Custom enclosure

[MechCD]

I need to build a custom enclosure for me genome cube 1. Cube 1 consists of:

2 powersupplies
2 standard atx mobos
1 5 1/4 quantum bigfoot
1 3 1/2 maxtor harddrive

Right now cube 1 is sittin on a shelf under my fax machine. The shelf is 19in wide and 16in deep.

What would be a good material to make this system more quiet? Wood? What kind of wood? Lexan? This can't be expensive. I'm thinking wood is a good choice do to my low skillz in making stuff ;)

[pelligrini]

I'd agree that wood would be the way to go. ;)

I'ts much easier to fasten and work than plexiglass. I used some 3/4" plywood and some 1/8 oak plywood on these simple boxes (http://members.home.net/pelligrini/Layout1.jpg). I used some black coarse drywall screws for the fasteners. They were finished in a single coat of tung oil.

I was intending on gluing up some panels and dovetailing everything, but the oak plywood was a whole lot quicker, easier, and much cheaper.

I have messed with plexi a few times, but it is a real difficult. It doesn't like high speed tools. Trying to cut it with a table saw can be very frustrating. The material will fuse back togeather on the back side of the cut, and the molten plastic coming off the blade doesn't feel good on bare skin. Joining and bending pieces can be a challenge too.

[stall6g]

Lexan is a lot easier to use than Plexi since it will bend more so than Plexi making it easier to work with. It is more expensive than either wood or Plexi but imho it looks a little better also.

Pell did you leave the paper on the Plexi when you were trying to cut it? Never had a problem with it fusing like you stated but then again I am used to cutting it on industrial sized table saws. If you think that PLexi burns the skin cutting it on a table saw try Aluminum sheets. OUCH!!:eek:

[pelligrini]

I always thought lexan amd plexiglass were just different brands of the same product, learn something new everyday...

I was cutting it using a bench saw with a 7 1/2" fine tooth veneer blade. I tried some of my 10" blades but they made some really rough edges, but the plastic fusing on the trailing edges was not as bad. The stuff I was working with had a thin plastic film instead of the paper.

I could imagine how the alum. would smart a bit ;) I'd just love to have some proper tools so I could find out myself :D

[MechCD]

Ok, what i wanna do is like pell's nice stack of puters :) Except mine will be all horizontal, no verticl mountings. I always have trouble getting holes to line up when i mount large things (like mobos) vertically. If I could manage to get all 6 of the mbo holes lines up right, I just might put the mobos on the sides and the guts uin the middle

[pelligrini]

One thing you want to consider in your design is accessibility. My first ideas were to have the boards lying flat and just stacking the boxes. But after having to move around three AT boxes (http://members.home.net/pelligrini/Wifes1.jpg) to get at the ones below, I decided that wasn't what I wanted. The felt pads on the bottom let them slide forward easily. They have to, because two of them are sharing the same BIOS chip ;)

Those boards in the oak boxes aren't screwed down. There is one bracket (small block of wood with a slot down one edge) screwed to the side on the back edge of the board. The front edge is held in place by the protruding edges of the video and nic cards. The HD is just lying on the bottom too. The PS is not fastened either. The top of the box doesn't go all the way to the back. The casing of the PS is the back corner of the case. There is just another piece of thin plywood fastened to the back sticking up enough as to not block the exauhst to hold the PS in place. The top front edge of the PS rests against the 3/4" plywood top. It just slides right out the side. Three of the boxes don't have right sides either.

[MechCD]

Sounds like my current shelf:) nothing is held down, its all just laying there.

I don't really need an enclosure, but I imagine it would help quiet things down a little. Quiet GOOOOOOOD

[pelligrini]

That's one of the reasons why I built the boxes, they helped mask the noise a little, could have been better if the fronts weren't so open. They were mainly built so I could direct all the heat out the window.

[dezekiel]

If I remember Plexiglass is Acrilic, Lexan is polycarbonate.

Dan

[stall6g]

If you want to get rid of the rough cuts on Plexi just take a one of those propane torches to it and gentley apply heat and a very fine grit sand paper. If you do it right it will look as smooth as polished glass. No white hazines or saw tooth marks. Just a trick of the trade. Hmm I might build one sometime. Hemi built a really nice Plexi test bench here (http://www.pccritix.com/images/plexi-bench.jpg)

[MechCD]

Ok, i've started building one out of pegboard. Only problem is i ran out of right angle brackets and i'm almost out of pegboard. I might not have enough for the back