LANpak - Scratch Build

[Insolent Gnome]

With the shell made and sort of under control, it is time to work on the inside. I planned for everything to fit but I know how my plans usually turn out, so I did some test fitting.

Stand ins for the 240mm radiators and fans.



Getting them situated so they don't interfere with the tray.



Speaking of trays, I need to figure out what I'm doing with mine. First thought, sheet of aluminum cut to shape. And the cardboard template.



And then figuring how the hardware would sit on the tray.



Before we continue on with the building, I should probably revisit how my plans never quite go...as planned. From the beginning I've been racking my brain on how to work out a monitor. It's a pain because even though there's plenty of room for even a widescreen 24" like I normally use, it would have to transport in a portrait orientation and then somehow rotate into a landscape orientation. So that adds complexity, weight, and thickness. And thickness is becoming a concern. This thing is not small so anything I can do to shave it down is a bonus for when I actually have it on. 

So I can ditch the widescreen and go with a small portable monitor. But then it's a tiny crappy monitor and you still have some extra thickness. 

Just make it so I can transport the monitor and assemble it separately on site. But I still have at least an inch of thickness plus then the whole back has to open so you can get it out.

Plenty of options to get a monitor in the pack, just all of them make the pack even more unwieldy. So executive decision...leave the monitor out. This also makes figuring the straps out soooooo much easier.

Is it less cool? Perhaps. But it's more "me" friendly and if I really need to take some sort of monitor in the pack, I'll look at a VR setup. I definitely have the horsepower for it.

So with the executive decision made to go for a more wearer friendly design(thinner and lighter), I started thinking about that sheet of aluminum I was about to stick in the case. Did I really need 'all' that aluminum or could I cut a lattice out that would be strong enough to hold the parts and attach the straps to?

And why am I thinking about this in terms of aluminum anyways? I can make a lighter and stiffer lattice out of carbon fiber and I happen to have everything to do it. Well, almost I had to order some expanding foam.



This is a polyurethane foam that's used for floatation in watercraft. Think of it as the spray can of expanding foam on steroids...and meth...and maybe some PCP. These two bottles will give me 2 cubic feet of foam that I can use as my mold for my frame.

Getting my shell ready to be molded. I didn't have enough foam for the whole thing and I didn't need a full mold anyways so I blocked off part of it. The garbage bag is a liner to make it easy to get back out of the shell.



Mixed part A and part B and dumped it in. This stuff gets a little warm.



Kinda looked like bread rising, so I guess now I have a loaf of foam in the shape of my shell.



Next I cut it down to where I wanted my frame to be and filled some air pockets with some regular foam from a can.



I laid out my component locations so I knew where my frame needed to run.



Even had room to slot in a couple of 92mm fans in the bottom for more air flow.



Laying out my lattice with tape. Some spots I wanted wider to carry more load while others were more for bracing and were thinner.



Made a couple of sanding blocks to cut channels in the foam.





Now some wax(which was useless) and 216 strips of carbon fiber.





And then epoxy it up, layer by layer. 8 layers in all.



After getting most of the foam pulled off, I wound up with, amazingly, what I was hoping for. I about did victory laps around the house.



It still needs to be cleaned up and the shape refined. And I'm seriously considering adding a solid layer of CF front and back to pretty up the look. Other than that though, I'm super happy how this is going.

Thanks for wading through this long update and thanks again to my sponsor:

[Insolent Gnome]

Continuing with the frame, there was a lot of cleanup to do on it before I could continue. The side that was in the foam was especially bad since the resin had seeped into all the little air pockets I had opened up when I sanded it. But after a while I got this.





Nice and flat and about an 1/8" thick.

Next up, I re-laid my tape lines on the frame to give me the pattern I started with. Now I can clean up the edges.





