[Professional] shinji2k's whiteOut

Here's a little taste of things to come. 

I could bore you with an intro, but let's dive right in. I got a good deal on some 3/8" and 3/16" white acrylic.

I attacked a sheet of 3/16" with the ol' circular saw. High TPI carbide tipped blades are a must for acrylic. 

Using a guide rail I cut out the piece for the outer shell. 

This piece will be bent into a U shape and will slide over the frame making the sides and top of the case. I made a bending jig and went at it.

With a heatgun, clamps and some patience I ended up with that. It's a bit oversized, but I wanted to make sure the main body of the case went according to plan before I cut the final size of the shell. I didn't really care what the radius of the bend was, so instead of trying to force it to a size I liked I played with a test piece and noticed to naturally wanted to bend with a radius of ~3/8". Some of you know of my past experience with bending acrylic to a specific curve and it's near impossible. Going with a radius the acrylic was comfortable with made this attempt a breeze.

Now for some hot table saw action.

The main body is 3/8" and will be glued together. I originally intended to screw everything together with 6-32 SS socket head screws, but even the 3/8" acrylic had a tendency to crack when trying to drill and tap a hole from the edge. Because of that I actually scrapped my first idea and came up with a simpler design.

Here's a quick mock up to give ya a feel for the look.

The shell should slide over the main body and with the help of a couple tabs for alignment it should just sit on top of the body without any fasteners. This is a very rough layout, much tweaking and trimming is needed.

I wanted this to be as compact as possible but still providing enough room for two large video cards and optimum airflow, all while having a minimal exterior. It will be housing my sig rig, so providing good airflow to the video cards was the first priority for me. That said, the internals of the case will have an unconventional layout but I don't want to spoil anything.  The outside dimensions are approximately 15" tall x 18" deep x 9.5" wide. It's not tiny but it's a little smaller than your standard mid-tower, except for width.

Drilled the holes with my nifty counter bore I picked up from McMaster.

Finished up the edges with a 1/8" round-over.

Here's an idea of where the PSU will go. The mount will be glued on to the walls towards the front of the case. I'll use an extension with a outlet much like the Lian-li PC-A05.

Needing to cut a 7" diameter hole in 3/8" acrylic I needed to make a template using the dremel and the circle cutter. I would have just used the dremel to cut the circles in the acrylic, but 3/8" thick acrylic was too much for the little thing.

A quick test fit after trimming the exposed edges with the 1/8" roundover. 

The plan is to have a large exhaust vent at the top of the case. The PSU will draw in air from the inside of the case and exhaust out the top. I know the right angle will cause some turbulence for air flow, but the sheer CFM of those fans should negate any issues. Plus I will have the help of convection and the video cards will get plenty of fresh air.

Next I fabbed up some mounts for the panel. The holes were tapped to 6-32.

These will glue to the walls of the case and the fan panel will screw into them.

I made up a template for the I/O cutout. 

To mount the I/O panel I tapped 6-32 holes about 1/4" into the back from the inside and secured it with 5/16" long socket cap screws.

Using the holes I tapped for the bracket, I secured the template to the back piece and did some trimming.

After the 1/4" round-over I'm left with...

Now it's time to work on the front. Cut out 3/4" holes for the vandal switches.

Found my slim DVD drive and mocked the placement up for it and the fan controller.

The fan controller is a Scythe Kaze Q, the PCB is all I need.

I tapped two more holes and mounted the fan controller to the back side of the mobo tray.

I tore down my gaming rig for a couple essential components to map out my cable management holes. Did a little mock up and marked down where I need to cut some holes.

Busted out my 1/2" rod for the fan controller knobs.

I chucked those pieces into the drill press and started sanding and shaping.

I was going to polish them, but after sanding down to 1000 grit they look pretty good so I'll probably skip that. I drill a small hole and used some permanent marker to make an indicator.

Next up is the hard drive mounts. I ordered a X-25M 80GB for the main drive and a 320GB 7200RPM, 2.5" WD Black for storage. I went with the small drives to be able to fit them behind the mobo. Here's the piece of 3/16" acrylic I cut for the mount.

Tapped two holes into the mobo panel to mount it.

Did a round-over on the edges and a polish to get a preview of how everything will look.

On to the DVD drive mount. Everything should be self-explanatory

I scoured the internet for days looking for some cable clips/clamps for wire management on the backside of the mobo panel, but after finding nothing I liked I ended up with a small piece of 1/8" acrylic.

It was a nice day out and since polishing is noisy, messy and I need lots of light to see what I am doing, I took everything outside. I'll be breaking out the big tools for this step. Here's what I need to polish.

When using overpowered tools like that for acrylic, you need a light touch and you have to keep moving. If you stay too long in one spot it's nothing but bad news. I am also using a white compound I normally use for polished aluminum. It cuts more than compounds like jewelers rouge people normally polish acrylic with so I finished this step in no time. It also helps to be thorough when sanding. I find when I use this method to polish, I only need to sand down to 400 grit which also speeds up the process. After an hour I've polished all the edges I can reach with my 9" angle grinder.

I tried to get some up close shots of the polished edges outside, but it is just too bright out.

Time to go inside and work on the small holes and the smaller pieces that couldn't be done with the big buffer. I find I need two different Dremel accessories to polish acrylic. The first step is to use the hard cone shaped one to buff out the sanding marks and then I follow up with a soft drum buff to shine it up.

This acrylic was on clearance at Delvies. It was apparently quite old and the paper is really hard to take off, they claimed it was near impossible. But I have a little trick.

Soak a rag in it and wipe the paper down. Wait a couple minutes and the paper backing comes right off. If you don't soak it in mineral spirits it will rip off in small pieces. I removed the backing and cleaned up a couple piece to get ready for gluing.

Weld-on #3 is my friend. All the strength of #4 but dries to a decent bond within a minute or two. 80% strength still takes a few days. Now to glue the rear panel on.

After I paint the mesh I will probably just glue it on. For now I will be experimenting with different paints. The gloss white looks a tad too white when put next to the acrylic, so I'm trying some various shades of white to hopefully find a better match. I fear even the lightest off-white will be too dark.

After the paint cured, the mesh panels were glued to the outer shell. I didn't really want to glue them, but that was the simplest method. Since my shop is dirty, I moved the case to my computer room for assembly and to do the wiring.

Here's the hardware installed.

Now it's time to work on the cabling. I purchased a fully modular PSU specifically for this case. That is because instead of individually sleeving each PSU wire white, I will make my own custom length cables using white wire and it being fully modular made this easier.

My wire, molex pins and molex crimper.

I wrapped the whole thing in heatshrink before sleeving. You'll also see some spade type connectors to attach to the jack, but I cut those off and just soldered them on.