CES Report - Section 16:
11/26/2004 to 12/5/2004
12-5-2004> While I was filling out some job
applications earlier tonight, I noticed that the pen I was using was
pretty sturdy, and I began to wonder if I could use it as a mounting
rod for CES's slimline
mounting rack. I figured that if I could cut it
down into 45 millimeter section, and then thread the sections so that
bolts could fit within them, I could get myself a lot closer to getting
my mounting rack into place. Plastic is not as strong as copper or
aluminum, but if I cut down a pen to 45mm, it will become stronger than
it was before. I called JD and explained to him my
idea, and he
mentioned that the tube had to be thick enough for threading, but I
don't remember the reason he gave for this.
> Just after nine in the evening, I went down to our basement pantry
to search the drawers under the VHS tapes to see if I could find
anything useful. I was looking for a thin copper or aluminum tube that
I could possibly thread later. In the drawer to the right, I found a
tiny
metal rod, and when I picked it up, it turned out to be aluminum.
Furthermore, the rod was threaded on either side. Not believing what I
was seeing, I couldn't help but scream with joy at this discovery. The
rod was thin and light, but still incredibly sturdy. When I used my
mother's postal scale to weigh it, I was amazed to find that it was
about an eighth of an ounce. I used my trusty aluminum
ruler
to measure
the length of the rod, and it turned out to be just over 50
millimeters. Thinking that might be a little too long, I stood the rod
up next to the broken
Maxtor hard drive,
which was still bolted onto
the empty
hard drive cooler. The rod was slightly taller than the drive
plus the cooler, and so the length turned out to be good as well. I
then made sure that the rod wasn't too wide by comparing its width with
the same kind of brass nut I used while positioning the hard drive on
the bottom panel. A rod the width of the nut could fit between the
motherboard and the left edge of the drive, and between the right panel and the
right edge of the drive. The aluminum rod was narrower than the nut, so
the width turned out to be acceptable too.
> This rod, is for a lack of a better word, perfect; I couldn't have
asked for a better one. In fact this find makes today one of the
luckiest days of my build. The only problem I have with the rod is that
its the only one I could find in the drawer. When I get a chance, I
will go to a few stores I think might sell more of this kind of rod,
and show it to anyone who can help me in my search. The Hope Depot
apparently doesn't carry anything like this except for rod couplings,
so I'm going to have to find some other places to look.
> Right after Christmas this year, my parents are going down to
their Florida condo in Aventura, but I don't plan on
joining them this
time around. I have to stay here in Jersey to complete a full backup
for the Archives, Dark Archives, and Projects folders I have on Candybox. I will do this by taking
what I want to back up, breaking it
all down into large zip files, and burning each zip file on a CD. All
this will be done on January the first. Tonight, I realized that this
plan may be in dire peril. The only computer in this household that can
burn CDs is PolyCarmen,
the same one I grafted from the working parts
of two machines. Unfortunately, when my parents go down to Aventura,
they will be taking PolyCarmen with them. This means that I won't be
able to do my backup as planned. However, I do have a solution for this
problem, although it's somewhat of a longshot. I could go ahead with
the building of CES as planned, and try to finish by the end of the
month. CES will have a DVD drive that's also a CD burner, so if I
finish the project on time, I can use CES to backup Candybox's files.
This doesn't really change my plan in the building of CES in any way,
but it does give me some extra motivation to finish on time.
12-4-2004> It's almost 1PM, and I just came back
from the Hope Depot. I was looking for some threaded rods to mount the
plate for my slimline
mounting rack to CES's bottom panel. However,
after asking two people at the store if they had such rods, they
basically said that the store didn't carry any such items. The closest
thing they had to what I was looking for was a few hollow threaded
couplings that are used to join together long thin rods. But the
couplings were too short for my purposes, so I left the store empty
handed and disappointed.
> Today, I finally got a chance to work on cutting the groove in
CES's bottom-front 12" angle iron to accommodate the hard drive. The
idea was to give the fan on the back
panel
a few millimeters of extra
space, and ensure that the hard drive's IDE cable doesn't run into it.
