First step was to locate my bottom fan, which will be an exhaust pulling air across the radiator.
No holesaws big enough for the 200mm fan, so I cut this with my scrollsaw.
Fan and grill.
Mounting the fan and grill and radiator all took a fair bit of planning, because you have screws to hold the fan to the panel, the fan to the radiator shroud, and radiator shroud to the radiator, and the grill to the panel.
Next goal, work on the plastic back panel. This panel is going to need cutouts for the power supply and the motherboard.
Started first by tapping some mounting holes:
Most of my work, I use 6-32 threading. Its a acceptable threading for ⅛” thick materials. M3 is probably a more appropriate size (finer thread), but 6-32 machine screws are cheaper and available in more varieties.
Then I cut the panel (⅛” gray acrylic), and fitted it:
I went to work on mounting the powersupply:
To locate the exact position of the cutout, you can do a lot of fancy and precise measurements, but whenever possible, this is my approach:
I mounted up the panel, but pulled off some strategic portions of the protective coating:
Then I placed my psu where I wanted it, and If you shine a bright light, you can actually locate the mounting screw holes of the power supply. Mark these locations and you actually have the exact location for the cutout.
Placed my psu bezel, with the mounting holes lined up:
At this point, I received an awesome gift in the mail!
Top panel arrived courtesy of Delvie’s Plastics (delviesplastics.com). ⅛” gray acrylic, laser cut fan grill. Basically I passed John sketch with some dimensions, and it turned out perfect:
I’ll need to add mounting holes, but it was too tempting to just slap it in place and take some pictures:
Next task I tackled is a bit of a signature of my exoframe design cases. Since the frame is made of tubular aluminum, I’m going to run a lot of my cables within the frame itself.
To get my switch panel cables from the switches to the motherboard, this is my planned route within the tube frame:
Next I started generating the entry holes into the frame.
Here’s the piece right below the switch panel.
Mark my location:
Drilled 2 large holes to remove material:
Squared it off with a nibbler:
Finished the rough edges with some trim:
Also important to file down edges (this is the hole between 2 frame bars).
As I had mentioned previously, I planned on going with UV lighting. I picked up this roll from Amazon for pretty cheap--UV LEDs on a strip:
Every third LED set has a spot where you can cut the strip, exposing + and - terminals.
I’ve soldered on 2 blobs of solder to the exposed terminals on the flexible pcb, and then soldered lead wires to the terminals.
I terminated my leads with a 3 pin fan connector, and heatshrink wrapped the ends.
And here is the functioning strip:
I put together 4 strips:
Each strips has some triangular mounting tabs--this is so the LED strips will sit deep in the hanger brackets, but shine their light out at the proper angle.
A lot of people get lighting in computer cases all wrong--by sticking in lights to shine at the viewer. Most of the time, all this does is blind the viewer. What I want in this situation is to have indirect lighting--I want the very bright UV LEDs to be seen as little as possible--however, I want their light to shine onto my UV fluorescent objects, thus causing them to light up.
The wiring of the LEDs is pretty intrinsic to the case, so I’m going to also run the wiring within the frame.
The cables are small enough to run simply thru grommited holes:
Ran the cables thru the tubing:
Cables all terminate here, where I’m using wire nuts to make my connections. We’ve got 4 pairs of leads from each set of LED strip, leads from the 12v line of the power supply, and leads to the switch panel button.
This project is gettin’ there! Time for a final pre-assembly. Make sure everything fits and looks good before the final breakdown for finishing details.
Yeah, looks a bit like a cardboard box with all the protective paper still on!
Once again, special thanks to my plastics supplier and custom laser-cutting, Delvie’s Plastics.
And, it was finally time to decide on my finishes. After visiting my local aluminum anodizer, Chico Metal Finishers, I narrowed it down to 2 choices:
Orange and Gunmetal.
Well, altho it may not look it in its cardboard box statuts, this case is NOT about subtlety, so, brushed orange anodize was the choice!
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