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[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

Milling Session 4

 

New 6mm mill has arrived! Time to use this for the left plate.

 

DW-003D: LEFT PLATE

 

This time the left side will be milled. No more fraying edges!

 

Of course, not everything goes as planned. I thought I had a handy solution for the zeroing to the 3mm mill; let the 3mm mill loose in the clamp, position the head to zero and fasten the mill. Bring the head up and tighten the clamp. Well, that did not work as you can see in the photos below. Turns out the clamp moves the mill a little up when tightening the clamp.

I removed the part with the fretsaw from the stock material. A lot of sanding time will be needed.

 

At home, I removed the internal parts with a stanley knife (and more sanding).

 

Takes a while, but the result is good.

 

Preliminary Assembly of the parts (teaser):

 

 

Next time, production of the right side!

 

Thanks to my sponsors!

[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

Milling Session 5/6

 

These are the last milling sessions: the last parts combined in a single NC program for production. The PSU bracket (redo), right plate (redo, first one failed), backplate (v2) and drilling templates. Also lasered the wooden parts.

 

 

New version of the back plate: no more surface damages! In the drilling templates are holes for possible dowels. If the front- and back plate do not stay in their position I can use these dowel positions.

 

 

The right side has pockets that ends in a red layer of wood, gives a nice effect. Like the knot.

 

 

The PSU bracket has minor surface damage, but less than last time. Also gave the PSU pocket bigger tolerances.

 

 

Removed the parts from the stock and again sanding, sanding, sanding ....

 

 

Bigger PCI-e holes in the backplate, aligned the holes better.

 

 

Also, drilled the holes in the sides using the drill template.

 

 

Fastened the RAMPA nuts in an improvised way;)

 

 

Next time: time for the definite assembly of the HDD!

 

Thanks to my sponsors!

[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

Assembly HDD

 

Now everything's sanded; assembly time. First fastened a harddisk in the hdd mountplate.

 

 

 

Now it's time for the assembly of the HDD bracket with the sata-extender.

 

 

 

The HDD bracket will be placed in the PSU bracket.

 

 

 

The HDD- and PSU bracket assembly will be placed in the HDD plate.

 

 

Everything fits! Next time the placement of the right plate and PSU will be covered.

 

 

Thanks to my sponsors!

[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

Assembly PSU

 

In this post the HDD assembly merges with the right- and left side. Also the PSU and backside will be placed.

 

 

The holes on the right side are aligned with the fingers of the PSU bracket and HDD ventilation plate.

 

 

The right side plate is placed. Now it's time to place the left side plate.

 

 

The left side plate is placed. For the observant reader, I have sanded the two cable guide plates so it does not protrude the rest of the surface.

 

 

At the top there is space for the PSU and cables, in the middle space is reserved for a PCI-e card and at the bottom there is room for the motherboard.

 

 

Flipped the housing over to place the PSU.

 

Fastened the RAMPA nuts, with these nuts a single or double slot PCI-E card can be fixed. It is also possible to close the holes when there's no PCI-E card or just a single slot card. If these holes would be left open, the PSU fan and extract fan would not force as much air over the CPU cooler.

 

 

 

The back plate falls nicely in place.

 

 

The PSU and cabling are aligned with the bracket.

 

 

Enough room for all cables to be placed.

 

The on/off switch in above picture is placed wrong and will be placed in the front plate. In the right side plate an other (reset)switch will be placed.

 

 

Fixed the side plates by 2 pairs of 4 M5x16 DIN912 bolts. Some more pics:

 

 

Thanks to my sponsors!

[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

Switches

 

In this post the power and reset switches are sleeved.

 

Testing the placement of the front panel cables. The power switch is moved from the side panel to the front panel. Searching for a long switch without ON/OFF logo.

 

 

User Deodutie from another forum pointed me to an alternative long switch. Alas, the threaded part of the switch was still 1mm too short.

 

 

Solution: handmilling the recessed pocket for the switch to a correct depth. In the past I did not have good experience with the supplied mills supplied with my old Dremel. But using the 2-flute mill from the CNC machine works wonders!

 

 

Carefully milling by hand..., feels like a hot knife through butter

 

 

Reset switch fits!

 

 

Solder and sleeving time.

 

 

Glass silk sleeving, it's very flexible and fine and dense but has a tendency to become fluffy.

 

Used female PCB headers for the plug. Quite subtle.

 

 

Thanks to my sponsors!

[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

Placement of the PCI-e Extender and the covers of the PCI-e I/O openings. 

 

This time the PCI-e Extender will be placed and I will test the PCI-E I/O covers. The large and small covers are made with the lasercutter. These covers will resp. be placed when no PCI-e card is placed in the housing or a single slot card is placed.

