From left to right: Vice, hammer, markers, de-grouting bit, drill bit, centre punch, files. Below: Pliers. Top: calliper, right-angle-thingy
Drill with de-grouting bit.
Riveter, rivets
Micro-vacuum cleaner & motherboard.
So you want to make one yourself? Well, go ahead! It's not very hard. I've tried to document how I
made mine, but because I didn't think of making this doc before I was nearly finished I haven't got
any blueprints or anything, just a few pictures.
If anyone should be following these instructions, I would appreciate an email how you got
along, and possibly a picture of your case.
Here's a few numbers you should consider before starting:
Price:The raw material should be somewhere between 25 - 50¤, depending on what kind of metal you will be using and how much small parts you already have anyway. The tools are quite expensive, though - so if you haven't got any of them, I recommend borrowing whatever you can get.
Time:It takes quite a while to complete your box. I didn't time myself, but I would reckon about 10-12 hrs. Of course, it depends on how good you are.
Size:My box is the minimum size for a medium motherboard and a mini power supply: 40x25x14 (cm).
You can make it a lot smaller using micro-motherboards. You could even use an external power supply.
First of all, get all the stuff you need - it's very frustrating having to stop in the middle
of your efforts just because you haven't got xyz.
Sadly, you can't buy these. But then, creating a shoe box case doesn't require a lot of skill anyway. You should be able to:
You need:
From left to right: Vice, hammer, markers, de-grouting bit, drill bit, centre punch, files. Below: Pliers. Top: calliper, right-angle-thingy
Drill with de-grouting bit.
Riveter, rivets
Micro-vacuum cleaner & motherboard.
For the computer:
At the top left, you can see the switches, the LEDs and the speaker connected to the motherboard.
Note the tiny NIC in the first PCI slot: It's panel has been screwed off.
The main 'ingredient' is the metal. There are lots of different kinds. I don't recommend using anything
thinner than 1mm or thicker than 3mm. Still, there's a big difference between 1mm and 3mm! Here's a short list of
pros and cons:
| Thick metal | Thin metal |
| Hard to process, takes a LOT longer to prepare | Easy to process (cut, file..) |
| Looks better | Easily gets scratched & stained |
| More stable | Easily dents and bends |
| More tight (better HF insulation) | Worse HF insulation |
| More expensive (approx. 30¤ a sheet) | Cheaper (~ 18¤ a sheet) |
All right, you need:
OK, got everything? Then let's go...
The first step is planning and creating the layout. Do this thoroughly. It will save you a lot of effort later if you do this right.
Start by mentally positioning the motherboard and the power supply (PS). In my case, I had the following restrictions:
You can see: the PS at the left, right next to the CPU and the motherboards power connection. The air holes are
underneath the wires in the right-hand side.
The hard disk can be mounted to the lid, there's enough space above the RAM (top left) or even
above the PCI slots, if I don't use any very high cards.
Of course, this is how it looked afterwards, you will have to do this designing without the box.
Once you've done this, calculate the dimensions of the base surface. In my case, it was 40x25 cm. My PS was 13 cm high, so I had to make the whole thing slightly taller.
If you're an expert with processing metal, this won't be interesting. However, here's a few hints on how to handle your tools and what not to forget:
Drill from the outside. When you're drilling the metal, the side your drill's coming out will fray - that's what you need the de-grouting bit for. Still, the side you drilled into will usually look better - so put the other side inside whenever possible.
Saw from the top. The same applies to using the jig saw - the side facing you while sawing will always look better than the other one. But then, you have to file jig saw cuts anyway, so that doesn't matter that much.
Never cut without a margin. Or: always cut out pieces slightly bigger than you need. You can always correct the size with a file.
A jig saw blade has a width. This sounds stupid, but after dealing with higher maths for more than a year where lines always have null-width, I forgot this: So don't cut through two adjacent pieces if you need them both - at least one of them will be too small.
Be precise. I know, this is an annoying piece of advice and I didn't stick to it more often than I should. But especially if you're new to processing metal you will find things don't always work out as planned - so working precisely at least stops you from having useless bits of metal 2mm too short.
Try everything before. Drill at least one hole before doing it in a critical position, cut at least one cut.... etc. Don't do anything without having tested it beforehand.
Get rid of all muck. This means: de-grout and file everything. Don't leave bits of sharp metal hanging around. Clean out metal splinters before applying electricity.
OK, so you've got the dimensions. Now you have to cut the metal into the right shape.
Of course, you can't cut a box from a sheet of metal - you have to make several parts and then
put them together.
There are several different methods to do this: You can cut one big piece and fold it together
like a cardboard box. Or, you can cut three pieces: One with the ground surface and two walls plus
two seperate walls. Or you can simply cut out each surface (ground + 5 walls) and then put them together.
I. A single piece.
Note the flaps at the smallest wallst, they're for connecting the sides once they're folded.
The metal needs to be folded three times, once at every line.
The dimensions are easy:
The ground surface is simply the dimensions calculated above, so is the height.
