Insolent Gnome

They have a submission form live now on the cmws landing page.

The rules page mentions a final submission form. Where is this or is this even a thing? "Submit your mod project between Aug 1st, 2022 to Dec 22st, 2022 by completing the final submission form (Opens Aug 1st, 2022) and attaching any additional documentation needed for the awards you wish to enter."

And now the finals.Thanks for checking it out!

Before I get to wiring I need to button up a few things. Power switches are always a good thing. I decided to mount these to the back panel and since I wasn't worried about them being fancy, used some extra surface mount switches from my last project.And then there was mounting the fans. The @#$%#$% fans. Ok it's my fault but what a pain. So while laying out the fans, I had a feeling that a measurement was off. I was thinking there was a half mm that I should be dealing with somewhere but wasn't for some reason. But I plowed on, finished the lay out and drilled them out. And then when I go to install the fans, I realized that my spacing was at 110mm for the screw holes instead of 105mm. The half mm measurement that I wasn't running into was for the 7.5mm in from the outer edge. Instead I came in 5mm and, welp, that doesn't really work. So two options, cut slots in the panels or cut slots in the fans. And though I didn't try to fit the case on the bandsaw, I'm gonna guess the fans were the waaayyyy easier option. So, custom modded fans...that means it's worth more, right?!!Now that the fans fit, the next mountain was the mountain of wires that come with them. LED fans are a nice touch, but the wires, ugh. And not having a motherboard tray to hide them behind, double ugh. So I mad a box to hide all my sins in. My sin box.6 wires go in and magically 2 come out. I'd tell you how it works, but it's against the law to divulge magic secrets.But for reals, I just needed a place to hide the wire mess to make it look cleaner so I didn't have to cut and solder a custom set.And then cut that set apart and re-do it cause I flipped a wire.And then it was the PSU cables. I decided to be trick and loop the wires outside the case. Loved the idea, hated having to do it. But first we need some wires.And some holes.This was the point at which I started cursing this idea. A 24 pin set later, I would decide that the CPU and the MB cables should swap because of how they layout on the PSU. Then after getting all the cables through the first set of holes and getting the two GPU cables(the 1070 is only an 8 pin, but I ran the second set for upgrades later) and the CPU cables back into the case through the second set of holes, I realized that the CPU cable was no longer capable of reaching the plug on the motherboard. FML. Needless to say, I wired this little "feature" like 2 and a half times.In order to keep the loops even, I used a little piece of 1/2" scrap pipe as a spacer. And if you look close, you can see my taped over tape for labeling the wire order, which kept changing.And I definitely hooked the cables to a tester to make sure I have them all pined right.And in the end she fired right up, no problems.So all that's left are the finals, and that's coming up next.

So this is the goal, obviously without the clamp.But before that, lets cut a bunch of holes in things!How about the top of the case? Yep, that needs a hole!And the door? Sure, why not.I decided a passive vent in the top of the case might be a good thing to help get rid of heat. No fans, but it's at least a place for hot air to escape. And all fancy door have windows, right?During all this cutting, my corded Dremel died and I was down to a cordless model, which, good in a pinch, not great for what I want. Soooo, I got a new tool. Sure it's a cheap Harbor Freight rotary, but it cost half what a new Dremel would and it's got a foot pedal for speed control. So nice and perfect for composite work.So hanging the fans so they float in the front of the case. Sounds cool, so naturally I'm gonna figure out how. Since the whole idea of the case is natural fibers and burlap is made from jute and they make jute rope, it only makes since to use it. But to keep the case from cutting the jute and keep the jute from breaking the case I was gonna need some grommets and a way of stringing the rope so that it didn't stress the edges.While I was at it, I also put in some eyelets and rope to dress up the top vent.The front panel was a little different because it was so thick. I didn't have eyelets that would go all the way through so I wound up gluing and eyelet in from both sides for basically the same result.I ran a loop of rope through the eyelets on the case first to give myself something to attach the floating panel too. The idea was to avoid having the rope loop over the edge of the case and snapping that front half inch off. Probably wouldn't be a problem with the bracing pieces in there, but better to not have to worry.Then I laced the floating panel to the loop of rope on the case. Let me tell you, fun times! But I like how it turned out. And any vibration from the fans is totally isolated, bonus!And for the windows in the door panel, I picked up a fancy piece of glass and went to town on it with some alcohol ink. After a lot of trial and error, I settled on a brownish orange that went well with the burlap.Then cut to size and glued in.So now we're getting close to the home stretch.

