Prototype Hardwood ITX Case Monitor Stand Style

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I did but decided I liked the look of the butted joint better. That way the bottom joint mirrors the top when the lid is on. There are dowels supporting the butts.

one possible future change is moving from aluminum to steel for internal support. The rear panel gives rigidity to the side panels, but unfortunately, the aluminum is too flexible to provide the same and the front edges of the side panels bow out a bit as a result.

Unfortunately only I only have the tooling to work with aluminum.

 

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Finishing complete! For all intents and purposes, the prototype is done Time to move into component install and testing (still waiting for the PCI riser cable), but before that more pictures...

The floating panel was the last piece to complete and the fit is almost perfect.

The mounting mechanism worked exactly as designed and once all the pieces are together the whole front assembly becomes very rigid. Here you can see the knurled screws and wood spacers that keep it all straight.

And finally the brushed finish for the aluminum pieces. I thought it came out pretty good, though there is a lot of improvement to be made for the next iteration.

All and all this met all my design goals and I am happy with the result. The real lesson from this build is precision, or rather I need to get some into my production processes. Most things that have to fit into something else or meet a strict layout requirement like screw hole locations are off by a mm or more. Nothing so bad that it's unusable, but several components like my power supply and motherboard won't be able to use all their screw mounts.

A bad craftsman blames his tools, so instead of blaming my CNC machine, I will blame my ability to calibrate it correctly. This is the source of most of the inaccuracies between plans and products. I have a few ideas on how to bring my machine up to the required accuracy.

In any case, ideas and suggestions are welcome!