The best width for the flaps is ~2cm.
+------------------+
___ | | ___
/ \| |/ \
+----+------------------+----+
| | | |
| | ground surface | |
| | | |
| | | |
| | | |
+----+------------------+----+
\___/| |\___/
| |
+------------------+
II. Three pieces
/+------------------+\
| | | |
\| |/
+------------------+ +----+ +----+
/| |\ | | | |
| | ground surface | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
\| |/ | | | |
+------------------+ +----+ +----+
/| |\
| | | |
\+------------------+/
III. Five Pieces
+------------------+
| |
| |
+------------------+
+------------------+ +----+ +----+
| | | | | |
| ground surface | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
+------------------+ +----+ +----+
+------------------+
| |
| |
+------------------+
Next comes a fiddly part: Inserting the holes for the motherboard connectors. This is what you want:
Note the six motherboard connectors: Some of them have red insulating tape on them. I just put the
motherboard onto the metal (ports slightly overlapping the edge) and marked the positions of the holes.
Then, I drilled a hole at every marker and filed it into a small square - just big enough to clip a motherboard
connector into the metal.
However, this is not very precise and I ended up with 4 of the 6 holes being slightly off target - that's
why they're covered with tape, I can't use them anyway.
Perhaps you can get a template for the holes, their distance is standardised anyway with ATX motherboards.
There's two things left before you can put the case together: Holes (for power supply, air,
switches, ports...) and folding. So what do you do first?
The obvious answer is to do the holes first, because it's a lot easier to cut them while the metal
is still flat. But then, it's a lot easier to mark the holes precisely when it's folded, and folding
metal with holes is a bit riskier.
It's your choice, again.
This is where I had to cut some holes:
You can see holes for the PS, the ports and the NIC. The fourth hole is covered, it's at the right.
Four holes for 2 switches and 2 LEDs, airholes to the left.
This is a tricky part, too. Again, you have several opportunities: You can either put the panel straight
into the case, or you can make an extra panel and just cut a hole. The former looks better, but is a lot
harder to get right - you might end up messing up your case. The trick is to get the panel into exactly
the right position.
The latter is easier and fool-proof. That's why I chose that way!
In any case, you have to make a template before making your panel. The best is to use a commercial case and a piece of cardboard and simply trace it. You can then use this template to draw the edges of the 'portholes' (ho, ho) onto your case.
My port panel. It takes a lot of patience with a file to complete!
If you choose to make an extra panel, wait until the case is finished before putting it in - that way you can make sure it's exactly at the right position.
I used extra corner fittings. If you want to do this, cut them out now.
If you've folded everything, cut out all the holes and made sure everything is done right you can start putting the case together. Basically, all you have to do is to drill a hole and put in the rivet.
The parts
Here the same parts including the sides.
Inside corner, before putting in rivets.
The corner from the outside, after putting in rivets
The finished case. You can nicely see the holes in the back.
A nice case needs a nice lid. Fortunately, this is the easiest part. All you need is a sheet of
metal the size of the ground surface, plus 3-4cm at two opposite ends to make a decent edge. I folded
these 3cm and put fittings on the other two sides.
Finally, I put a HDD rail underneath the lid. I simply used some scrap metal I had lying around and folded
it 4 times. A 3,5" HDD case is ~10.5cm in diameter (not 3.5", that's just the disk itself). Make sure you
make holes to screw the HDD to the rail, they have to be exactly opposite! If you have an HDD lying around,
just try it before you do any unnecessary calculations.
The parts, including the HDD rail.
The complete lid, from the top...
...and from underneath.
The HDD rail close up.
As mentioned earlier, you don't have to know anything about electronics. This is just about
putting in the switches and the LEDs.
First of all, you have to prepare them. This means you have to solder the switches, the LEDs and the speaker
to the connectors (Technical note: I'm pretty sure you don't need extra resistors for the LEDs, I checked the
current coming from the pins and got 20 mA - that shouldn't ruin your LED. However, I'm not sure).
Next, plug them in - finished. Consult your motherboard manual on how to plug them in.
Check the polarity is right - the speakers and the switches don't care which way they're plugged in, but
the LEDs do. Usually the '+'-connection is marked on the motherboard, but if not it's usually the left one
looking from the side they're plugged into.
If everything worked, you can have a test run - connect your motherboards power supply, the switches and the
LEDs and definitely the speaker, switch on the power supply (nothing should be happening yet) and then push
the power button (now something should happen). If the CPU and the power fan start to spin, the power led
starts to glow and the speaker beeps, it seems everything's OK.
Note: If you haven't put a VGA in, your speaker will probably beep more than normal -
that's simply an acoustic error message saying 'You don't have a VGA'. If you want to permanently use this
computer without VGA and keyboard (like me), you will have to boot it at least once with both and disable
the error messages in the BIOS.
Here I'm doing a test run with VGA to see everything's alright.
Well, that's it! There's a few odd jobs left: