the Red Oak, and $3.91 per board foot for the Phillipine Mahogany.

I ended up getting just over $40 worth of wood, although my initial high-side guesstimate was $30, so I'm a little perplexed as to how much extra I ended up buying. I did manage to find a 16 inch wide piece for the top/bottom pieces, and I suspect my numbers were skewed from this change. (I was originally going to combine 7-8 inch wide pieces to cover 14 inches width.)

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As for working on it today...since I didn't have a truck to carry the wood in, and I live 15 miles out of town, I had someone hold the wood for me. And due to the weather (it rained all weekend and today) it *might* have some water in it.

But that's not all...

He didn't drive his truck today, so my wood is still at his house. :( And tomorrow all of us seniors are going to a "Sober Graduation" event in another city/town for half of the day so I won't have wood shop. :( And to top it off, I don't have woodshop on Wednesdays! :mad:

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But I did begin some concept work with a scrap piece of plywood to mount my hard drives in a wooden enclosure. The final product will probably be made from extra hardwood I'm sure to have left over.

Basically the drives will slide into a box that has slots dato-ed out. (I actually cut it out with a table router). The plan is to come up with a decent block that the hard drives slide right into and that allows for a fan to be mounted to it somewhere for cooling. I forgot to take pictures of it, but I'll see if I can't sneak into the wood shop class to take a picture of what I did on it.


So next update will probably be Thursday. And I might have a picture tomorrow if I can sneak into the classroom before the Sober Graduation thing...
 
Update:

photos_dsc_050405060.jpg

Making sure it fits (used a small pocket camera because I didn't have my wideangle lens with me)

All of the sides (and bottom) have been cut today, with some minor sanding work done. I'm ready to router/drill the holes, along with rabbit the sides to make it all fit (and possiby make it look better than a compact box). The dimensions of the pieces are (IIRC):

2x :: 7x20
2x :: 7x16
1x :: 14x18

I still haven't decided what I'll do for the top, but I'll need to cut some holes in it for a 120mm fan over the processors.


projects_dualliewoodie_hdd_layout.png


After I get that glued together I'm going to be working on a piece to hold the CD-ROM and HDD's in place. They'll slide into place after some routering. I am planning a "L" shaped cut/route at the edge so I can build a "L" shaped stopper to lock the drives into place. On the top of the image above I'll be doing the same thing for the CD/DVD drive.
 
Update:

projects_dualliewoodie_05055066.jpg


3/4 diameter router bit + hardwood = no cut & smoke. So I had to use a jigsaw that swerved to the right to do the major cut for the disc drive bay, and then router the remaining areas with a table router with some guides clamped in to make straight edges. Now I just have to file/sand it down until the burn marks are completely gone, but other than that the drive fits. Just need to tighten that fit up though...

I'm not sure if I'll be able to make the router cuts to fit the PSU in though from this expirence.. Fortunately I am building the case an extra 1/2 inch tall, so hopefully the PSU will fit when I go to transplant my system into this box...



projects_dualliewoodie_05055067.jpg


Here you can see what the Dato cuts left me on the sides. It turns out that my short sides are too long (or dato too shallow :p) so I'll be trimming those down on Monday until it fits snugly. Then it is glue & the staple gun along with a few screws along the bottom.



Things I still need to address:
  • Mounting motherboard tray to case
  • Mounting PSU to case
  • Routing power from outside of case into case to PSU -- the PSU will not be accessable when complete
  • Finish the drive cages/bays
  • Cover the top side of the case with something
  • Buttons / Status LEDs
  • Perhaps wire an equalizer/mini-amp into the circuit & find a place for speakers?
 
Tim_axe said:
Project Duallie Woodie is what I've decided will be my semester project in my woodshop class. The goal of this case (other than getting a good grade in the class) is to improve the performance of my dual CPU machine.
Click to expand...
Hey this project sounds good to me. I like wood cases and love dual proc machines. I don't care what other people think, I think it's awsome! Also, the cooling will be much better than the case you have now, as long as you make it a crossflow design with intakes in one end and exhausts on the other. You could also modify the design just slightly to mount it to the wall if you wanted.... Can you tell I like wall mount machines? Good luck!
 
