Project FiveWood - Complete!!

[cc3d]

Progress? Not much, but I did get my Sony D717 camera back.
This is a 4 year old 6 mb digital that is my favorite of all digital cameras.
I've been using a few others including 2 Canon 6mb and 8mb cameras, bit this Sony takes better pictures.
The CCD went out on it about two months ago. I checked the Sony website and found they were supporting a recall on this camera.

I sent it in and viola! They sent my camera back with a brand new body! So I did a few things to warrant taking a couple of pictures to post.

Here's where the 5.25" dirve bay stands now.




and the 3.5" drive bay (nothing is lacquered yet)



Here's a part of subproject "sunshine".
This is what I am building to test some ideas I have for a very important part of this build.

Can you guess what that may be?



more to come...

C

[jokkos]

I like it...and I love the new design of the front panel.

[true blue]

Nice i like it

[cc3d]

I've been kind of jumping around on things for this project. I've had to do a lot of little test items to see if my ideas will work.

Anyway, I decided to knock out the motherboard tray. Again, I am building a component without really knowing how this will mount into the case. I had planned to make it up as I go and this will work out fine I'm sure.

Here's the board I built from joining red oak and mahogany. I used my surface planer to get to about 0.20" thick.



I pulled out some polystyrene for making a motherboard template. When I was cutting these things with a waterjet, it required that I measured out the motherboard and make a CAD drawing to cut from. This time, I'm going analog.



I'm going to put an eVGA 780i motherboard in this build. I used my spare 680i to mark out the template. Both are standard ATX form and identical in almost every way physically.



Marked up polystyrene



Cut and drilled polystyrene



I marked it up for future use.



Marking up the wood for the cutting!



and here is the rough cut motherboard tray. I always leave a big hole behind the CPU so I can easily mount CPU cooling without having to remove the motherboard. After this step, I tested the strength of this tray before subjecting it to sanding and....



...I broke it in half! Alright! So, I'm gluing again. Oh well, that's why I tested it.

I also have a CALL FOR IDEAS: I am contemplating how I will connect the motherboard standoffs to this wooden motherboard tray. I've though of a couple of things that I don't want to do. Please let me know if you've got a good idea for it. Thanks.



I thought I'd take a moment to show off an old 'mod'. In my shop at home, I needed a computer. Why? I don't know, music, podcast, internet access, we always need a PC nearby right?!

Here is a shot of the monitor. I took an old 15 inch LCD I had and tore it apart. Right down to nothing but the screen and electronics. I had a frame I had made that fit it nicely. I then mounted it over this workbench.



I've got an old laptop (PIII 933 MHz with 512 Mb RAM) mounted below the workbench with an on/off switch extended out for easy access.




I took an old (yes, everything's old) keyboard tray/ monitor stand and extracted the drawer portion. I mounted this under my workbench so I can tuck it out of the way.



Viola!! It's nice to be able to have this running in there. I have it on a wireless NIC to get on my home network. Not exactly an extreme mod, but quite functional.



Alright, I'll have more progress soon.

C

[Problemchild49]

Nice job so far. I have also thought about making a wood case.

To mount your stand off's you could use a hex nut the that fits the stand off and counter sink it into the surface of your motherboard tray. I've had good luck using a slightly smaller round hole with a forstner bits ( if you can find one small enough ) and force fitting the nut in. I've only tried this with slightly larger nuts and it worked great.

[cc3d]

Originally Posted by Problemchild49

To mount your stand off's you could use a hex nut the that fits the stand off and counter sink it into the surface of your motherboard tray. I've had good luck using a slightly smaller round hole with a forstner bits ( if you can find one small enough ) and force fitting the nut in. I've only tried this with slightly larger nuts and it worked great.

Thanks, that's a good idea.

[cc3d]

Things are moving slow and sure.

I finished enough of the motherboard tray so that I could work out placement. I've still got to glue up the trim items and put the lacquer finish on it of course.



Here I'm just placing the trim items for reference.



I also began work on the bottom tray. This tray will have a wire path and air flow path below the 'false' bottom of the case.



I've just got things jumbled in here for fitting. Nothing glued.



If you're looking for Christmas and birthday gift ideas for me, I'd say that I never have enough clamps.



I started tracing out a back-slot panel, I am not sure why yet.



Here, I traced the back profile of the frame onto polystyrene, This lets me square up the back, clamp it down and then trace it.



Here's my reference for building the back panel.



A little razor action.



Here's the back panel blank I build. This has mahogany and walnut joined up.



A little glue and a little planing will make this work.



The trace out for the scroll saw.



Here's the trace out for the fan-mount panel for the top of the case.



and a little more razor action.




Here's a glimpse of the next mod. Just testing hardware right now. This is the guts of an old Dell. Runs well with OpenSUSE.



Thanks all and more to come.

CC

[Problemchild49]

Great work so far. I can't wait to see more.

P.S. never enough clamps, always one short.

[cc3d]

...and one more thing.

What are these strange spots in my red oak? Hmmmmm?

[cc3d]

Okay, I've been jumping all over the place. I'm still on target to get this project completed by the end of February. It'll be a push, but I won't have to be a hasty push.

Here's my plan for the top of the case. The top will have two panels. This will be the bottom-most panel.



This requires maple with holes. I couldn't find any maple with holes in it already, so I made my own.



I used the hole cutting bit to make the holes and here, I tried to use it to cut rings. Looks nice in this picture, but didn't turn out so well.



As seen on TV, I want to have a walnut stripe down the center of this panel. These fit well and it will show once I level everything.



I also headed back over to the frame to start figuring out how to mount the motherboard. This WILL work somehow.





Here, the motherboard tray is 'pegged' into place. I should be able to mount the motherboard tray without glue. (That's a good thing)



And while I was at it, I decided to trim up the top panel on the band saw. While doing so, the brand new blade I installed went BOOM!



Here's a sight you don't want to see. That's my blood on the blade. When breaking, the blade must have whipped over a wnet into and back out of my ring finger. This happened so fast that I almost didn't know it happened. That was until I felt the pressure and saw this nice set of 14 mm lacerations on the end of my ring finger.



Enhanced by a lot of drippy blood!



I would like to show you a picture of the lacerations, but I HAD to leave before I could take any pictures. Plus, my other hand was busy applying pressure to the wound. After a trip to the doctor and a half dozen stitches, I'm back to normal. Well, actually I've got this big dumb bandage on my finger and it is begging to get caught in some other piece of equipment.



I practice safety strictly in my shop. You just have to. Shit does happen. Safety glasses are a pain to keep up with, but so are seeing eye dogs. Gloves get in the way, but can be the difference between bad lacerations and accidental dismemberment.

While this wound was certainly no life-changing injury, it did occur to me how close I may have come to losing a digit there. I love every digit on my hands. I play guitar and I play golf among many other things that require great digits. My first thought was to leave the band saw as is and make due with my other equipment for a while. So, I changed the blade on the band saw (I'm taking the other back) and finished trimming the top panel. I got it trimmed, but this friggin bandage sticks out like a sore ....thumb?! It is in the way. Anyway, I got right back on that horse.



Next time.



CC