Dark Crystal

BUILDING THE CASE

OK, here we go...

First stage - The case’s front panel.


Cut out parts of wood and acrylic and assemble them with bolts and screw nuts. The wood I used is pine of 22mm X 22mm section. The pine is a tender wood able to be cut and sandpapered very easily. The acrylic is 6mm thick which I recovered from the shielding of my father’s store shop-window.


It was necessary to drill holes to pass the bolt shank very precisely in order to be able to easily pass through all the sections. I thus drilled the wood and acrylic at the same time so they all correspond perfectly.


Once all was in place, I put a screw nut at each side of the bolt stems and I tightened them as much as possible in order to make the nuts sink into the wood. I then cut and filed the excess length off the bolts so that the stems and nuts are not apparent any more. Then I repeated the same operation for the top of the case and I thought of making the rear case in the same way but the number of cutting for the exits (PSU/motherboard connections/ventilator…) did not allow it…


Then I continued the front face by cutting out the openings of the blowholes, LCD and slot-loading DVD. To do that I used a jigsaw. The great difficulty was not breaking acrylic parts because I wished to use them as grills for the front fans.


Here is the result after light sandpapering to the countour-line.



I did the same work for the LCD’s opening just like for the DVD drive slot opening.