—19 7 07
I had some time tuesday to get some milling out of the way.

-had to cut a notch to accommodate the frame rail on the motherboard backplate.

-and another set of notches on the tank mounts. This will make it easier to line up for glue.

-I had some scrap I thought I’d add to the on switch tube. I added some holes.(Did I mention I LIKE the new mill bit? Is it obvious yet?)

-Making the hole for the on switch. This is a post that will sit behind the big marble. I started with 4 tiny holes in each corner…

-Then cut out the center with the 1/4″ mill bit. (It really is handy…) After this I filed the corners out a bit. When I dug the switch out I realized it was larger than I thought it was.
90% of my mistakes come from trusting my memory. My memory is so bad I forget that my memory is bad.-what?

-Today I bored the hole out with a little dremel bit. High drill speed, slow feed, and lots of water. Next I drilled the rest of the way through the block with a slightly smaller bit. (for the wires.)

-After some filing the switch fits.

-In the afternoon something amazing happened. I got my freaking Futurlec order that I purchased on May 16th!!!!!
Odd that the 1st thing I ordered was the LAST thing to arrive.

-Some stuff from Xoxide showed up too. An 80mm Swiftec radiator, 120mm fan, and a 80mm fan. I bet you were wondering if I would ever get some hardware. -And YES I know the Chinese knock-off fans are loud. I like $2 typhoons…

-With the magic of photoshop I can show the layout that would let me add a 2nd radiator, should I need it.

-Back to the on switch… Here I abuse the countersink bit again.

-An OLD friend. The buffing rig. I need to change the belt on it, -it’s older than I am, and pretty frayed.

-Mostly finished and partly polished switch mount. I need to figure out how much of the back to cut off now.
—21 7 07

-I put together a wall wart/LED nightlight the other day. It freaked me out by lighting up while unplugged! I’m not showing my soldering work…My hands shake pretty badly, and it shows.

-Glued the backplate to the case back I made a pretty big mess of it in the process. The solvent was drying faster than I could apply it.

-I screwed up somewhere, now I’m missing 1/4″ from one side. The plate is one I kept from an old rig for modding.

-I had to set the saw up to fix the backplate, so I made a jig to cut some discs.

-It worked really well.

-I started the milling of the backplate holes by drilling small holes in each corner. These will help me find my position when I flip the board over to cut the countersink. They will also help me square the corners later.
Note the ugly splice at the bottom of the pic.:(

-Milling was/is (I’m not done) a pain. Everything is covered in blue-pink fuzz. It’s like I’m grinding up the easter bunny! This rig ws used to cut Hypno-Toad, only without the cross-slide vise or a proper bit. I actually hand fed that booger and cut it with a dremel bit.

-I have all kinds of clearance issues, and the vibration required me to tie everything up with rubber bands. 8 vises make one hell of a racket otherwise. It’s a good thing I was using saftey goggles, because the rubberbands were breaking constantly.(and hitting me.)

-Don’t you hate it when that happens. It’s 1/2″ away from being completely done here.

-Some repositioning and I’m done…Flip over and continue on side b…

-Starting the countersink cuts…tomorrow.
—23 7 07

-I finally cut through the backplate. The bit jumped a lot, so I needed to do some heavy sanding.

-After polishing…

-Started putting some stuff together. This is my half finished tank and hardrive bay sides.

-I found that a good way to break plexi was to drill out a pre-existing hole. I was very carefull and managed to not make this part explode. It also helped that I drilled as slowly as possible.

-I oncw thought it was impossible to tap plexi properly. Recently I read TribalOverkill recommend vasoline for tapping. -it worked great. Messy, but great.

-Finished, tapped, & capped.

-Just finished up gluing the hd bays down. Notice anything wrong here? I should have.

-I put the hd bays on facing the wrong direction. I really shouldn’t do this stuff while half asleep. Now I need to drill new cd mounting holes, and hopefully the base mount holes will match up reversed…
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