Well the front of the case is probably gonna have some fans mounted, so how am I doing that? Good question. First up, some different burlap. For this I went with black dyed rather than the natural color. Just for contrast.I did a hand layup, but this time no vacuum bagging since it's a flat panel and I'm out of bagging material.I had a wild hair and decided that I wanted a floating front panel.And then I laid out the fans, which I would find out I measured wrong, but more on that later, leaving a half inch for figuring out how to make this thing float in the front of the case. Sometimes it's just a bit of on the fly engineering!Burlap composite being what it is and needing something to attach the front of my door too, I decided to make some brace pieces for the front of the case out of the leftover black burlap panel. However I decided to hang the fans, I'm sure it's gonna try to bend the sides of the case and I'm just gonna nip that in the bud.The case is six layers of burlap and has some flex, but the black burlap panel is 8 layers and waaaayyyy heavier on the epoxy since I didn't loose as much to the breather cloth. These things aren't flexing. And there's that little strip where the front door mounts will be.As I was showing pics to some friends, I notice I had forgotten the fan on the back panel. Whoops! So I cut one in, and again, laid it out wrong, but yeah, later...Up next, the ultimate in fan isolation.

To prep the mold for the layup, I gave it a nice coat of wax to seal the foam and make everything easier to get apart. And then I got all my materials ready for vacuum bagging. Bottom layer of release cloth, because if you've fought a mold once, you'll take any advantage you can get.And with our breather cloth, vacuum bag and burlap ready to go.And now for some epoxy...crap I forgot the epoxy. Just kidding, I only forgot to take a pic of it.There we go. Entropy Resins laminating epoxy. 30% biobased which from what I gather means that 30% of the carbon in the resin comes from new biological sources, like from agriculture, rather than from petroleum. Not my normal go to, West Systems, but they have the same parent company, so lets give it a try.Since the hand layup and vacuum bagging is a bit of a rush though, I've got a before:And after:Now to let it cure up and we can see how it turned out. Not super impressive in the pics, but that's kind of due to the weave I think. The burlap soaks up a ton of epoxy, but with the open weave, it also looses a lot into the breather cloth. You don't get the nice smooth surface that you do with carbon fiber.But since this is burlap, it works. A super glossy finish like you'd put on carbon fiber would look weird here. It's burlap, they make potato sacks out of it. Its rough and rustic and has flaws and weird spots in the weave and that's the look I'm going for. I do kind of like it when perfection is the enemy, it plays to my strengths.Next up, making more than just a burlap tube.

First up was to figure out the layout and the size. I mean, it's usually good to know the direction you're heading before you start slinging epoxy around. I decided on an old school layout with the PSU up top. Just seemed different from the current norm and that's a space I like to occupy.I'm going to vertical mount the GPU to show it off, plus, it's just way easier to layout on a custom build.Next was size. I'm a fan of compact layouts and not wasting a ton of space on dead air and I just happen to have a Meshify C in my shop so I based the dimensions off that. Is that an MNPCTech poster trying to sneak in!?!So with size and layout figured out, it was time to figure out what I was gonna make the case out of. Flax fiber was my first choice because it seems to be the material that's leading the way as far as coming to market and if it's good enough for the wing on a race car, it'll probably surpass my needs. But since natural fiber is kind of a new thing, places you can buy a few yards are few and far between and that's if they have the weight you want in stock. And for flax, no luck. So I started looking at other possibilities. Hemp popped up, but once again, I couldn't find anything available other than a few fabric weaves. So while looking around the local craft store for mold materials, I decided to check out if they had any natural fiber fabrics that might work. I mean, linen is flax fiber. Most of the fabric was poly or a poly blend, but then I stumbled on their bolts of burlap. Yep, the stuff they make potato sacks out of. And dresses for Marylin Monroe. And, well, it would be interesting. So I picked up 16 yards of burlap.I wouldn't say it's the best candidate for composites. The weave is crazy open and the fiber is all over the place, but it might work. So I did some quick layups to test and figure out thickness. And you know, it wasn't half bad and had a very unique look.So lets get a mold built. I used pink insulation foam because it seemed like it would be easier at demold time than wood and it would be dimensionally stable under vacuum. Also, the epoxy not eating it up was a good feature.Glue all those together.Then smooth it out and put it on my new rotisserie. Figured I was gonna be wrapping the burlap around the mold, so being able to spin it was gonna make life easier.One nice thing about composites is there is quite a lot you can do with design since the material conforms. Only having a month and a half to get this done though, I decided to keep it simple. Chamfer the corners because sharp corners are the mortal enemy of hand layups.And I decided to glue some small acrylic squares onto the mold to give it a bit of flair.Next up, the layup!

