The cutting was very messy and covered my entire kitchen in a thick layer of acrylic dust. The actual clean-up took about five times longer than the actual cutting did! Oh, how we suffer in the name of modding!
When all of the above was said and done, I had a compartment to fill with hardware. I did a quick test with the mainboard and an old, dead hard drive just to get a feel for how the layout would be before going any further.
This was by far the worst stage of this project. I had to get each layer of acrylic exactly the same, that meant I had to get a little bit...creative.
First of all, I didn’t own any sander that could handle the job I had planned. So, the first thing I had to do was to go out and buy myself a belt sander. After that, I nailed two kitchen chairs together and hung the sheets between the chairs. I used a threaded rod through the centre and some nuts to keep the sheets in place. Then I just spun the acrylic and held the sander to the edge. Clever, no?
I actually thought that the mess made by the cutting was as bad as it could get...but damn I was wrong!
The sanding seemed to go on forever and there really was an awful lot to do. Every time, as soon as I thought that the process was finished I'd find a new little thing that had to be fixed.
When I sanded the inside I could only use the beltsander for a very small part and I ended up using sand paper and files instead. At this stage I also drilled the four holes and inserted the four threaded rods that would keep this case together.
In the above picture, you can see the rough-sanded case. At this stage I also tried out the planned ventilation. Although the Epia doesn’t get very hot, I felt that it would be best to be able to move some air through the case, which I achieved by adding spacers between some of the layers. It’s a very simple but effective way to get some fresh air in there.
I cut away the "bottom" portion of the sides from 8 layers to give access to the mainboard connectors. I also made one more disc from 4mm aluminium at this time since I noticed that this case would become rather heavy and the 5mm acrylic would not be enough to securely fasten it to the wall. I forgot to take any pictures of this,so you just have to imagine me cutting a 50x50 sheet of 4mm aluminium into a disc shape and painting it black.
Since not all the hardware needed to continue with the case was immediately available to me, I decided to make a table stand instead. The pentagram is supposed to be wall-mounted, but since it was going to be displayed at Dreamhack Winter 2007, I needed some way to show it off at our booth without having to put it up on the wall.
I had a ton of scrap pieces left over from when I cut the discs, so I decided to use them to make the display stand for the rig. That way, it would match the theme as well. So, once again, I had a lot of cutting to do in order to get all the pieces I needed.
The stand ended up being made from sixteen big pieces and eight smaller ones, plus some tubes and a couple of decorations.
This is why it always pays to keep your cut-offs and excess materials - a little extra effort can turn your waste into something which is actually rather snazzy.
After spending what seemed to be eternity cutting the same pieces over and over again, I finally had all the pieces I needed and could clamp the legs together to see what it would look like. The legs had to be really sturdy, because the case weighs quite a bit. Also, since its going to be on display at Dreamhack, it had to be stable enough that no one would bump in to it and send it flying to the floor. Such things are more common than you'd think, unfortunately.
Now it was on to more sanding, and that meant removing the 4 rolls of masking tape from all the pieces. That left the largest pile of used masking tape I have ever seen.
The final step was to connect the two finished legs. To do this, I drilled holes through all the pieces and fit two acrylic tubes through. Then I used super glue to glue the leg layers together and added a green acrylic tube in the middle just for the hell of it. The stand was still not sturdy enough for me to trust it, so I used a threaded rod through the bottom tube and fabricated a couple of pentagram shaped end pieces and some nuts to give it that final bit of strength.
The final product on display. The left is without UV light, and the right is with some nice UV glow running through.
For a pentagram PC, this story has been surprisingly pentagram free up until now - but all that is about to change. After all, it's not much of a pentagram HTPC if it doesn't have a pentagram, right?
The pentagram itself would be made from 36 pieces of acrylic. Why so many? Well, it would be a pretty boring mod if all I used were five simple pieces, right? The modder in me screamed to try something as elaborate as possible and all I could do was obey.
I chose a detailed, intricate design that could make good use of my recently acquired Dremel Scrollstation. To accomplish this, I decided to use many small pieces of UV green plexi over a black plexi base.
To start off, the acrylic was masked off much like I had done with the circular pieces before. Once each piece was taped, I began to sketch the designs. Then, each individual triangle was cut and sanded to create the final result.
With the pieces masked off and the design planned out, it was time to start cutting.
I first cut the black base parts of the pentagram, and then cut paper templates of the other parts to be able to get a feel for the finished product and to give me a chance to play around with different layouts and designs. After a few hours of trying stuff out (I'm easily entertained), I finally decided on the design I wanted and started cutting.
Here we can see how the pieces are starting to come together more and more to form a UV-glowing green pentagram. The effect with the UV lights turned on was quite simply stunning and made my "modder's nerve" tingle like crazy. It took a whole lot of very boring work to get all of the pieces cut and sanded, but it was sure worth it.
In order to attach the pentagram pieces to the front, it needed to be a flat surface. However, this is trickier than it sounds - the nuts used to attach the front plate to the rest of the body are 5mm thick, and so is the acrylic!
In order to fix this little problem, I took a hacksaw to the nuts - translate that as you would like, ouch! I then cut them down to about a third of their original size and recessed them into the plexi. Problem solved!
Now it was time to get started on fitting the actual hardware to the case. I didn't include the specs in the intro, so here's the full scoop.
The hardware for the Pentagram HTPC is as follows:
Of course, so far all I have is a cavity and a bunch of parts. That means I'm going to need to look into some mounting methods for, well, all of it. So, lets get started...
To mount the mainboard, I just cut another acrylic piece in the same dimensions as the board itself, then attached some spacers to it. Then, I used plenty of super glue to affix the whole assembly to the bottom of the case.
The hard drive plate was made in the same way, but since I had to be able to remove the drive I used bolts to fasten it instead of super glue. I also added some some rubber spacers to the HDD mount in order to eliminate vibrations from the drive.
When the mainboard and hard drive were mounted, it was time to start getting the rest of the stuff in there. I was planning on using remote controlled power and reset buttons, so I needed to fit the PCB for that and also some additional cooling. I also needed a backplate to get some additional USB ports, the power connector, antenna mount and a backup power switch in case the remote fails.
I took a piece of 1mm aluminium, mapped out the holes I needed and started to drill and file like the crazy Swede I am. I didn’t put much work into the power switch (as you can clearly see), its just a small peg that sticks out at the back - but since it wont be visible, that’s just fine. I drilled holes for the antenna mount for the remote system and a hole for the Pico PSU DC adapter.
To provide some additional cooling, I used a fan ramp from a Corsair dominator kit. This was the perfect solution - it had the right size and just enough airflow to keep the very cramped insides cool. The remote control PCB comes from a Logisys remote multi-function panel that I tore to pieces when I made my Puzzlebox 2.0 case. I used a piece of aluminium profile to hold the fans and remote PCB in place.
Finally, I cut a hole in the back to fit the back panel and hooked up all the cables. As you can see, it is a tight fit - but it does fit, and that’s the important part.
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