However, this was not a job I was willing to do in the kitchen. My dad
had warned me that working with a Dremel would cause a big mess, and
advised that I go outside to work, so that's what I did. I attached my broken
Maxtor hard drive
to the empty
hard drive cooler with three
screws. Try as I might, I could not get the fourth screw into place, so
I had to give up on it. Just before 1:30PM, I set up a temporary
workstation outside on the patio, but I didn't take all of CES's
parts
out. I only needed the blue
tin Dremel kit, the broken hard drive and
cooler, CES's bottom assembly with the rest of chassis detached from
it, and the Sony
Cybershot camera. But I didn't actually start working
until about an hour later, because my nephews had just arrived at the
house, and I needed to satisfy my pent-up urge to tease Austin.
> When I took the Dremel out of the tin case, it didn't have a bit
on it. I didn't know how to put one on, so I took the Dremel's
instructions inside and started reading them on our basement sofa. I
couldn't make head or tail of what I was trying to read, so my dad
showed me how to fit a bit on. I chose the thick
circular bit, which
was about three times the thickness as the ones
I used to cut out the
top
hatch windows. As I began to work, my dad set up a nearby propane
heater so I could stay warmer and work a little easier.
> I began by cutting a groove on the right edge of the green
mark
that told me where the hard drive was going to hang over the beam,
making sure the Dremel was on its lowest of five settings. As I
continued along with the job, I eventually switched to the higher
speeds. Before I cut the groove too far along the green mark, I put
the
hard drive into place in order to see if the groove was deep
enough.
The depth of the groove was just below the bottom of the hard drive, so
I figured that if I cut the rest of the groove that deep, the drive
would be able to fit into it and stick out of the bottom assembly. I
started a similar groove on the left edge of the green mark, and it
too was deep
enough. With a tiny groove on either side of the mark, I
bridged the two by standing the bottom assembly on its front end, and
then cutting a shallow, horizontal groove
on the inside edge between
the deep grooves. Then, I put the assembly back onto its bottom, and
extended the groove towards the center of the mark. I kept chipping
at
the groove at an angle, bit by bit, until the groove was wider than
the
drill bit. Then I stood the bottom assembly on its left end, and cut
downward with the bit parallel to the angle iron, making sure the
side
of the drill bit never faced towards me. If the bit were to shatter, it
could have hit me, and I didn't want that to happen. As I cut, the
shallow, horizontal groove kept the groove I was cutting fairly
even.
After a while, my dad helped out a little by cutting a new
groove at
the front of the beam on the other side of the one I started at the
back, while I held the chassis on its back end. I was convinced he was
cutting too low, but fortunately we stopped before he did too much
damage. After my dad went back inside the house, I cut a
little further
into the groove until I couldn't stand the cold anymore, and had
trouble feeling my hands. Just after 4PM, I decided to go back inside
myself and warm up a little before continuing.
> When I went back outside to continue working on the groove, it was
just after 4:30PM and it was getting dark very quickly, but
surprisingly it was not as cold as before. When I was working before my
break, I was wearing these thick gloves to keep my hands warm, but I
had to occasionally take them off to take pictures of my progress, and
to use the Dremel. But now, I could work with the gloves off the whole
time. I put the bottom assembly on its front end, and continued to cut
the groove horizontally, making it gradually
deeper. When I eventually
cut
all the way through, it was easy for me to cut off everything above
the groove, leaving just a thin
sliver of aluminum. I then put
the hard
drive into the groove, but it didn't go in as cleanly as I would
have
liked. At first, I thought that certain areas of the groove were not
deep enough, and that I could solve this by sanding off some of the
rough areas. I took off the circular bit, and was about to switch to
the cone
shaped bit to smooth out the groove, but decided to widen the
groove slightly on the left side instead. I put the circular bit back
on, sharpened the angle of the left side of the groove, and tried
putting the drive back into place. The drive was now a perfect
fit for
the groove, and I realized that I was done for the day. What really
surprises me about today's work was the fact that I didn't break any
drill bits. After I was done with the job, I put everything back
inside, including the folding chair I was sitting on. I was hoping I'd
have time to drill the bolt holes for the hard drive cooler in the
bottom panel. Unfortunately, I never got around to it, but there's
always tomorrow I guess.
