Mod of the Month - January 2008

Homemade Alu Case

by legoman666
Worklog

For those of you who are newer to the forums, you may not know that much of legoman666. Sure, he wanders the forums and interjects helpful commentary here and there – but you'd have to have been around to see his last project in 2004, which even made mention on our front page.

Well, he's back – and once again doing us Ohio boys proud. This time, he's ditched the hardwood and gone for an aluminium construction that is all his own, coming complete with copper highlights. And, as history repeats itself, he's once again doing a meticulous job that is both well measured and well executed.

Now, if you're reading along and not just looking at the pictures, I have a note here. Go and look at legoman666's worklog. No, seriously, look at it. His worklog is one of the best that I've ever seen – all updates are linked to the first post, so you can quickly navigate. All pictures are sized equally at 800x600. Logs like this are a joy to read through and easy for people like myself to get a good look at your project. If your log doesn't look like this (read: most of you reading this), take note.

Anyhow, let's go back to the project at hand...


The frame for the project has been made by hand using aluminium bars. Each hole was drilled and tapped, and the braces countersunk to hide the screws. It's a bit of an "industrial" look, and very clean.



The aluminium panels are getting attached using black hex-head bolts, creating quite a contrast to the smooth silver exterior. Note the care – legoman666 has kept the panel taped up through his fitting and drilling process to prevent scratches. This tape won't leave until after all work on the panel has been completed – not just the initial cutting. After the outer panels were fitted, it was time to add the motherboard tray, which was created using the same method as the frame.



Don't think that cooling has been left out or that it would be bog standard – legoman666 has taken on some helpful sponsorship from Danger Den and dropped in a 360mm radiator, which fits snugly along the top of the project. Though he couldn't create a radiator by hand, he did create the reservoir – it's gone through a couple revisions, but this one is the current "final" design.



The latest addition to the project has been the hard drive mounts, which place the drives vertically at the back of the case. Again with the small details, legoman666 has made sure to add rubber strips to dampen the noise and vibration.

Of course, all of this ignores the copper accents, which have been starting to find their way into the project piece by piece – I figure you can take a look through legoman666's worklog to find those, as well as find out what else he does in future updates.

In the meantime, if you think that this well-designed case has what you want to see as Mod of the Month, then make sure you vote for Homemade Alu Case in the forum!