Thanks for the support zeusenergy :)


Today involved mounting the motherboard tray and cleaning up previous cuts. This will let me measure where to cut the PCI/AGP slots in one of the sides, along with the side-panel. I have also finished up more rabbit/dato cuts. Once the PCI/AGP slots and IO tray area are measured and cut, I'll be gluing and working on the HDD mounting and think something up for power-routing (as the PSU will not be accessable from the outside)


projects_dualliewoodie_0505071.jpg


You might be able to make out a pattern of drilled recesses between the 4 corner holes. These correspond with the ATX-spec mounting holes because of how I constructed the motherboard tray. The head ends of the screws on the tray rest in the recess and the tray sits flatter.


projects_dualliewoodie_0505069.jpg


And here the tray rests where it will mount to the case. The black foam-core represents my motherboard. The 4 holes that go all the way through have a small recess on the other side for a nut to rest in without protruding from the exterior of the case. I still don't have bolts/nuts for this part though.


Next update will be on Thursday since I have no woodshop on Wednesday. It's hard to imagine I started 23 days ago and have only managed to get this far. Hopefully from here the process will speed up. Cheers.
 
KrakenGuy said:
You should watercool this baby. That would be cool. Literally, lol.
Click to expand...

I was wondering about that a bit...

Looking @ [H]ot|DEALS, the Mag Drive pumps at PETsMART ($22.50 for the Model 3) look affordable and seem to perform well. I'll see if any stores in my area have any similar deals (I only have a locally-owned "Pets Are People Too"). Then with a 1974 Pontiac Bonneville heatercore ($23.99 @ NAPAonline) as a radiator I'd be at under $50...

But getting 2 CPU waterblocks doesn't seem very cheap ($40-$60 each @ DangerDen) and so far most of this has been from scratch... So while I could build my own (and have a friend who has), I'm not sure if I could convince any other friends to let me borrow their CNC mills for a while to machine small blocks of copper. Somehow I doubt my friend who built his own waterblock and is trying to keep running his machine faster than mine will like competition, so I may not be able to borrow his CNC mill...

I may just grab the pump (if it is avaliable here) while it is cheap and get the heatercore and wait until some waterblocks come my way...


But right now water cooling isn't a high priority. It would be fun, but I don't think I have enough time left this school year... (At least I get to move to a college machine shop after this :D)
 
Update:

I bought some Gorilla Glue, and on Friday I hope to make a few final cuts and then glue the case together. I took the bottom (and one side) home today for a few measurements and to prepare for cuts, and took a few pictures of how it is now.

duallie_woodie_05050633_mounted.jpg

4 stainless steel bolts/nuts/washers hold the tray to the bottom. There is some slight bowing in the metal because all of the force is on the edges, so I may make another hole for one more bolt in the center. I'm also going to dato a channel into the top area so when I put the PSU in the huge power cable has somewhere to hide.

The nuts are sunk on the other side so the bottom is flat.


duallie_woodie_05050637_io.jpg

This piece is the back panel (inside view). Some minor modifications are needed on Friday, along with drilling holes all the way through so stuff can actually be plugged in through it.


I have about 3-4 days of class left before finals (and senior sneak :p -- though oddly enough the school has a senior class field trip on this day so we don't actually, well, sneak...), so I really need to kick in gear to finish this up. Cheers.
 
Update (Friday):

duallie_woodie_050505074.jpg


Drilled out a bit to make room for the IO Panel...it was a very messy job, but I'll be cutting most of this thing out later so it doesn't really matter at this point...

duallie_woodie_050505075.jpg


Dato'ed out a channel in the bottom piece to make room for the PSU's cables. And then glued. Unfortunately I moved the clamps around a lot and slid the piece over so when it finally dried I was unable to get the other pieces on correctly. It took a lot of sanding to correct... BTW, Gorilla Glue is some strong stuff... :D

duallie_woodie_050505078.jpg


I worked with the dato blade for a while to cut out the square. At this point I wanted to try and keep a wooden piece between everything, but it turned out that was pointless...but you get an idea of where the AGP/PCI/PCI-X cards would go.





Update (Tuesday):

duallie_woodie_050505081.jpg


I drilled inside on 4 corners and cut it out with a jig? saw. Then routered the inside to be flat, and finally routered a nice edge to the piece.

duallie_woodie_050505086.jpg


I plan on routeing a nice edge to the IO panel to. It'll be the same finish, except I'll be able to get the bit in deeper which makes a pretty big change to how it'll look. This sort of gives you an idea of what the IO & expansion panel will look like.