> Later on into the night, I noticed that the some of the Pigma
Micron lines I had been drawing on the bottom panel for the past
few
days had smudged a little. I don't think this is going to be too much
of a problem though, because I can read the previous log entries to
remember how to redraw them. I put the top portion of CES's chassis on
the bottom
assembly in order to find out if the hard drive would clear
the front-right 4" angle iron. To my relief, it did, but there was a
small gap between the drive's right edge and the beam's left edge.
12-3-2004> I planned on going to JD's house this
weekend, but it appears that it's not going to happen. Apparently, JD
and Jen are spending the weekend down in Atlantic City, so I wont be
able to use JD's table
saw.
I called JD today to ask him if he had a
tool that could help me drill accurate holes with a hand drill, and he
mentioned something about a tool that could accurately punch a starting
hole for a drill bit to follow, and he said that my dad probably has
one. But unfortunately, when I asked my dad if he did, he said that he
didn't. The method he uses to make a starting hole on a surface to be
drilled is to hammer one in with a nail. But this isn't good enough for
me, so I'm going to ask JD to bring his tool over when he or Jen drop
off the kids over here tomorrow.
> I went to the mall today to apply for some jobs to get my positive
cash flow going again. I picked up a few application forms, and planned
to walk to the Hope Depot when I was finished. I was going to buy four
45mm long threaded rods for my slimline
mounting rack, but by the time
I was done at the mall, it was too dark, so I just got a ride home.
Hopefully, I can go back to the Home Depot tomorrow before the kids get
here.
> Just before 11PM tonight, I started getting ready to shave off a
piece of CES's bottom-front 12" angle iron in order to accommodate the
hard drive. I brought CES's chassis and parts to the kitchen and laid
out the newspaper. After I got the Dremel
from the garage, I asked my
dad if I would need protective goggles, and he suggested that I do this
tomorrow so I can work outside. I agreed, since cutting through
aluminum would most certainly cause metal shavings to fly from the
beam. I'm going to put CES back upstairs, and get some rest so I can
get up early to work on the beam.
12-2-2004> It's after two in the afternoon, and I
don't really have much to do on CES today except wait for the blue
marks for the slimline drives' mounting plate on the bottom panel,
and
the green
hard drive marks on CES's bottom-front angle iron, to fully
dry. It's been over 14 hours, so I don't know how much longer I'll have
to wait. I will then reassemble CES, and wait for the weekend when I
can work on CES further. I only have four weekends before the end
of the project, so I damn well better make each and every one of them
count. At JD's place, I plan to mount the hard
drive cooler and the slim
drives' mounting
plate to the bottom panel. Hopefully I'll get to mount the slimline
drive rack to the panel, and cut out its front
panel
bay hole as
well.
> While waiting for the Micron ink to dry, I decided to find out
more about the 6" x 7" plate that my slimline drive mounting rack will
rest
on. I will use my spare
lexan panel as the mounting plate, but first
I'll have to cut it down to size. I used my aluminum
ruler
to measure
the area I need to cut out of the panel. The distance between the front
and back drill holes was 79 millimeters, and the distance between the
left slimline drive rack drill holes, and the right rod drill holes was
150
millimeters. So I figured that 90mm x 160mm was a good size to cut the
mounting plate, since this would give me some extra space for the rods
and bolts. So this weekend, I'm going to use JD's table
saw to cut the
lexan sheet down to size.
> Because I'm cutting down the lexan panel to use as my mounting
plate, this will take some weight off of CES. I weighed the panel with my
mother's postal scale, and it turned out to be about 3 1/2 ounces. I
don't know how much weight cutting down the panel will save me, but
after it's chopped down, I will weigh it again, and then subtract the
difference from the official weight of CES. Since it looks like nearly
half of the panel will be removed, and I'm only half an ounce
overweight, I'm confident that cutting the panel down will bring CES's
official weight back below ten pounds.