I know right? Back so soon? But this year for the World Series, Cooler Master added a new category for best use of reusable materials. Which means, "– For this a large proportion of the build must be made from natural, bio or recycled material/items." I thought it was perfect timing because I had been mulling a case idea that fit perfectly into this.The general idea:A natural fiber composite case. While working on Carbon, I came across some stuff on natural fiber composites. Not as strong as carbon fiber(bout half as strong if I recall), but it was a really cool look; and being a renewable resource, something that I thought had a bright future. So I put the idea on the back burner because I was too far along on Carbon to change things out. Skip ahead to the middle of October when I was finishing Carbon, and there was just enough time that I might be able to knock out a natural fiber case before the December deadline.The hardware:Since this is a last minute personal build and the category we're shooting for is "natural, bio or recycled materials/items", why not use some recycled hardware?CPU: Intel i5 9600KMB: MSI MPG Z390 GAMING PRO CARBONRAM: 16GB HyperX Predator DDR4GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070PSU: Silverstone SX700-LPTStorage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB and 2TB NVME drivesFans: 3 Cooler Master MasterFan MF120 Halo and a random CM case fan I had laying around.CPU cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Black EditionYep, I did have to buy the new storage and cooler, plus I totally forgot to get a pic of the case fans.Next up, we'll start with the build.

And the final shots. I tried out my Pixel's portrait mode...worked pretty well. Better than me playing with f-stops on a real camera. It's already been to one LAN party and a note to self, lighter wood next time! Thanks for following along! Hope you enjoyed the build or at least learned from my follies!And one more huge thanks to GeForce Garage who helped make this build possible and helped me get my sanding game on point!

Before I get into the little tweaks to make this thing desk worthy for me, I did grab a pic of the pump housing after the chrome paint. If you remember, I said that Killer Chrome does a good impression of chrome on super glossy surfaces, but on textured surfaces, it's a good metallic look.Not flashy but it does match the board very well.And now the little tweaks. First up I was thinking about this build in competitions. It needs a name and a little stronger theme. I decided to cut the name down to Carbon seeing as most of the case is built from carbon materials, be it carbon fiber or the carbon in the wood. And to tie it together better I'm changing up the grills for competition purposes.For me, the tree grills mean a little extra and I think they're cool in my head, but for competing, I'm going with grills based on a graphene lattice. A simple lattice made of carbon atoms. It makes for a simple and more normal looking grill and you don't get much more on point with the Carbon name.But the silk silver PLA wasn't doing it for me, so I printed another set, smoothed them out with primer and went with a black ceramic engine paint. It just has a good sheen to it and now the spheres really show up.The next tweak was a breeze. Literally. It's fans.I was proud of my cheapy ring fan find, and they were pretty quiet too, but the LEDs were just too much in the case. So I went with one of my favs, the Noctua Redux.Granted they're better looking than the browns, but the frame color just looks off in the case. Since I had luck with the Killer Chrome before, I decided to try my luck again.And they came out with a sharp cast metal look that I really like!Since I was getting close to wrapping the case up and everything was working, I went ahead and dropped my drives in. A 512GB and a 2TB for the m.2 drives and an 8TB spin drive.It's definitely much calmer on the inside now. Matches the outside of the case better too!One thing that was bugging me though was the lack of light coming from the 24 pin cable. In my original design, I staggered the wires to keep the cable tight, but that wound up blocking all the lighting. So back to the drawing board.This time around, I went with an open, snap in design. I'm not feeding all those wires through again!But the closed combs bit me in the butt again trying to change them out. Not only was it a pain to get the wires in, but it was also a pain getting them out. I wound up cutting the combs off.It's a bit of a different look, but they work and I don't have to pull pins from a connector to add more combs if I want.As for the 24 pin, it wound up about the same overall size.And now I get a bit of light peeking through.I think that's all the changes I had for the build. I'm pretty satisfied with the final product so all that's left are some final shots which will be coming soon.Thanks for sticking around and also thanks to GeForce Garage for going along with a build that is a little off the beaten path from trendy.