I'm going to do my best to get time after school on Wednesday to finish some routering and do some more gluing. Cheers.
 
Nice start. Just curious why oak?

Why not Mahogony or Walnut. They finish much nicer and are a little softer (easier to work with).

I've got all of the equipment at my disposal to do this... lathes, table saws, ban saws, dado blades, routers, bits, fine species of wood that are very old and rare, etc.....

I might make a mini wooden case, when a nice Pentium M mini-ITX board becomes available and reasonably priced.

Probably mahogony wood with a cherry or mahogony stain. But it will have to wait a little longer for the right components.
 
chrisf6969 - I went with (Red) Oak & Phillipine Mahogany because it was much cheaper than the other woods at about $3 per board/ft @ 4/4. I know relatively little about how to pick woods for projects, other than reading a little chart that showed these to be strong and pretty easy to work with. I am guessing though that the hardness of the oak is causing it to burn when I'm routering...I think should have went with another wood because of that...

RCGodward - I hope this helps. I'm probably leaving a lot of steps out in my postings, but it should be pretty easy to fill in what I did. Just remember -- measure twice and cut once. I bought a lot more wood than I really needed for this project :p


On to some more pictures from today after school:

dualliewoodie_050505087.jpg

I routered out the PCI/AGP card area (and it burned :(). It gives the cards more space, but I made the mistake of making the area for the cards too large. If you look at my last set of photos of the back of this piece where I dato'ed out a square, and have another line going to it, I originally wanted that to be a space to slide the edge of the card into. But now that I've cut it out, it's a little big...

dualliewoodie_050505090.jpg

A view with the I/O Panel shield in place...

dualliewoodie_050505094.jpg

Testing how it'll look when glued. At this point I realized that the last gluing resulted in the piece sliding over a bit too much, so I tried sanding it down before giving up... (Note the channels created for the PCI/AGP cards to sit properly)

dualliewoodie_050505097.jpg

...though I did remember to prevent it from sliding around this time. :D


That leaves 2 more pieces (CPU exhaust & front panel / CD-ROM drive) to glue, and both of those pieces need some routering and cutting to them. I'll be able to do that on Friday, then after school I can gloss it, and finally put stuff in it on Monday and work out holding the PSU & CD + HDDs...
 
What concerns do you have about wood movement? I was considering a wooden case but was planning on using ply to try to keep movement down to a minimum... (At least that was my thought, but it's also been twenty years since I took woodshop!)
 
timmmay -- to be honest I never considered wood movement...so I hope it won't expand by much. :eek:

Here's to hoping it won't cause my case to split this summer... :kampai: :)
 
Tim_axe said:
chrisf6969 - I went with (Red) Oak & Phillipine Mahogany because it was much cheaper than the other woods at about $3 per board/ft @ 4/4. I know relatively little about how to pick woods for projects, other than reading a little chart that showed these to be strong and pretty easy to work with. I am guessing though that the hardness of the oak is causing it to burn when I'm routering...I think should have went with another wood because of that...
Click to expand...

Yep, oak is hard which is good if you need something to be strong, like book shelves, chair, or a table top. But for something like a fancy custom case, etc.... mahogony or walnut would have been a lot easier to work with (no burning, etc) They also have a nicer grain pattern and color usually.

I have this piece of wood from my grandpa's garage (he was a carpenter) that is some exotic fancy burlwood. Its so heavy and its texture is almost like wax, its hard to explain. I made a pen holder out of a small piece of it with the lathe. Its probably worth thousands of $!

Here's a picture: (this is with out any stain!!! just a clear coat!! which it barely needed b/c its grain is so tight)
cup.jpg


If I ever get around to building a Pentium M (or Yonah) SFF PC I'm going to build it with an "exotic" species.