> When I get a chance, I will go to the Hope Depot in town, and buy
four rods for the mounting plate. I'll see if I can get a length of 45
millimeters, because the height of the hard drive plus the cooler is
40mm. I'll try to get rods that are of a lightweight metal and make
them thin, since this will mean that not only will they will be light,
but they will also fit into the corners of the plate.
> Several months ago, I stumbled across a Dremel
rotary tool in a blue
metal box in the garage while looking for a soldering gun. On a
hunch, I went back to the garage just now to see if it was still there,
and lo and behold it was. It may be possible for me to use the Dremel
to work on the green area I have marked on CES's bottom-front 12" angle
iron. The green area is where the hard drive will pass over the angle
iron so it can stick outside the chassis a bit, making more room in
front of the fan on the back
panel.
I plan to re-assemble the chassis,
and then plane the marked area down gradually to make a groove until
the hard drive can fit into it. However, I don't know what drill bit to
use, and I haven't used a Dremel since I cut
out the windows for my top
hatch doors. So tomorrow, which is a Friday, I'm going to ask my
dad to help me use the tool, so I can have more time to work on the
slimline drive mounting assembly at JD's place. It's nearly six in
evening, and the blue marks still haven't fully dried. So I'm going to
re-assemble the chassis tomorrow.
12-1-2004> At around two this afternoon, my dad
took me to the post office so I could weigh CES and its components. The
current CES parts I weighed were the chassis with the reset
button
attached to it, the power
button, the power
and HDD LEDs, the front
panel,
the cold
cathode fan grills and their nuts and bolts, the back
fan, the hard
drive cooler, the hard
drive (heaviest component), the slimline
mounting rack, the roller
catches and their nuts and bolts,
and two
expansion slot covers I plan to use to mount the PS/2 and USB
mount. I also included four 8/32" bolts to compensate for the bolts for
the mounting rods, an old 14.4K
modem and a voodoo
card to compensate
for the motherboard, Glamdring's broken
CD drive as a substitute for
CES's future CD drive, and my spare
lexan panel to compensate for the slimline drive rack's mounting
plate. The result was a shocking 11 pounds,
2.20 ounces, and I was just floored by how heavy everything was.
Rounding the weight off to 11 pounds, 2 ounces, and factoring in the
compensations I had established for the packaging, the official weight
was reduced to 10 pounds, 11 ounces.
> Desparate to lose weight, I considered re-weighing the MarcEcko
shoebox, which I had weighed separately with my
mother's postal scale
a
few days ago. The scale's limit is four ounces, so I needed another way
to weigh the box. My mother suggested that I try her old
kitchen scale,
but I tried using it several months ago, and was disappointed with it.
The scale does not give accurate readings, but it was the only thing I
had that went over 4 ounces, so I thought "what the hell". I set the
scale to 0 pounds, and placed the shoebox on its side on
top of the
scale. I couldn't get an exact measurement, but the scale suggested
that the box weighed
at very least 12 ounces. Before, the total weight
I had to compensate for the packaging was 12 ounces, and since I had 5
ounces set aside for the shoebox, I could now add 5 ounces and revise
the total packaging weight to 19 ounces, or one pound and one ounce.
This brought the official weight of CES down to 10 pounds, 4 ounces.
> I still wasn't done chopping down CES's official weight just yet.
Two giant holes will be cut from the chassis for the 80mm
case fans,
one on the back, the other on the bottom. In order to get an idea how
much weight this would take off. I took the empty
hard drive cooler,
and placed
it on top of one of my top
hatch cutouts, so that the
cooler's entire hole was over some part of the cutout. Judging by how
much space the cooler's hole took up on the panel, I estimated that two
cooler holes would be roughly the same surface area as one top hatch
cutout.
Therefore the weight that will be removed when I cut out the fan holes
will be roughly the same as the top hatch cutout. I used the postal
scale to weigh the cutout, and it was almost two ounces. Just to be
ultra-conservative, I will consider this to be 1.20 ounces, to cancel
out the extra .20 ounces of today's weighing. This takes another ounce
off of CES's official, bringing it down to 10 pounds, 3 ounces.
