Advice Custom SFF - Sanity Check & Questions on Fasteners

[SnoWFLakE0s]

Hi all,

I am currently working on a custom SFF case design. With my original design that required no risers, I was almost ready to go into production... but when I ran it through the shop techs, they suggested that while my design would be possible to fabricate, it would most likely be fairly difficult to get tolerances right. With that I went back to the drawing board to put together a new design that would have fairly relaxed tolerances, and swap materials from 0.05" Alu to 0.039" Steel to reduce material cost.

As you can see, it now has convergently evolved into the very boilerplate layout of most cases like these. Strong references were made to the Velka 3, but it has been upsized to fit an SFX PSU among other things. The frame of the case is built with steel extrusions/bent frames to ensure ease of fabrication, and potential tolerance-sensitive mounting points have used slots instead of rigid holes to ensure maximal leeway.

I originally thought to use wooden side panels as well, but upon further deliberation I decided against it. I was trying out designs for metal top & panels, but I am finding that this is rather difficult to do properly. My current thought is to implement a U shaped cover piece that simply wraps around the side and top faces and is riveted in to secure, but this feels like a bad solution.

My question is, is there a good way to design some easy-to-mount side & top panels?

 

[hrh_ginsterbusch]

My question is, is there a good way to design some easy-to-mount side & top panels?

Is it about the general design of the panels? Or the mounting mechanism?

For mounting, neodym magnets feel like an easy way out, and the other one being the classic screw / countersink hole approach with flat top screws.

Or another classic, the "slide in" / sled method, like what the Shiny Snake cases use: Small lengthy cut-outs on the case side, and small bent-out "tabs" on the panel top and bottom, to slide and hook into the case cut-outs.

Personally, for customization reasons, I prefer the simple classic screw approach.

For panel design itself, I'd go with seperate pieces instead of an u-shaped "slide over". Aside of customization reasons, I think another issue of those U-wrappers or shells are structural rigidity / integrity, which is why a lot of those "one piece" shells are so massive, eg. the Mjolnir cases.

Guess it depends what your goal is: Portability or just less space wasted

cu, w0lf.