Much better. I did get one line a bit off, but I'll fix that in a bit. As it stands, it's pretty tough, but not as stiff as it needs to be to hold a computer and all the water cooling and all the peripherals and the shell. Plus, it looks a little like a wreck, so lets put another pretty layer of CF on it to give it some more strength and make it look nice.



Little bit of Super 77 to help hold the CF in place before it gets epoxied. And once that side is cured, flip it over and do the other.





To fix my crooked line, I just added in some CF scraps to build up where I needed to move my edge to and when I clean up the edges again, I'll shift it over. With the finishing pieces covering my crime, no one will ever see it.

Thanks for checking out my log and thanks to my sponsor:

[Insolent Gnome]

And back at it. Once the epoxy sat up on my frame, I got it cleaned back up. Ready for paint or clear, either way it should look sharp.



Now that I could determine how my frame was gonna sit in the shell, I could cutting on the shell, putting in a window and cutting it to its final depth.

First the window. I want to have a good look at the GPU and stick close to the shape of the shell's panel.





And then cutting the case down to size.



I started out cutting on the shell with a die grinder and abrasive wheel but soon turned to a pull saw. It was faster and a lot cleaner without the chance of screwing something up in the blink of an eye. It also dealt with the Kevlar much better than the grinder.





Next up was getting the frame mounted inside the shell. This took a bit of research because the frame needs to be mounted in a way to transfer the weight of the shell to the straps and not fall apart but it also needs to be removable since I can't really put anything together through my little window in the front. Combine this with me not wanting to use any sort of screw that would show on the outside of the case, and I was left with some sort of glue.

Or rather epoxy. 3M DP420 seemed like the right stuff, good for bonding metals to composites and a high shear strength. I mean, one of the uses the show is gluing golf club heads to graphite shafts, I think it'll stand up to my use. Pricey though, but should be worth it.



First up some aluminum brackets.



And marked out ready to bend. Since I want the brackets to match up with the look of the frame, I decided to put some at angles, cause who wants to make things easy.



And on top of that, I needed these to be at about a 60 degree angle to sit right with the shell. Only problem is my bender is set up to do 90 degrees. Yay! More work.

Had to grind my hold down bar to allow for acute angles and notch the frame a bit but it can now pull off about a 60 degree bend. That bar was a beast.



It bent my brackets like a charm. You'll notice on these two straight brackets that I roughed them up to give the epoxy something to grab on to.



The angled brackets were naturally more of a PITA. Luckily before I glued them in, I thought about the radiators being close and did some measuring. Need to knock them down a bit to keep them from interfering.



Along with the brackets, I also made a jig that would allow me to set them square and at the same height around the case.

I did have to tape them to hold them in place till the epoxy cured. 20 minutes turned out to be more than enough work time.



And with some cure time and some holes drilled and tapped, I could mount the frame.



The two brackets at the top are a bit off, but they're matching and you should never see them so I'm not worried. Plus that epoxy is a beast to remove. I found that out redoing a couple of the brackets that didn't line up the way I wanted.

With the main brackets out of the way, the smaller ones were done pretty much the same way but using the frame as a guide.



Next up the back panel! 

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[Insolent Gnome]

And the back panel. I've been putting this off trying to wrap my head around everything so I don't epicly screw it up. This is where the rubber meets the road. Where the straps meet the backpack. Where, if I screw up, $500 of epoxy carrying $2k of hardware meets the floor. No pressure.

I want to make a plug for the panel, that way I can have curves and make it look like a part of the pack, not just a panel slapped on the back to finish it off. So I'm starting with a piece of 3/4" plywood cut to match the interior dimensions of the shell. This will let me build up layers and match the shell, or be really close.



This went on to a piece of scrap 1/2" OSB I had laying around and then I flush cut it to the original piece of plywood. This is to add thickness to the plug because when the cloth goes from the vertical of the side to the horizontal of the panel the plug is on, there's a flare and I don't want that to interfere with my final cut line.





Then I put a 1/4" roundover on the plywood to give me a gentle curve from the back panel into the shell.