> I still have one more trick up my sleeve in my quest to shave
ounces off of my machine. A considerable amount of my angle irons will
have to be cut off in order to accommodate certain internal components
of CES. The two right mounting rods for the slimline mounting rack will
pass over the bottom-right 7" angle iron. In order to make it easier
for the rods to be mounted to the bottom panel, I'm going to chop off
the middle five inches of the horizontal side of the 7" beam. On the
left side of CES, the left spacers of the motherboard will be mounted
to the bottom panel's left edge, just over the bottom-left 7" angle
iron. In order to make sure the spacers hold securely to the bottom
panel, I'm going to cut off the middle five inches of the horizontal
side of the left 7" beam as well. This means that ten square inches of
1/8" thick angle iron is going to be removed form CES, or the
equivalent of a 5" long beam.
> But wait, we're not through yet. Each of my case fans is eight
centimeters square, or just over three inches square. The case fan that
will be mounted to the back of CES will overlap
a three inch wide
section of the back 12" angle irons that's 7/8 of an inch wide
between
the two angle irons. This means I will be cutting off 21/8 square
inches, or 2 5/8 square inches off of the 12" beams. The fan also
overlaps a thin three inch long section of the back-right 4" beam, and
assuming that the overall area of that section is 3/8 square inches,
the fan will take three square inches of angle irons off of the
chassis. This brings the total square inches of angle irons to 13.
> The slimline mounting rack will be mounted behind
the top-front
12" angle iron. The area being covered is just over a quarter of an
inch, by just over 5 3/4" inches. This means that I'm cutting off about
a square inch and a half off of the beam. This brings the total surface
area coming off the chassis to over 14 inches. Therefore, I think I can
estimate the weight I'll save by weighing one of my 7" angle irons.
I'll do this when I take off the bottom
assembly and isolate the bottom
panel when I draw the marks for the slimline mounting rack's mounting
rods.
> It's after 9:30PM, and I just resumed work on CES. My goal tonight
is simply to measure the drill marks for the mounting rods for the
slimline drive rack's mounting plate. I removed the bottom panel by
first
separating the bottom assembly from the rest of the chassis, and then
unscrewing the assembly's four bolts. But before I got to working on
the bottom panel, I used my mother's postal scale to weigh the
bottom-right 7" angle iron. This angle iron's total surface area is 14
square inches, just under the surface area of the angle irons that will
come off CES as the result of making room for the different internal
components. The result came out to be about 2 and a half ounces, so
that's how much more weight I can take off. CES's official weight is
now 10 pounds and half an ounce. Hopefully, it won't be much longer now
before I'm back under my 10 pound limit.
> As for choosing the locations of the mounting rods on the bottom
panel, I wanted to make them inline with the mounting rack's bolt
holes. This way, I could push the rods far enough apart to keep the
mounting plate stable, but close enough to keep the plate small and as
lightweight as possible. So I went upstairs to my bedroom and retrieved
my blue
Pigma Micron. This would be my first time using it in this
project. I made a tiny mark in the center of each of the circular marks
for the two right-side mounting rack bolt holes. I then used my trusty aluminum
ruler
as an edge, and drew a blue line across the two back
mounting rack bolt marks, and the did
the same for the two front marks.
Since the rods were going to straddle the hard drive, I wanted to place
the rods' marks as close to the drive without touching it. To get a
good idea of what this distance was going to be, I placed one of the
chassis' 8/32" brass nuts between the green line marking the left edge
of the hard drive, and the red line marking the right edge of the
motherboard. I then placed the ruler against
the back blue horizontal
line. The nut helped me determine that a good distance to place the
center of the rod from the hard drive was seven millimeters, so I drew
a cross that far away to the left the hard drive on the blue line. I
then followed suit with the
other three bolt holes, making sure the
marks were seven millimeters away from the hard drive marks on the
outside of the drive.
