Another concern my friend brought up is the panel heating up during laser cutting and thus having it's structural integrity compromised...
Anyways, I think it's worth a shot, for sure. Probably won't use it immediately though since I want to use normal screws etc.
Thanks for the insight on screw tolerances and it being quite loose on the fan, that's interesting... two levels of offset! screw to panel and screw to fan
I don't know enough about manufacturing so I will defer to your expertise. It does sound like it is likely to be not manufacturable.1. This goes against design guidelines of using at least 1T material spacing. Most guides I've seen recommend 1.5T to 2T where T is the material thickness. T in this case, would likely be 1.1 mm to 1.6 mm.
2. Secondly, comparing a removal process (punching or lasering cutouts) to combining strands for more tensile strength is kinda silly. The proper analogy in this case is adding bends to sheet metal increases the tensile strength like combining strands to form a rope.
3. Finally, if you increase the thickness, you actually have to increase the distance between holes. Thicker materials requires more force to punch out materials, which causes more deformities if you don't leave enough materials. If you're lasering, increasing thickness makes the cut more difficult, as the laser must go slower. At that point, you cause more deformities and lose edge quality. The more holes you have, the less likely you will use laser, as you will incur a lot of machine time cost.
@arturbecker seems we've covered all the possibly hole spacings. They're all just X integers of 20/X. The 5mm will get you a symmetrical layout but is not feasible to manufacture.
The best is go with 6.56 mm slot/oblogs/rectangles in my opinion.
Concerning design-wise, the areas where it would be beneficial to have a symmetrical look, you don't want to mount your components. Having visible screws break up a clean pattern/feature. Where you should mount them, I think being symmetrical doesn't really matter as it would not be visible. You can get away with adding S bends for strength and having large cutout for better airflow. Here is how fractal does it for example.
Oh yeah, at our somewhat philosohical dsscent into fan hole spacing I didn't quite think about the appearance of the screws. I guess here's a point where custom hardware (i.e. black pan head allen screws) is an option or maybe even a must
I will try to prototype a version of the slotted design since it suits my immediate requisites well now. However I came up with about 11~12mm slot length, care to explain why you'd think 6.56 would be ideal? Or is that horizontal pitch?
Probably I still cannot convince you about my idea, but here you go: 1.80mm AlMg3, no magic involved
Also did a quick FEM with DC01 and SUS304. With steel you could decrease the thickness to 0.80~1.00mm and with stainless steel down to 0.60~0.80mm without any issues.
Probably I still cannot convince you about my idea, but here you go: 1.80mm AlMg3, no magic involved
Also did a quick FEM with DC01 and SUS304. With steel you could decrease the thickness to 0.80~1.00mm and with stainless steel down to 0.60~0.80mm without any issues.