And then I flipped over my plywood and did it again because someone forgot the shell isn't perfectly symmetrical and he needed to flip the plywood to keep everything lined up. No biggie though, everything is going to be filled in the end.



And then I attached the beginnings of my plug to a base made out of some more scrap OSB.



Now for the details. My plan is for the back to be the attachment point for the straps and the frame/hardware. Basically, this back panel is the middle man for transferring the load from the frame to the straps. Now, CF is tough, but I'm not sure that it can handle the stress of that weight being loaded on some bolts going through it and transferring to another set of bolts so I wanted to build in a panel that could.



I decided to use some 3/16" plywood I had laying around because it's stable and I know it could handle the load, plus it's something the epoxy could really grab ahold of. I thought about using aluminum but even roughing it up, it's just a piece of Al floating around in a composite matrix whereas the plywood can soak up the epoxy and become part of the composite and less prone to separation. At least that's my thinking so I'm going with it.

Since I didn't want this panel to jut out on the exterior, I routed a spot for it in the plug.



I also need a door on this back panel for access to ports and plugs, and as a way to get your gear in and out. So I routed an inset for a door as well. The door itself will be CF as well and be held on with some cam latches so it's going to need a nice clean lip to sit on when it's all said and done. To get a nice roll for the lip and to help the cloth sit nicely on the plug, I beveled the edges of my insets.



That pretty much did it for shaping, now to get it ready for epoxy and cloth. My main thing here is I don't the epoxy to be able to soak into the wood and I don't want any edges for it to grab on to. First up some sanding and then shellac as a sealer.



After some more sanding, I used some filler to give me a smooth surface on the OSB, fill in any knot holes and grain, and to give me flat sides with a fillet to the base.



And for a final layer to help this all come apart, PVA wax.



Now I should be able to layup my back panel, but I'll save that for next time. Thanks for following along!

Thanks to my sponsor:

[Insolent Gnome]

And now to lay up the back panel. First layer down was carbon fiber followed by Kevlar. Then my plywood support panel went in followed by another layer of Kevlar and 2 more layers of carbon fiber. I'd have shots of the work but it's hard to grab picks when you're covered in epoxy. But the final product.



Then I vacuum bagged it to pull out the extra epoxy and keep from getting air voids in the layers. I learned from last time and just sealed a cover to my table. So much easier.



After prying it off the mold, we have a back panel.





Then I cut the part down to a more manageable size and checked the fit.



Total weight of the case right now stands at 7 lbs 6 oz. Not bad.



Since I need to start getting things drilled out for hardware, we should probably check out the hardware.



Intel Core i5 9600K

Asrock Z390M 

16GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666MHz RAM

Corsair MP510 480GB NVMe drive

Silverstone SST SX600 600w PSU

And the monster NVIDIA RTX2080TI

Yes, I'm shoving all this and cooling and a keyboard, mouse, and headset in the case. But first I want to get the back panel mounted up.

To do this I need to mount the MB and PSU because they might have some say on where the mounts for the back panel end up.

Mounted up the MB and PSU on my frame.





Next up I mounted some spacers that sit just outside of the hardware so there are no clearance issues. I'm getting some real mileage out of these 1/4"-20 x 1" aluminum spacers. Good thing cause they're pricey.



These will be a direct link from a majority of the hardware(and weight) to my plywood support panel and in turn, the straps for the pack.

It works like this: The shell carries the weight of the radiators/fans and any peripherals that you have in the pack and that gets transferred to the frame through the 9 bracket mounts. The frame carries the rest of the hardware weight and transfers that and the shell's weight directly to the plywood support in the back panel through these spacers. On the back panel, I'll use d-ring tie downs or something similar to connect the straps, using the same screw that is holding the back on to the spacer. It seems really complicated in words, but basically I'm trying to tie the straps as directly to the weight of the hardware as possible and avoiding stresses on the CF panels anywhere I can.