So lets get the boring stuff out of the way so we can get to the cool stuff at the end of this update.Putting parts on the motherboard.I was gonna tape up the CM cooler so that I could paint the pump, but I got to looking at it, and the top pops off. Sweet.Not only did that make it easier to paint, it also gave me a spot to hide the wires so I didn't have to cut them down and put new connectors on.I didn't get a picture of the top after paint, but I painted it with Killer Chrome paint, which does give a good chrome finished on super glossy parts, but on parts with texture, it has a cool metallic look that matched the motherboard. So I went with it. I've got some other parts coming up that I painted with it, so you can see how it looks.Some things are coming together.I was ready to mount my switches but I needed to lengthen the wires and sleeve them with the reflective paracord I went with.I was gonna epoxy them down, but there was no real good way to hold them in place while it cured, so I used super glue. Hey, it works!And the wires ran right through my nice little inset on the bottom of the tub.Next up are some fans. Can I just say, WHAT THE :) IS UP WITH FAN PRICES??? $30 a fan and nothing was what I was looking for.With a bit of hunting I did find these and I like the look. Just a simple LED ring, one color, with the LEDs tied into the fan power so no extra wires. Almost perfect. Granted the LEDs will dim with the fan speed, but I can work with that.And 5 of them...$27. I got all I needed and an extra fan for less than one LED fan. Now I will let you in on a secret, I did change the fans out later for more expensive units(still not $30 a pop though). Not because they didn't work, but in this case with all the reflections, it got super busy so I went with non-LED fans.But getting down from my soapbox...one pair of fans got wired together for mounting on the AIO, the other pair, I sleeved the wires to run them behind the mb to their own fan headers. I mean, I've got like 4 extra headers, might as well use them.And with most of the hardware in the case. Looks pretty solid.While I was doing all this plugging things together, I decided to try something different on the fan grills. I like the look, but the foil wasn't the cleanest way. I debated going with a painted finish, but since I would have to print another set to paint anyways, I tried a silver silk PLA on the print. I think it came out pretty good for no finish work.Less sparkle, but way cleaner. I was really impressed.I was debating on putting the wiring in this update, but I'm trying to catch you all up, so here we go with what I think is the coolest bit.It starts simple enough. Sleeving my wires with paracord. I used a reflective paracord cause it was a simple pattern that went well with the build, but part of me was hoping that it would add some sparkle.I hate using cable combs, as some people might know, but since the wires were just going to be hanging out in the open and I planned on them being a feature, I figured I should round up some combs. Round being the key word there.3d printed with the same silver silk PLA as the grills, they have a nice metallic look.I didn't give myself enough room to slip the wires through easily, but I managed to mangle my fingers getting them in the combs. Are they combs if they're round???With the round form, it took a few more combs per cable than normal to keep it all in check. It all looked really cool till I had to put the other connector on. Silverstone is a one to one, so the other connector flops over. It took a few tries to make it look like something, but I wound up weaving them back across each other to make it work.Lets just say the 8 pins were a joy compared to the 24 pin.Although I like the fact that the round combs are different, there was another reason for making round cables.Those are LEDs and 4mm side lighting fiber optic cable. It looked cool on the website so I thought I'd try to put it to good use. Just a warning, avoid Adafruit if you value your wallet.In every comb, there is a middle hole just for the fiber optic so I can run it down the center of the cable. It winds up being invisible.Until...The LED's do require a bit of infrastructure so I built a holder for them that includes a spot to hold the wiring.It just sticks to the back of the PSU and plugs into on of the extra peripheral connectors. The tape is to mark the bit of fiber optic that I need to cover up with heat shrink otherwise that open bit would drown everything else out in the case.And the full set of cables. The 24 could have used some extra space to shine light through, but it's already bulky enough. The 8 pins are just about the perfect spacing though.And of course I had to try it out in the case. Ignore the multiple colors on the LEDs, this is before I could go in and set it all up.See what I mean about busy with those fans? But I think the cables look awesome! Like they're glowing! I ran all the wires long so they could meander around the case and be a feature. The best way I can describe the look I was going for is a high tech interpretation of the branching of a bristle cone pine. You know the super old trees with the windswept branches? I just didn't want the cables running straight to the components. It would have been boring.Thanks for following along! Next time I'll start all the tweaking that I'm going to do. Normally I have to hurry and finish for a deadline. This time around I can take a minute to tweak things and change stuff that doesn't quite work. Such a luxury!And thanks to Geforce Garage who had no idea that a main feature of this case would be...wires.