Its best to climatize the wood to dry air, that way it won't shrink/warp much after you build it.
 
are you going to use a finish on it? I think tung oil or beeswax would look nice...
 
just a quick question? not scared of your pc catching on fire?.. wood + oils + paint.. just wondering if you took that under account. thats all
 
Crazystick -- The hottest my processors are currently getting is only 60 degrees celcius. It isn't hot enough to boil water...and those temperatures wouldn't even ignite gasoline without sparks (~230 degrees celcius) -- hence the chances of the wood or any waxes/paints I put on it catching on fire are slim to none. So it's pretty safe in that regard. I've had a lot of people wondering why I was making it out of wood because it can burn -- so it was one of the first issues I decided to research and settle. :D



snoopy -- I haven't considered anything other than a clear-coat / light-coat at this point. I'll see if there is anything else I can use and test it on the abundant amount of extra wood I have and post some pictures...although I'm definately coating the outside on Monday because that is Finals week and I really can't afford to wait much longer to finish this...



chrisf6969 -- That wood looks nice. I don't have any exotic woods in my house. The most exotic I've used is Purple Heart -- and from working with it while building wooden locks in class I found that it burned way too easily for me to have any chance at looking decent.

It looks like you have a pretty nice set of tools to work with too. I'm still learning some of the tools as I find I need to use them (ie, learning to use the jointer for another project, etc) I'd love to see what you come up with when you get working on that Mini ITX Pentium M. It would probably be something more creative than my little box with a huge workstation stuffed inside it :)
 
Update:

dualliewoodie_050505101.jpg


Just claming the other 2 sides on. With these 6 clamps figured into the weight, I could probably take top 10 in the How Heavy is your PC thread.

No idea how much it weighs though, but it is sitting over the weekend like this so I can work on it Monday to try a test-fit and some electrical install...


And that's it for this update. Cheers.
 
Whats better than a woodie? A dualie woody.... Heh... Keep your woody up bro!

-Brad
 
Update:

I'm almost done now :D


dualliewoodie_050605114.jpg


I couldn't work the IO face-plate on because there wasn't enough room. It's too late to make the area it goes into deeper (as it's all glued together), so I'll just run without a face plate again... One problem related to this is that the area for the AGP/PCI cards is the right size (infact bigger), but I can't actually put the cards in without removing their face plates because they collide into the side & motherboard...


dualliewoodie_050605116.jpg


As you can see everything pretty much fits. I still haven't worked out electrical delivery 100%, but I'm getting there...


dualliewoodie_050605109.jpg


Showing off the dato-job that holds the HDD's & CD-ROM drive in place. Unfortunately one of my HDDs is a bit taller, so the dato cuts weren't wide enough. The bottom space is a bit tight...


dualliewoodie_050605108.jpg


Just another view of the above...


dualliewoodie_050605121.jpg


This is what will make sure the hotter air from the processor goes out. Helps move more air over my HSF too... I guess it could almost pass as a sleeper since you can't see if it is a single CPU or dual CPU system :p


dualliewoodie_050605124.jpg


And here I've taken everything out so I can do a light coat of varnish on it. I'm not actually sure what I used, but the colors that came out really suprised me.



Tomorrow I should be done. :D But it may be a while before I update because I'm going to be enjoying Graduating on Friday. Bonfires, pranks (I may post a picture of what I came across), family, and all that jazz. Cheers. :)
 
Sorry for not updating this for so long. So here is a photo-finalie...with a much better camera (see sig). :)


dualliewoodie_05061407.jpg


dualliewoodie_05061409.jpg


dualliewoodie_05061415.jpg


dualliewoodie_05061417.jpg


dualliewoodie_05061421.jpg


dualliewoodie_05061425.jpg


dualliewoodie_05061428.jpg


dualliewoodie_05061430.jpg


dualliewoodie_05061435.jpg


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Why is there no PSU in the case, you ask? To be honest, it makes a huge mess of the insides and I don't want to show that off. :( I need to mod the PSU to be modular or cut off some power leads & reposition a lot of PSU internals...

My plans are (after solving the PSU messy-ness issue) to get a nice sheet of plexi-glass to screw in. It's a bit late to make the slots to slide it on/off, so I'll just have to keep it there. I've already cut an old "450 watt" PSU into a box of spare parts (I always knew those $20 cases with PSUs would be good for something) and used the power adapter to fabricate my own power-cord extension. (I used the rocker switch for a camera corded remote control thing, BTW. I'll find some use for the capacitors after I desolder them from the PCB)

If I decide to do anything else to this case, I'll be sure to post some more pics. Cheers. :)
 
You really ought to apply some veneer to that CD-ROM drive, so you don't see the beige plastic from the front.

 
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