> I've done all I could for CES for tonight. All I have to do is
pack up the parts for CES, and move the chassis to a safe location. I'm
not yet ready to reassemble the chassis, since doing so now could
smudge the blue lines I just drew. Tonight's job went remarkably
smoothly, and I didn't even smudge any of the blue ink. While I'm at
it, I might as well redraw the green hard drive mark in the
bottom-front 12" angle iron. It's after 11PM, so I think that now is a
good time to call it a night. Next weekend, I'd like to visit JD once
again, and hopefully mount the hard drive cooler to the bottom panel,
and also to bolt the slimline mounting plate and its mounting rods into
place. If possible, I'm going to use my spare lexan sheet as the
mounting plate, because it's lightweight and incredibly sturdy for its
weight.
11-30-2004> It's just after 9:30AM, and I'm set up
in the kitchen and once again ready to work on CES. I'm not taking up
as much room this time, since I don't have to lay down any newspaper
for what I plan to do today, and also I'm using Glamdring's keyboard,
rather than a separate USB one. My parents are sharing the table with
me for breakfast, so I bet they're happy to have some room to eat.
Today, I plan to mark the positions of the four threaded rods for the slimline
mounting rack's mounting plate on the bottom panel. I will
also try to determine exactly where the hard
drive cooler will be
mounted on the bottom panel.
> Before I continue with today's work, I'd just like to point out
that I'm looking at CES's chassis right now, and I can't help but
notice that there are several things wrong with it. I have the hatch
doors
open, and I'm looking at the chassis from the front, and I can
see that the top-back 12" angle iron or the back
panel
is crooked,
although I'm not sure which. The side assemblies are also crooked, with
the front sides being higher
that the back sides. There are unnecessary
drill holes all over the place, making the chassis look like Swiss
cheese. When I close the top
hatch doors,
the space between them is
also crooked.
After the official project is over, I may spend some
money to completely overhaul the chassis to try to fix these problems.
If I choose to fix the chassis, I'm going to fill in the extra holes in
the 4" beams with an aluminum welder. I'm also going to replace all of
the non-painted panels and angle irons except for the top hatch, and
order an extra panel and angle iron of each size. I'll see if I can
redrill the holes right the first time, so that there are no extra
drill holes. If someone does help me assemble the chassis, I'm going to
fucking insist that all holes are drilled with a drill press, and
there's no way in hell I'm going to use a hand drill this time. Even if
the chassis is mostly assembled, and I only have a couple more holes to
drill, I would rather take the entire chassis apart and use a drill
press than to risk slipping with a standard drill. I may even have to
re-mount any internal components to fit the fixed up chassis.
> I removed the bottom panel through the bottom of the chassis. I
took it out this way because I didn't feel like going through the
frustration of tearing down and reassembling the entire chassis again.
After I took out the nuts holding the bottom panel in place, I tried to
take out the panel through the front and and bottom, but the angle
irons kept getting in the way. So I had to take out the bottom-right 7"
beam and bottom-front 12" beam in order to make some space. Once I had
the bottom panel isolated, I wiped
off the red line that marked the
right edge of the motherboard, and the left green line that marked the
left edge of the hard drive cooler. I measured and drew a new
red line
17cm from left edge, with no leeway. This meant that anything mounted
on the right side of the chassis absolutely cannot cross the red line,
or it will be guaranteed to run into the motherboard. I erased the
green line, because I'm now going to mount the hard drive's right edge
exactly on the edge of the right 4" angle irons. Since this is also
true for the slimline drive mounting rack, I can use the mounting
rack's right black line for the hard drive cooler as well. This means
that I no longer needed the right green line either, so I used a Q-Tip
to erase it. But while I was erasing the line, I accidentally smudged
the red line, so I drew it over. In order to avoid smudging the line
again, I'm going to wait a while before putting the panel back into the
chassis.