As you can tell by the last pic I posted, I 3d printed some trees. You might ask yourself, "Why did he print some trees?" A totally valid question. Well...This build is sort of themed around trees and carbon. Maybe not overtly themed(yet) but it's been in the back of my head during the build. Wood panels, carbon fiber tub, so I wanted something to be the bow that sort of tied it together. And since I needed grills for some airflow, we printed some trees.And you might ask, "Why do you have a view from the top and one from the side?" Also a good question.And the answer is, in my head, that seemed cool. If you look at the front of the case, you get a side on view of a tree, from the top of the case, you get a top down view. Sort of like if you were to have a tree in the case and project the views to the acrylic panel these are going into. I'm weird, but it works for me.The next question is most likely, "What are those two bumps on the side profile?" Well, that is a little personal bit I put in for me. Just before I started working on these, I had to put my 16 yr old lab down. I thought it would be nice to add a little reminder of her into the build, since this is a personal rig. Now it's very personal. The silhouettes are for her and her brother, who she's buried next to under a tree on my property.And now I have something in my eye, I swear.There was a whole process of finding pictures for the shape, fixing them in an editor, converting them to .stl and taking them into fusion. Needless to say, they ended up on the printer. And like most printed parts, they are a bit rough. Some because of the printer, some because of the design. To clean up the prints and hide my sins, I decided to silver foil them to match the foil I used in the carbon fiber.Now all I need to do is put them in the acrylic panel. Break out the power tools!I cut the acrylic a little tight and filed and sanded till I got a good friction fit with the grills. I didn't want to have to add brackets or mounts or glues that would mess up the finish or look, and I also wanted the option to change them out in the future. Now the case can breathe a bit better. I wanted them just for general airflow, but I did place them so that the front grill would give the PSU somewhere to pull air from and the top grill is over the GPU fan, which I think is an exhaust???While I was playing around with Fusion and the printer, I decided to knock out a handle/latch for the acrylic panel. Something to open it without getting a bunch of oily fingerprints all over the acrylic and kind of hold it in place. Not that I expect it to really fly up at any time.To mount it to the acrylic, I decided on screws. Adhesives would have worked but screws would allow me to change it out if I ever wanted to. For the mounts in the handle, I used push in inserts and epoxied them in.And handle!Thanks for following along. Next update will be generic putting things together I think. Not exciting, but you kinda gotta do it.Thanks to GeForce Garage for sponsoring this build!

Now to take care of that giant open section in the middle of the case, and I'm gonna start with this.Just your standard smoked acrylic, but I did have them cut it to size and round and polish the edges. A bit extra in cost, but it pays for itself in the labor I saved. Plus I'd probably mess up the first one polishing the edges.The plan is to mount it to the carbon fiber tub with a hinge giving me a door to access everything.This is why I made my GPU bracket so big and ran it to the top of the case. I wanted something extra to support the hinge and not stress the carbon fiber.So first I cut a pretty standard hinge I had left over from another project and got it mounted to my acrylic.And then mounted that to the case. I know, rocket science.I had wanted to mount the hinge on the back side of the back panel, but had to settle with mounting it to the inside to get enough clearance for the screws. Not a big thing, but if I had to do it again, I might try a different hinge style.That was all simple enough, now to try and ruin a $100 piece of acrylic. Let's bend it.I had brainstormed a bunch of different ways to try this in order to make sure the bend came out as well as possible. Like cutting a mold out of fiber board or hot gluing a thin piece of sheet aluminum to the case to make sure the acrylic didn't sag. In the end I just went for it straight up.I got a bit of sag in the middle of the bend, but an acceptable amount. Nothing that ruins the look.Only a couple of things left to finish the acrylic. One is to cut off the bottom edge so that it matches the case. The others I'll get to later.I wanted to try something a bit different for the power and reset buttons so I did a little hunting on Amazon and some electronics sites...and couldn't find anything that I liked. Figures. So I bought a couple of styles that I thought I might be able to make work to see what I could come up with.I was basically looking for these style of buttons, but with the wire coming out the bottom. No luck. And yes, that's just a standard pcb mounting momentary switch in a housing. I could have made a new housing but I decided to just chop these up.I'll mount them so the cut is in the back and no one will be the wiser. Except for you all and you're not gonna tell anyone...right?With that bit of prep done, I needed to get the final finish on the carbon tub.First thought was clear coat, and boy was that the wrong thought.It was great for the outside of the tub, but the inside had way more pin holes than I had imagined. You can kinda see the rough finish in the reflection of the PSU bracket on the side panel. That should be glass smooth or damn close.So, there was a lot more sanding and a few applications of epoxy to seal up the inside of the case. Yes, it sucked and was a pain in the :). Especially trying to keep from messing up the outside finish and making more work for myself.Once that mess sanded out, I tried the clear coat again.It turned out much better this time around. The reflections of everything make it almost too busy now.Remember those switches, I'm gonna go ahead and pop some holes in the PSU bracket so I can mount those later. That reflection is sooooo much better.Thanks for following along, next time I'll be growing some trees on my 3d printer.Thanks to GeForce Garage for sponsoring a level of sanding that I hope to never repeat.