Below the covers two clamping plates (2x 3mm) are placed in the back wall to keep the flange of the PCI-e card backplate in place.

Back wall with the small cover.

Back wall with the large cover.

Time to attach the PCI-e Extender cable to the HDD ventilation plate.

I used an Ati HD4850 as a donor card to check the dimensions / placement.

With the new produced back wall the VGA and DVI connectors will fit! The PCI-e Extender cable is aligned properly.

Looking at the bottom of the housing. The PSU draws air from the PCI-e card and motherboard and blows the air outwards from the housing.

Temporarily placed the motherboard.

Removed the motherboard and routed the PCI-e Extender ribbon cable back to the inside of the housing to the motherboard.

The excess ribbon length is folded ....

... and kept in place by the fan plate assembly.

 

 

Thanks to my sponsors!

[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

24+4 ATX

 

The cables at the left side of the housing are placed. First the presleeved cables are partially disassembled to put these through the cable guides.

 

 

After an evening fiddling with flattened staples I had sore fingers (and could only disassembly one cable).

 

 

So ordered the right tools for the job! The crimp contacts were not firmly pinched, therefore the holes in the wooden parts were a little too small. With the order I also bought a good crimping tool.

 

 

With the cable sleeve tool the cables were much more easy to detach from the connector. After a while I got the hang of it. I was too cautious in the beginning.

 

 

After using the crimping tool the cables could go through the holes in the wooden parts.

 

Gradually progressing....

Checking every cable position multiple times. I don't want smoke from my motherboard when improperly placed.

Rebending the barbs back to their original positions, needed to place them back in the connector.

Next time the cable connector will be assembled.

 

Thanks to my sponsors!

[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

 

Cable Connector

 

 

My last post progress was the preparation for the cable connector. In this post the cable connector will be moved into place.

 

So first cables through the first part.

Then placing the second part with help from the wooden dowels.

Preliminary assembly of the cable connector. The first bolt keeps the two sides together. The remaining three bolts are used for the strain relief.

Moving the cable connector into place.

Moving the cables from the connector into place.

Three different sleevings in a row:

1) glass silk insulation sleeve (silver, very smooth and dense, but tendency to fluff) for the fans and switches,

2) NZXT sleeving, made of PET (open structure, rigid) for the motherboard pins and

3) BitFenix sleeving, made of cotton (?) (coarse and dense structure, slight tendency to fluff) for the 24 + 4 pin cables.

Gently adjusting each cable. When finished, tightened the three remaining bolts for the strain relief.

PSU void is quite full.

 

 

Thanks to my sponsors!

[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

Laser cutting & sleeving

 

Meanwhile MDPC has delivered some extra sleeving. But this was too thick.

 

I still have some glass fibre insulation left to use for this cable. In the picture below it's almost finished. Only the connector needs to be placed.

All cables done!

 

I've produced a new laserbatch for the coverings. 

 

The top and bottom outside panels are glued together. The bottom outside panel will be build as follows:

 

 

Two panels are glued together by a third panel due to the limited working envelope of the laser cutter. This extra panel also holds the acrylic panel in place. The two panels need some hand milled pockets to place the magnets. In the below picture the panels are placed (not glued) on top of each other.

As you can see in the pictures below there still needs some sanding to be done. Some brown laser marks are still visible.

After sanding I glued the panels together. Also lightly sanded and cleaned the neodynium magnets in preparation for glueing with a hot glue gun. The latter was not a good idea though ...

I found out after fixating the magnets in the side walls. Hot glue does not fixate well on the (Ni-Cu-Ni) coating. After removing and placing the side panels several times the magnets came loose! Besides, I did not read the users manual, which states: Do not heat neodynium magnets! (actual max working temperature <60 degrees Celcius) I'm happy the magnets are still strong. Removing the hot glue, cleaning the wood and fixate now with epoxy glue. After hardening the magnets are finally fixated well.

 

OK, let's go on with the placement of the panels; a few pockets in the panels needs to be made to accomodate for the magnets. (The side walls already have recessed pockets, since the outside was CNC milled.) The front a back wall of the casing also need some extra recessed pockets. So printing a 1:1 scale production drawing and cut to size.

Placed the paper on the back wall.

The top panel is already glued and the recessed pockets are milled by hand.

A small error in the top left corner, but not in sight (it's on the inside). The DW logo is not a watermark, but real engraving lines on the wooden surface.

Lasered the window, painted it et voila!

 

Till next time!

 

 

Thanks to my sponsors!

[Jorrit Scharloo 4]

 

Photoshoot!

 

 

Forgot to attach the window photo's:

 

Thanks to my sponsors!