Check this guys project out.

AC3421 said:

I have no doubt in the skill it takes in all of it. I was just stating my opinion.

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and a few of us were questioning it hehe..

Susquehannock said:

Yes great project. Saw that over at XS a few days ago. Think I should probably take time to compliment his work.

Nice to see some real fabrication work! Kind of disappointing to see the pre-made HDD racks though. With all that tooling & know-how, why not make a custom HDD rack as well?

Wish I had a metal break like that at home. I could make some stuff that would blow your mind.

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What is a metal break used for?

raevien said:

What is a metal break used for?

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They are used to bend metal sheets at sharp angles. Take a look at heating/air conditioning duct work sometime. All done on some type of sheet metal break. Same thing with PC cases.

For a time I worked as a "sheet metal mechanic". I will try to explain the procedure. On the type used for that case project the sheet is clamped in place on a hard straight edge. Then a piece is brought up to bend the sheet to the desired angle. Here is an image of an old school manual break : http://www.bidcorp.com/auctions/116733889/MetalBreakA.jpg
Some automatic breaks force the sheet into a shaped channel with a hydraulic ram.
Also, some breaks have movable straight edge segments so you can work with parts with vertical sections.

Hope that makes sense.

AC3421 said:

Meh. I dont care for cubes and total complete DIY builds (as in building the actual case, etc)

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Amen brotha', cubes are the Devil's shapes. Hitler liked cubes. Cubes kill puppies. And babies. Lots of babies. So many, in fact, that republican's have been trying to ban cubes for years.

And I hear the guy who is building this thing is ugly. Like, scary ugly. You should kick him in the head if you ever have the extreme misfortune to see him.

Now that that's out of the way...

autolex84 said:

I agree. Thats pretty darn awesome.

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Thanks! I certainly hope it turns out as insane as it is in my head.

Adragontattoo said:

not bad.. Its a one off though so you cant really compare it to a MM or any mass production case.

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You're right, its not meant to compete or compare to a Mountain Mods case. Things like the lack of an optical drive and the placement of the switches would make it highly unpopular if it were to be produced. Change that and you could have a pretty popular case I think.

CougarSE said:

I Just read through that whole thing last night.... Over dialup. And yes it did take me about a half hour and man was it worth it! Such inspiration!

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Haha, awesome dedication.

Adragontattoo said:

he is definetely over engineering the case, I ll give him extreme credit!

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Over engineering? No such thing . Anyway, I enjoy the design process as much, if not more than, the actual construction. I've probably put 300 hours into the design alone. Start with the basic idea, a cube, and start evolving ideas out from that. There were probably 50 or 60 distinctly different designs since I started thinking about Oracle. I wish I still had all those, showing the evolution of the case would be awesome, but sadly I lost everything in a hard drive crash earlier this year.

thaclassikz said:

Why does he need all that cooling with a duron build? Lol, i was hopping he'd put like quad sli in there or soemthing.

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Buy me a quad SLI setup and I'll gladly toss it into Oracle . The Duron was a random find, I wouldn't put anything that old into Oracle. One of my goals for Oracle is to find a suitable computer to put in it, the problem? I dont have those kind of funds, so we'll see what happens.

It may very well stay empty for a while.

However, I do have an idea of what sort of gear I would like to stick in. My wishlist over at Newegg, you know, if I had an extra $1500. I'll probably start buying it in pieces as I need the parts in the mod. I think the motherboard and PSU will be first, since I need to stealth the board and heavily customize the PSU. The rest of the components will follow as money allows. As soon as I go back to work and get the ol' credit card paid off I'll start picking things up.

Mr.Guvernment said:

yeah, another cube case..lol

thumbs up though for all the work they did on it.

the water affect would of been alot better if he used one of those fish tank stone filters to more evenly distribute the air bubbles.

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Jeeze, are cubes really that common? I've only seen a few scratch builds involving them, and I only know of 7 or 8 in production, and even those are pretty uncommon.

Anyway, I'm thinking about using something like an air stone in the next iteration of the reservoir, hopefully the effect will be as pleasing as the current one, which is, in and of itself, awesome.

whiterice said:

that thing is ridiculously sick...i wanna see finished pictures of it now lol

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You and me both, my friend. I was injured rather severely several months ago, so construction was put on hold until I recovered use of my arm. I want this case done so I can move on to other projects. I actually have two other cases planned that will fit in with Oracle, using common themes, shapes, or concepts. None of them will be cubes by the by, nor your standard tower.