And now the outer panels. I choose a hard maple board from one of my local shops. I was hoping to find something exotic that I thought would look good, like a tigerwood, but no luck. The maple stood out because of the definition in the rings. A few spots had a little figure, but that wasn't really a factor in the choice.First thing I needed to do was to join the pieces so I bought a biscuit joiner and got busy.Once they were joined and smoothed out, I needed to transfer the shape of the carbon fiber tub to the panels. I usually use a roll of tape to trace an outline like this, just roll the tape along the shape with the pencil on the inside and you get a consistent distance even around corners. I didn't have a roll of tape thick enough, so I used a hole saw. It's janky, but it worked.I cut out one panel, traced it to the other board for the second panel, then all I needed to do was clean up the edges.I used a belt sander on the edges and to make sure the panels stayed lined up, I made up a few brackets that I screwed to the bottoms.To finish shaping the panels, I rounded the edges. 1/8" round over on the inside, 1/4" on the outside.To mount the panels, I laid out my holes on the carbon fiber tub and then transferred those to the panels, making triple sure that everything was lined up and square.I used inserts in the panels so that I could reliably screw and unscrew them without tearing things up.For finishing the panels, I tried out different options. Different dyes, techniques, and finish coats.In the end I went with straight Arm-R-Seal because it kept the prominence of the rings. I also really brought out the figure of the boards which I hadn't even really been looking for.While working on these panels, I was making up some hard drive carriers. I wanted something to dress up how the mounted. Bring out the aluminum.They're very simple, just a square with a couple of bends and a few holes. But with a bit of playing with a sander, they look pretty spiffy!I'm only starting with one spin drive, but I made two so that I could upgrade down the line.They're mounted from the back through the carbon fiber with a couple of flat head screws so that they don't interfere with the side panels.Next update I'll be studying this piece of acrylic.And also digging out the Cooler Master AIO I originally bought for this project because apparently there is a World Series this year. I'm glad I found out two days after entries opened up by seeing someone's post on facebook about their entry. https://forums.bit-tech.net/styles/smilies/bit-duh.gifAnyways, thanks for following along and thanks to NVIDIA for sponsoring my tool buying habit...I mean this build.

Now to cut this thing down to size. I guess I didn't get any pics of laying it out. But that's the boring part anyway, lets cut stuff!I had been trying to figure out the best way to cut this since it's a tight spot, but the jigsaw fits in just fine for most of it. In the tight areas and the corners, I flipped the jigsaw to the other side, and used it like it was mounted in a table. Not the recommended use, but it worked for what I needed.I made sure to give myself room on the cuts so I could file and sand it to the final shape.And the final product.I was starting to get worried about the size because I was wanting a more compact case, but now it's looking about right.Next up I'll start work on the outer panels, but here's a sneak peak!Thanks for following along and thanks to GeForce Garage for dealing with my slow a**!

So lets see, smoothing things out, building mounts, what's next?Oh yeah, cutting giant holes in a part that took 3 months to make with a custom mold. Fun.So first off, I taped it up for my layout.And after I took that picture, I ground all the edges down cause I was tired of 1/2" splinters and sliced hands.And then laying out component locations.Had to make sure my tubing worked.Then I took implements of destruction and cut it all out. Jigsaw, dremel, 4.5" hole saw, whatever worked. I was sure the hole saw would grab wrong and wreck the whole thing, but it didn't!You can see I slipped in a hole for the I/O. To mount the motherboard, I took 10mm standoffs, cut the threads off and epoxied them to the panel. I needed a bit of weight to hold it down, so I used what I had.And it didn't fall off.With everything laid out and cut out, now I can trim this bad boy down to the size I want. But I'm gonna save that for next time.Thanks to GeForce Garage for indulging me!

Ok, so sanding and smoothing things out took longer than expected. And getting back to this log even longer, but here we go!Lots of sanding and layers of epoxy gave me some nice smooth surfaces.The forged carbon looks awesome.You might notice that the carbon is wavy under the epoxy and there are a few spots that I burned through, but the sides will be covered so I wasn't worried about looks, just structure.While sanding and smoothing, I also had to fix some spots like this one. I wound up with an air gap between layers of the layup.The repair is just to grind the spot out, shove some epoxy and fiber into the hole, and smooth it back out. Easy peasy.With the repairs done and everything smoothed out, it was finally time to figure out the hardware mounting. My first thought was to make aluminum brackets for the PSU, GPU, fans, and cooler, since I really cut it close in some spots.This plan also included mounting the radiator on the outside of the case, hence the weird cutout on the bottom of the cooler bracket. It's so you can feed the pump through and slide the tubing into the slots.I wound up scraping this idea because it seemed too complicated. It didn't save drilling holes in the carbon fiber and I would have had to epoxy the panels in place and a whole bunch of other little issues. So instead I decided to mount the radiator on the inside and mount both it and the intake fans to the carbon fiber.So I've got a PSU mount still.And a GPU mount since both of these just make mounting the components easier and are more durable mounts.The GPU mount includes a weird top portion to mount a hinge to. Again for durability.But that's where I'm going to end this update. Next update I'll cover the butt puckering moments of drilling holes in a part that took like 4 months to build.Once again, thanks to NVIDIA for sponsoring my madness!