> While waiting for the red line to dry, I decided to figure out
where the left edge of the hard drive is going to go on the bottom
panel. I separated my broken
Maxtor
from its mount, and then placed the
drive on the bottom
panel_against
the right black line for the mounting rack, and made sure
that the back of the drive lined up with the back of the panel. I then
used the drive's left edge to draw
a green line on the panel. When I
tried to put the bottom panel back into place, I had a lot of trouble
trying to get it to fit. I couldn't get it back into the chassis, and I
smudged the red line yet again trying to do so, and also the green
line. I fixed the red line again, but redrew the green line all the way
across the panel. I then tried a different approach in reassembling
CES. I tipped CES on its back end, removed all the parts of the bottom
assembly, and put
the bottom assembly together separate from the rest
of chassis. I then put the rest of CES over the bottom assembly, but I
didn't bolt it all together just yet.
> I put the hard drive into
the temporarily assembled chassis, and
put it up against the bottom-front 12" angle iron, with the left edge
of the drive lined up with the green line. Because the top part of CES
wasn't bolted to the bottom assembly, I could lift
up the right side of
CES to make sure that the right edge of the drive lined up with the
right black line. With CES's top on, I was able to compare the position
of the drive's right edge against the front-right 4" angle iron to make
sure the drive could extend over the bottom 12" beam without running
into the 4" beam. When I found that it could, I used the green
Micron
to mark
the drive's position on top of the bottom 12" beam. The next
time I get my hands on a Dremel, I'm going to shave a piece of that
marked section off so the drive can pass over it when the hard drive
cooler is bolted to the bottom panel.
> With the hard drive's position established, I decided it was time
to bolt the bottom panel back to the rest of the chassis. I put all of
the bolts in place, but as I was fastening on the first nut, I
accidentally smudged
the red and green lines AGAIN. So I once again
isolated the bottom assembly, and used the floppy drive section of the
slimline drive mounting rack as an edge when redrawing the lines. After
I finally bolted CES together again, I found that I had smudged the
green ink on the bottom-front 12" angle iron. Fortunately, I was able
to fix
that without yet again taking apart the chassis. I didn't have
time to draw the marks for the mounting plate, because I was rushing to
pack up for the weigh in at the post office, which closes at 4PM.
> It appears that I might have time to do the mounting plate drill
marks today after all. My parents couldn't take me to the post office
today, but hopefully I can get a ride there tomorrow. It's almost four
in the afternoon, and I'm going to take a break to go into town for a
while. When I get back, I'll try to finish those marks before the
sandman gets me.
11-29-2004> I continued work on CES after 9AM
today, and began by applying nail
polish
to the peeled-off areas of the Fire
Flower angle iron. I taped
the beam to the edge of the kitchen
table, but this time I taped it behind Glamdring. Normally, I would
have taped it on my side of the table either far to the left or right
of my seat, but the whole left side of the table was covered in
newspaper, and I didn't want to put the beam on my right and risk
running my elbow into it while using Glamdring. I applied
the first
coat of polish, but I was worried that the coat may be a little too
thick.
> Yesterday, I established the horizonal positions of my hard drive,
the slimline
mounting rack, and the motherboard. I was concerned about
the hard drive's Molex power connector passing in front of the fan
on
the back
panel.
But after giving the matter some more thought, I've
decided that cutting the back-right 4" angle iron to push the fan
further to the right is a good way to make sure it misses the hard
drive's power connector. I also needed to know how close to the front
panel
to mount the hard
drive cooler. When the hard drive is mounted to
the cooler, it will stick beyond the cooler a little bit on the front
and on the back. I could screw my broken
Maxtor to the empty
cooler,
place the cooler on the chassis, slide it forward until the drive runs
into the front panel, and then mark the position, but the bottom 12"
angle iron is too high for the drive to clear. I don't want to cut the
beam down until I know the hard drive's exact position, so I'll have to
find another way to measure the cooler's depth.
> Not long after I typed out the above paragraph, I found a way for
the hard drive to clear the bottom-front 12" angle iron. I began by
bolting the hard drive to the cooler, so the drive wouldn't slide
around as I worked. I then retrieved a deck of old Hoyle
cards, and
slid five of them under
the hard drive cooler. This gave the cooler and
drive just enough of a boost to raise them above the 12" beam, and push
the drive to the front panel. I had to do this in the middle of the
chassis because there were rails
on the back of the front panel which
were blocking the drive. I knew that I had to cut these rails off if I
wanted to put the drive into its true position within the chassis.