Susquehannock said:

Yes great project. Saw that over at XS a few days ago. Think I should probably take time to compliment his work.

Nice to see some real fabrication work! Kind of disappointing to see the pre-made HDD racks though. With all that tooling & know-how, why not make a custom HDD rack as well?

Wish I had a metal break like that at home. I could make some stuff that would blow your mind.

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Are you stalking me?

Anyway, the real problem I have is that I really don't have the skills to make a decent modular hard drive rack. Plus, why reinvent the wheel? The Lian-Li racks are well built, relatively nice on the eyes, and do their jobs very very well. Add in the rubber feet I put on to dampen the vibrations and the racks work excellently.

Susquehannock said:

They are used to bend metal sheets at sharp angles. Take a look at heating/air conditioning duct work sometime. All done on some type of sheet metal break. Same thing with PC cases.

For a time I worked as a "sheet metal mechanic". I will try to explain the procedure. On the type used for that case project the sheet is clamped in place on a hard straight edge. Then a piece is brought up to bend the sheet to the desired angle. Here is an image of an old school manual break : http://www.bidcorp.com/auctions/116733889/MetalBreakA.jpg
Some automatic breaks force the sheet into a shaped channel with a hydraulic ram.
Also, some breaks have movable straight edge segments so you can work with parts with vertical sections.

Hope that makes sense.

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I really need to spend some time playing with my break, since I can't, as of now get it to consistently break to the angle I want. I'm looking at making a hydraulic version that would break right angles all day, which is really all I need.

The bottom blade of the break is removable by the way, I've got several smaller wedges made so I can break pieces with vertical edges. I really wish I had documented the building of the break, I think a lot of people would have benefited.

Anywho, I'll bring the log over since there seems to be so much interest in my case. I should have an update later today.


Cheers!

E

EDIT: The log is up over HERE

LMAO !! .... cubes really are the devil's work = kidding. That part really did make me LOL though.

Endscape said:

Are you stalking me?

Anywho, I'll bring the log over since there seems to be so much interest in my case. I should have an update later today.

Cheers!

EDIT: The log is up over HERE

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Stalking you? Yeah sort of.
Once the OP here shared the lynk to your project over at Xtreme Systems I decided to reinitaite my old account over there to share a few kind words & comments.

Glad to see you moved the project log over here as well. Many will surely benefit from your efforts. Anything that inspires people to pick up tools and do some custom fabrication work is a good thing in my book.

Endscape said:

Anyway, the real problem I have is that I really don't have the skills to make a decent modular hard drive rack. Plus, why reinvent the wheel? The Lian-Li racks are well built, relatively nice on the eyes, and do their jobs very very well. Add in the rubber feet I put on to dampen the vibrations and the racks work excellently.

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Reinvent the wheel? Well, not really what I meant but I see what you're coming from. Nothing wrong at all with using pre-made parts. Smart thinking. However, you can design a "wheel" which is unavailable & more closely suits your needs. Then again, at this stage you likely have already incorporated the pre-made cage into your overall design. Even so I think this is a very good discussion topic. And I would like to further discuss that topic in your project log if you do not mind.

Endscape said:

Anyway, the real problem I have is that I really don't have the skills to make a decent modular hard drive rack. Plus, why reinvent the wheel? The Lian-Li racks are well built, relatively nice on the eyes, and do their jobs very very well. Add in the rubber feet I put on to dampen the vibrations and the racks work excellently.

I really need to spend some time playing with my break, since I can't, as of now get it to consistently break to the angle I want. I'm looking at making a hydraulic version that would break right angles all day, which is really all I need.

The bottom blade of the break is removable by the way, I've got several smaller wedges made so I can break pieces with vertical edges. I really wish I had documented the building of the break, I think a lot of people would have benefited.

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You know, I still find it hard to believe you can not make your own rack. Get out pencil & paper - - use cardboard & make some mock-ups. That always helps me. And yeah, sounds like your break may not have enough clamping force to hold the metal.

And by the way - - sorry to hear about your injury. At least you are up and running again.

Susquehannock said:

LMAO !! .... cubes really are the devil's work = kidding. That part really did make me LOL though.