After waiting on materials and re-doing a vanity top(which consumed my shop area), it's finally time to continue on with this thing.The next step is adding a few layers of carbon fiber to stiffen the tub up. In order to help keep it's dimensions and to make life easier on me, I would normally stick it back on the mold. Unfortunately I kinda destroyed that so now I get to build a jig to hold it.And after spending a couple of hours searching my house for trim nails for my gun...poof!Even though I believe the release cloth is supposed to leave a texture that helps the next layer of epoxy get some bite, I took a sander to it to knock down high spots.Then figuring out the spots I wanted to reinforce and getting the CF ready to lay up.I also worked up another forged piece for parts of the case that will be on the exterior.With everything preppedAnd then a mad dash to lay it up.Since there was really no way to vacuum bag this, I used the normal bagging materials but pulled tight and stapled to the jig to give me a similar effect of compressing everything down.Then after four days of curing, it was time to see how it turned out.As good as I could have hoped just using the bagging materials to compress it all down. Next up is to sand it down and give it a few layers of epoxy to cap the outside.Thanks for following along and thanks to my sponsor!

After letting my body recover from all the blood loss from getting the carbon fiber tub off the mold, I figure it's a good time to show you how we arrived at the blood letting festival and it's product.First off, I got the mold covered in PVA wax. Normally I'd just use a brush or rag to spread it around, but with this much area my larger paint gun made short work of it.With the mold ready, it was time to get ready for the layup.Cut the pieces of carbon fiber.And get the bagging materials ready. Release cloth and breather.And the ginormous bag.For a little something special, I need to modify two of the pieces of carbon fiber...With some chopped carbon fiber tow. Tow is the individual strands of a carbon fiber weave. A pound of 1" tow and 2 pounds of 1/4" tow.I saw a company was selling sheets of forged carbon fiber, which is basically tow stuck to a backing sheet so you can lay it up like regular carbon fiber. Unfortunately they wanted over $300 for a yard of the material. I'm gonna make my own. The idea is just to use an adhesive spray to hold the tow to the sheet. And the results...And to turn it up to 11, I added some silver foil to the mix.It's impossible to get a good picture of this stuff, but in person it looks pretty good and is ready for the layup.Action shots! Once the carbon was applied with the epoxy, on went the release and breather cloth and into the bag.And after a few hours letting the epoxy stiffen up, I brought the whole deal upstairs to let it finish curing in a warmer environment.After an overnight in 70+ degrees, I could pull it out of the bag. I still couldn't pull it off the mold since the epoxy takes 1-4 days to fully harden and was still flexible. I'll save you all the action shots of me fighting to get the bagging cloths off.After a couple of days, it was de-molding time. Or as I like to think of it, The Night of a Thousand Cuts. I was hoping that once I got most of the sides popped loose with wedges, the tub would just pop off.That was not the case and I wound up having to deconstruct the mold inside the tub. At this point I was cursing myself for building it too sturdy but I did manage to finally free it.All in all, I'm excited with how it turned out. My forged carbon sheets worked, the tape lines on the mold gave me some great cut lines as you can make out in that last pic, and the finish is pretty amazing considering all the horrible things I did to get this thing off the mold. Now I've got some more tow and epoxy coming to do the outside of the case to give it a matching look and thicken up the panels. They're a little flexible for my taste right now.Thanks for following along!And thanks to GeForce Garage for sponsoring this madness!

Welp, it's slow going, but there has been progress!While I had the mold upstairs to let the last coat of shellac to fully dry(my basement is about 60 F so things take forever to dry and cure) I didn't like how the little cable run looked. It wasn't the straightest and also would have been a pain for the layup so I changed it up a bit.Some more shellac and I was gonna be ready for my epoxy....but I was out of epoxy. Or at least I didn't have enough to coat this thing. But since what I really wanted from the epoxy was a smooth, non-porous surface, paint will work fine, and give me a chance to use up some of the extra paint left over from previous projects. Started off with some primer.And then some gray paint from something. Looks like it's still in primer but that is gloss.Now to layout the outline for my part on the mold. The problem being that I've had countless hours to run over the layup and design in my head with no oversight...now we're going for iteration 37B of my design...full side panels and no wrap around the top for the hinge attachment. That probably means nothing to you all, but for me, it makes cutting the carbon fiber for layup easier and means de-molding will go better.I cut the radius that I wanted for my corner to make sure both sides are the same and laid out the pattern with a marker.This next part is sort of an experiment. Right now with the mold, measuring my pattern out is easy-peasy. It would be nice to be able to transfer those cut lines to the part. My idea is to use striping tape to give me a physical lip to cut up to on the part.I'm not sure it'll work the way I want but if it does, that will be a useful trick to know.Now to just apply a PVA wax to the mold so I can pop the part off when it's cured and to wait patiently for my vacuum bagging materials to show up.Thanks for following along and hopefully it gets more interesting than me just building a box.And thanks to GeForce Garage for sponsoring this snoozefest!

