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* Project Monster *
Greetings and salutations!
Welcome to Project Monster. As is showcased in some of my previous work, I like going big. Anything worth doing is worth doing bigger.
Why "Monster"? To be blunt, this thing is going to be massive. Not quite as large as some of the Mountain Mods cases, but for a scratchbuilt, pretty damn big. It'll clear the bottom of my desk by about 1" when completed, and that's only if I choose not to install wheels.
Some of my prior work:
Circa ~2002 - (Untitled Build)
Feature Highlights:
Yeong Yang Cube case
176watt pelt cooled Athlon 1.2ghz@1.77 - Idled @ 7 degrees f, full load - 55 degrees f
Seperate power supply for peltier
modded motherboard, CPU voltage protection override, CPU voltage adjustment mod
Dig the CRT monitor?
176 watt peltier @ 15.3v
Circa ~2009 - The 7 year Itch
For this build, I wanted something with so much space I would never want for space again. The case was designed with water-cooling in mind, though I never got around to installing the plumbing.
This is my current case, and will be sacrificing some of it's hardware (fans, acrylic for new doors, currently installed hardware) for this build.
Feature Highlights:
space for 6 3.5" drives, 8 x 5.25" bays
360mm + 240mm radiators
100% plexi/aluminum external case construction.
Dual power supply (capable)
False motherboard mounting (pocket for easy cable management)
Modded dual USB hub, 8 external, 6 internal ports.
Enough of the old stuff, on with the show.
About 6 months ago I got the itch for another build. I thought with my last build I wouldn't be wanting for space. Turns out I had a little too much of some things (5.25 bays), and not enough of others (space for radiators), so the 7YI wasn't a good candidate for this build.
Additionally plexi/acrylic construction is a pain to keep clean, and it's not condusive to continued hardware installation and removal, tapped plexi doesn't stay tapped for long (I've since installed longer screws backed with nuts in a few places.
Plexi is out, 5000 series aluminum is in.
After much collaboration with the engineering dept at work, we arrived on this configuration, drawn up in Solidworks.
12" Wide, 32.5" Tall, 24" Deep
2 x 200mm intake fans
16 x 120mm exhaust
4 x 480mm radiators on hinged mounts for access
4 x 5.25" bays for hard drive bays (May expand to 5 depending on upcoming hardware selection)
External removable dual power supply bay (not included in this image, construction to be documented)
No Hidden Compartments, everything will be visible
Items you may notice are neither in the Solidworks export or mentioned:
Power/Reset buttons
Optical media
External USB ports
These items will be installed in an external desktop "mini case" which will be attached to the primary case via an umbilical.
After exporting from solidworks to DXF format, the drawings were sent to this behemoth, our Cincinnati CNC laser cutting table:
With a total of 15 panels to be cut, the burn time was around 90 minutes. Aluminum burns slower than steel (this is a laser table, which has issues with aluminum's reflectivity). Unfortunately no pictures of the burn itself, with this being a personal job, they squeezed it into the schedule.
I have a plasma table at my disposal, but the cut quality is not as good.
Here are the results, 15 panels, all beautifully done - the precision is stunning.
Attaching the panels will be done via 1x1 angle aluminum, cut to length and fabricated into brackets.
for the primary case, 24 will be required.
To maintain some conformity between all of the brackets, a jig was fabricated to ensure consistent pilot holes centered 1/2" from the end of each bracket, creating 4 holes total per bracket.
The jig consisted of washers acting as a backstop with a 2.4 acting as the supporting material.
With this method 2 holes were created per bracket - which was re-tooled for the additional holes.
To keep external clutter to a minumum all brackets will be internal, tapped 10-32, and the connecting media will be countersunk by eye (not that hard after a few tries on some test material).
The end result of endless hours of drilling, countersinking, and tapping:
Excess bracket material will be trimmed off at a later date with a rotozip and filed.
Additional pictures of the case with 4 panels securely fastened:
That's all I have for now, what's next? The installation of the Lian Li D8000 motherboard tray, on sliding rails fabricated out of machined Delrin - also an outlay of the hardware selected for the "daughtercase".
Teaser:
Thank you for your time, stay tuned!
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