To hold the back panel where I want it, I made some temporary tabs for the inside of the shell that will keep it lined up while marking out my holes.



Bit of marking, a bit of cussing, some drilling, and the back panel is mounted.



I liked the idea of the tabs to keep the back in place, so I made some permanent tabs from extra CF pieces and epoxied them on.



Thanks for following along and thanks to my sponsor:

[Insolent Gnome]

With everything laid up and mostly figured out, I put down another coat of epoxy to fill any voids, pits, etc. I'm planning on top coating all the pieces, but the better they go in to top coating, the better they'll come out.



After that coat cured, more sanding....but it'll be totally worth it in the end.



The next thing I wanted to tackle was some tape???



Oh yeah, and a flat piece of CF I laid up earlier under the tape! This is gonna become my door panel. 

I cut it to size then beveled the back edge so it fit the back panel as close as I could make it.





Then I cut the back panel making sure I had enough of a lip for the door to sit on.



Came out pretty slick, though I did get the weave going the other way.



With that done, I started tackling the finish of the shell. It had some defects that epoxy just wasn't going to fix, at least not fast enough to get it done by QuakeCon. I also knew that I was painting the shell. Two reasons for this, one is that would be a lot of CF all in one place if I left it natural. Two, with the sharp corners, my weave wasn't as perfect as it was on the back panel. So I turned to a polyester filler to smooth out the exterior. 



I had one more thing to do to the shell before it went to paint...I had to drill out the fan holes. Let me tell you, fun times. I used a 4.5" hole saw and a couple of Bill's fan templates to put some giant holes in this thing. I was worried about the saw jumping or breaking the little bit of shell left between the holes, but it all came out great.





With all that done, it was finally time to get spraying. First up, clear coat on the back panel, door, and frame.







And an epoxy primer/sealer on the shell, which I promptly sanded and did some more filling on. Nothing like a nice coat of paint to show you all the imperfections.



Thanks for following along! And thanks to:

[Insolent Gnome]

So with the shell, there was a whole lot of coat and sand and coat and sand again, but I finally got to the final coat of epoxy.



The nice thing about the epoxy is I could put my top coat on an hour later, so no waiting for it to cure up for a day. For the top coat I decided on a Hot Rod Black that I had gotten for a previous mod. I liked it on that case and it was a pretty durable coating. On top of that, the satin finish meant that it was less likely for something rubbing on the case to dull the finish like with a gloss, and the satin finish doesn't show every little flaw. So win win.



After another coat and curing.



Now it was time to start fitting the hardware.



For the GPU, I adapted a miscut aluminum bracket from a previous build.



Making sure everything was lined up right before marking out any holes.



And checking it out how it looks in the case.



That's one of those moments where things come out how they looked in your head and it's kind of amazing that you got there.

Next up are some brackets to help hold the GPU steady and keep it from stressing the CF frame too much. The plan is to run a piece of aluminum from the back of the GPU to this bracket to keep the GPU from flopping around.



Before I got to far, I decided I should get my window panel made and installed. Nothing like having to pull everything apart to put this in cause I forgot it.



Just some 1/8" acrylic and I'm attaching it to the shell with some epoxy. And some lead weight to keep it in contact until the epoxy sets.





Thanks for following along and thanks to the sponsors!

[Insolent Gnome]

While the window was curing up, I decided to get the back panel and door ready. The clear coat came out nice, but you can always make it nicer. So I knocked the finish down with 500, 800,1000, and 3000 grit sandpaper and then attacked it with some finishing compound.





With the door shined up, I decided to put my latch hardware on it. Just some simple cam latches, but that's all it really needs.



So I drilled some holes and slapped them in. Fine tuning them will come later.