With the component locations laid out, I can start prepping for some of the details I want in the finished product. Firstly I want to raise the fans on the floor and the PSU up a bit. Multiple reasons for this, more room for the power cable, more space in front of the fans, and more interesting than just making the floor flat.First step, cut hole.Check. Next step, chamfer the edges.Check. Next, slap in a board to fix the giant hole I just put in my mold.The screws are there to hold it all in place while the glue dries. They'll get pulled out and the holes filled. Speaking of filling, I definitely want to smooth the edges out.In between layers of filler, I decided some science was necessary. I'd like to vacuum bag this layup to reduce air pockets and get nice and tight corners, but the mold being hollow is a bit of a problem. I've got the perfect foam to fill the mold laying around, but I wasn't sure if it would hold up under vacuum, so bring on the experiment. It's simple enough, make foam, measure the volume in a bucket of water, put the foam under vacuum, see if it collapses by comparing the volume to the previous measurement.I didn't think it would collapse cause it's some pretty tough stuff(I use the 4lb version to support weak tub floors and it feels like you've put concrete under them), and there was no appreciable change in volume at the precision I need for this. Next up filling the mold.I'd be extremely leery of doing this with the normal expanding foam you get in a can. That stuff can keep exerting pressure even when it meets resistance(ask me about it lifting up a 6'x3' tub full of water) so I don't really like it. The foam I use is less aggressive when it comes to expansion and as long as it has a place to go, doesn't put a lot of pressure on the container it's in. Perfect for what it need. After 5 or 6 pours, the mold was full and I trimmed the foam down. I'm using filler to cap it to keep the mess down. Little pieces of foam rub off and just stick to everything, quite the mess.Before I start finishing the mold, I wanted to add a route for a bit of wiring I'm planning. I'm thinking of sticking the power and reset buttons next to the PSU and I wanted a path to get those wires over to the motherboard so they weren't flopping around under the case.One last thing for this update is laying out the general outline of the part I'm making. Since I've got the components marked out, it's a good time to figure out all the edges and get measurements for the part so that I can lay it out after the epoxy. That way I won't have to mark out all the components again.Thanks for following along and a huge shout out to GeForce Garage!

Welp, back at it again. I don't think I've done build logs for the last two cases I've done, so this might be a bit rough around the edges, but I'll give it a go!It's been a minute since LAN parties and since it seems I might be able to attend some this year, I decided now would be a good time to build a new case for competition. I can't keep taking the same old cases to new events!So here's the initial design: I want something that looks fancy and refined while just sitting on a desk, but then lights up and shows off the hardware when it's running. The plan is carbon fiber for the middle structure and some sort of wood side panels with a mirrored or tinted piece of acrylic for the curved window. I wanted a different way of looking at the hardware instead of through a side panel, so solid sides and a see through front and top.So let's start with the hardware, not the most important part of a build, but without it, I'd just be building a box.Gigabyte Z690, i7 12700K, 32 GB of Vengeance PRO RAM, a Silverstone SFX-L power supply, and a CM 240mm AIO. I've got a couple of drives that will obviously go with but I don't remember what they are and I still need to figure out the fans. And then there's the giant chunk of unobtanium that is the GeForce RTX3080Ti. A big thanks to GeForce Garage for helping me out!And now the box I'm shoving all this into...First off trying to get an idea of spacing and sizes so I can figure out how big this framework needs to be. Yes, I've started and have no clue how big the case will actually end up. It's just how my process works, don't ask.With a general idea of size now, I can start working up a mold. I'm using 1/2" MDF.Yes, I built a box, but only because it's easier to just make the whole thing rather than make something the exact pattern I'm going for. This way I can use the box to draw out and eyeball the design and once I get it where I like it, I can just layup the carbon fiber in the pattern I want.I used screws to hold it together while the glue dried and then pulled them so they wouldn't get in the way later and used putty to fill in all the holes and any misses on the panel edges.After that was sanded out, I took an 1/8" roundover bit to all the corners to make the layup easier. Then a couple coats of shellac to seal the MDF so when I coat it with epoxy, it's not soaking into the wood.Now was the time to do a bit of layout work. I know I want some insets in the mold and to know where I need to do some cutting, I need an idea of where the components are going.Next time, I should be cutting some holes in my brand new box and hopefully getting to a point where I can lay down some epoxy.Thanks for following along and thanks to GeForce Garage for sponsoring this build!