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A cube = 6 sides = 666

Coincidence? I don't think so.

Susquehannock said:

Reinvent the wheel? Well, not really what I meant but I see what you're coming from. Nothing wrong at all with using pre-made parts. Smart thinking. However, you can design a "wheel" which is unavailable & more closely suits your needs. Then again, at this stage you likely have already incorporated the pre-made cage into your overall design. Even so I think this is a very good discussion topic. And I would like to further discuss that topic in your project log if you do not mind.

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I'm always up for discussion, so I dont mind at all. Anyway, you're very right about the design, the Lian Li racks are pretty much completly integrated into my current design, though that is not to say that it cant be redesigned. Hell, Oracle was pretty much ready for paint and lighting when I decided to pull it apart and start over.

Susquehannock said:

You know, I still find it hard to believe you can not make your own rack. Get out pencil & paper - - use cardboard & make some mock-ups. That always helps me. And yeah, sounds like your break may not have enough clamping force to hold the metal.

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Oh I can design a rack, no problem. Hell, I could design one in my sleep while drunk off my ***. Its the precise, clean cuts that I'd have to make several times over that don't agree with me. We'll see what happens, I might play around with something once I get the break up to snuff.

Yeah, the break needs a little help, its on my list of things to do.

Susquehannock said:

And by the way - - sorry to hear about your injury. At least you are up and running again.

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Thanks, it certainly wasn't fun. .45 caliber bullets and I don't get along so well apparently haha.

Endscape said:

Thanks, it certainly wasn't fun. .45 caliber bullets and I don't get along so well apparently haha.

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No one gets along with .45 caliber bullets. I don't care how tough you are! lol.

phantasm said:

No one gets along with .45 caliber bullets. I don't care how tough you are! lol.

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This is true.

If I only had the tools and the money and the time and the inspiuration and the knowledge and well you get the drift

This guy is talented

If I only had the tools and the money and the time and the inspiuration and the knowledge and well you get the drift

This guy is talented

what a majestic sight.....awesome

Dam now that is awesome. And I thought I was cool because I'm going to cut a few holes and rearrange a couple drive bays in my new silverstone Tj07. that is some great craftsmanship

Susquehannock said:

Nah, it's not that difficult at all really. Here is one I made a couple years ago from scrap steel around my shop.

*sniped

As you can see I like to think outside the box. Not easy to tell there, the only part touching the drives are the screws. The rack is mounted to the case bottom with two 5/16" bolts mounted on acoustic foam. Even with that WD Raptor mounted in there I cannot hear the drives at all.

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Sorry to dig so deep into a thread.
I made custom HD mountings for my case as well. Sometimes it serves the purpose better then stock parts. While mine are not as rugged as yours I wanted to have light (vibration reducing) for my mountings. All it takes is some desire and thought. They are actually one of the easier mods for the inside of a case.

The benift is greater than most realize. As my storage grows. I can change up easier and add to the rack. I ripped out my cages for the drives. I am only limited in how high I can stack them now. Not actual available bays.

I could imagine me doing something in the lines of a custom aluminum case. I have a key to my best friends shop and he has much more tools and stuff. Hmmmmm, maybe i should look into building a new case. But wow i give that dude mad props.

Thats pretty sweet. Not how I would have done it but it looks good. Im not much of a cube style person, but it seems to work well. Ive always wanted to build my own case and this has given me some inspiration.

not into cube cases, but the amount of skill and patience building that must have taken is mind blowing.

WejRepus said:

not into cube cases, but the amount of skill and patience building that must have taken is mind blowing.

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Patience...nahhh. Alcohol, lots and lots of alcohol is more like it

OCnewbee said:

I could imagine me doing something in the lines of a custom aluminum case. I have a key to my best friends shop and he has much more tools and stuff. Hmmmmm, maybe i should look into building a new case. But wow i give that dude mad props.

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Heard of Pandora's Box? You know, box filled with evil, pain, hatred and all that good stuff? Yeah, building your own case is opening Pandora's Box.

Have fun.

So I'm thinking about paint colors, and I cant quite decide. All black, black with white pin striping, all white (maybe a pearl white), or white with orange pin striping? The striping would be minimal, just enough to stand out a bit. The first two options would have white and blue lighting, while the last two would have white and orange lighting.

Thoughts?

Black w/orange pin stripes ...