The door is covering a nice little spot that I'm gonna toss my keyboard, mouse, headset and cables, so all I have to carry into the LAN is a monitor. Since those items can be a bit pricey to replace, I wanted to finish the cubby with something softer than carbon fiber since I don't feel like buying new peripherals. I had some fleece backed suede-like material and I thought that would be perfect, soft, fluffy, just what it needs.

I cut a piece to fit and using Super 77 adhesive, slapped it in. The edges are a bit rough, but I'll get back to those later, cause at this point I was in a bit of a rush to finish for QuakeCon and from the outside you can't even tell.





I think it's kind of a fancy look. Makes me think of a hypercar with a nice tan interior, crazy performance on the outside, luxury on the inside. I decided the door could use the same treatment because things would be rubbing on it, plus the suede was a good material to keep the door from scratching up the lip it sat on.



It looks horrible but it gets better. I trimmed off some of the fleece around the edges.



And then some more Super 77 to stick it down. I did go back after this pic to straighten up the edges, they just bugged me.



So now we're getting somewhere, let's see about making this contraption carryable. When I put all the parts together I slipped some tie downs in at the bolt locations. They're pretty beefy, rated at 700 lbs. but this isn't the place to skimp.



And then some replacement backpack straps.



Just a little spoiler about the straps. 1st off, they totally worked, I carried the LANpak into QuakeCon strapped to my back, no problems whatsoever. But $12 backpack straps gonna be $12 backpack straps. After judging for the mod contest and getting into the top 3, I had to take the case to the ballroom for the place announcements on stage. I was just starting to pick up the case and one of the ends of the straps gave out. Luckily I hadn't even gotten the case off the table so no harm done, but dang it! Thankfully it happened then and not when I was carrying the case around on my back. New straps have been ordered with a little more capacity and no cheap metal connectors, but this is part of the process so I had to throw it in.

So with the straps it does work like a normal backpack. A little bigger and in need of some strap adjustment, but it works.



And the case, with straps...under 10 lbs. Awesome!



Thanks for following along and thanks to my sponsors:

[Insolent Gnome]

With the outside kinda wrapping up, let's put the inside together.

With the PSU mounted, I can set the height of my GPU and attach the bracket to keep it from flopping around. I epoxied the piece of aluminum because I didn't want to drill holes in the backplate to mount the bracket.



And I got everything put on the board except for the cooling.



I also wrangled some switches from another build. I don't think they're permanent, but I do need a way to turn it off and on.



Starting to run the cables. The switches will go on the CF frame above the GPU if your looking at this pic. The panel they're on uses the same mounts the frame does.



At this point I was waiting on seeing what I was going to be using for cooling so I checked to see if what I had so far fit.



I also knocked out some decals to break up the solid black. How about a nice NVIDIA green .



At this point, I couldn't wait. QuakeCon was a few days away and my cooling stuff hadn't come in, so I went with Plan B/sorta Plan A.5. I wanted to get this into the CM World Series, but couldn't for the life of me figure out how, none of their PSU's even come close to fitting and I'm not gonna put a few fans in it and call it good. But, I needed a cooler, and I happened to know where a Cooler Master MasterLiquid Pro 240 was. Off to my parents house!

Yes, I stole the cooler off my parents computer. I'm a horrible person. But I did put a Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3 back on, which is not only cool looking but dead quiet. Not that they even care, the only question I got was could they still use it.



And cooler installed on the board. Installing this thing in the shell is going to be....interesting.



Actually just mounting the MB to the frame was interesting. Yes, I had to pull a stick of RAM to plug in the PSU. I mean, we've all run into that before, right? Right?!?



But I would guess most people haven't had to ream out the mounting holes of the PSU to gain that 1/16th of an inch so they could get the RAM stick back in and working. Just guessing.

I think doing a little testing with this spaghetti monster might be a good idea before shoving it into the shell.



It all works and next time I'll start cleaning it all up so I can shoehorn it into it's home. Thanks for following along and thanks to my sponsors:

[ad jago]

insane  GL sir