> Sometime in the late morning hours, I realized that I could get a
better idea of how to mount the slimline drive rack's mounting plate. I
put
the mounting rack back on the bottom panel between the two black lines
where I previously marked it. Since the mounting plate will have four
bolts to hold the rack, four of the plate's eight bolt holes will be at
the same location as the four bolt holes on the rack, but at different
heights. Knowing where the rack's bolt holes were would be over the
bottom panel would give me a better sense of where the plate would go.
I tried to use my black
Pigma
Micron pen to mark the bottom panel
through the rack's four bolt holes, but the rack kept sliding out of
place. However, three pieces of Scotch
tape_on
the back of the rack
fixed this. Once the four dots were on the panel, I removed
the rack.
> I later realised that the dots did not indicate the rack's exact
position over the bottom panel. This is because the rack was up against
the bottom-front 12" angle iron, which was as far forward as it could
go. The rack will eventually stick out further than that, but at the
time I didn't know by how much. So I placed the mounting rack outside
the chassis alongside
its right edge. I made sure that the front of the
rack's faceplate was up against the inner edge of the bottom-front 12"
angle iron. After some adjusting, I used my pink
mechanical pencil to
mark the position of the front of the mounting rack on the newspaper on
the table. I then pulled the rack towards me a little, and made sure
the front of the faceplate lined
up with the front panel's main surface
(as opposed to the thick border). I went to the far end of the table by
the window to get a side
view of the rack and CES's chopped down
chassis, and the rack's faceplate appeared to be in alignment with the
front panel. I marked the faceplate's new position on the newspaper,
and then moved the rack. I could see the two
lines I drew, and they
were further apart than I thought they would be. I used my aluminum
ruler
to measure
the distance between the two lines, which was about 16
1/2 millimeters. This would mean that I would have to push the mounting
rack dots on the bottom panel forward 16 1/2 millimeters.
> Soon after I determined the depth of the mounting rack, I realized
that the front panel was taped on crooked, so I wanted to try measuring
again. The top of the panel was attached solidly on the chassis, but
the
bottom was sticking out. I used the broken Maxtor hard drive, which was
still mounted to the cooler, and pushed
it against the front panel.
This made the panel stand up straighter, and when I got another
side
view of the rack, it appeared to be further forward than before.
When I
pushed the rack back a little, it appeared to be about a millimeter
behind
the front penciled line. I marked the new position, and measured
the
distance between the new line and the original back line. The new
distance turned out to be 14mm, so that's how far I'm going to adjust
the dots on the bottom panel.
> In order to proceed in moving the mounting rack's drill marks, I
needed to be able to rest the ruler flat against the bottom panel.
There wasn't enough room inside the chassis to do this, so once again,
the bottom panel had to come off. After I removed
the panel, I used my
pink mechanical pencil to draw
a line through the two left dots. I then
made a mark 14mm towards the front panel from each dot, and used my
black Micron to enhance the marks with thick
crosses. In order to test
if the marks were the right distance apart, I put the mounting rack's
two left mounting holes over them. Both crosses fit directly under
their counterpart holes; so far so good. Then, I moved the bottom panel
on the left side to the chassis, and lined
up its bolt holes with the
bolts that stuck out of each corner of the rest of the bottom assembly.
With the mounting rack still in place, I looked at the rack next to the
front panel from a side
angle, and the rack's faceplate seemed to line
up perfectly with the front panel; again, so far so good.
> I was going to repeat this pattern with the two right dots, but I
found a faster and equally effective way to do it. I placed the rack's
left mounting holes over
their counterpart crosses on the bottom panel, and
then used the black Micron to mark
the panel through the rack's right
holes. I couldn't get the pen to mark the entire holes, because it kept
running into the rack's right wall. So I used my pink pencil to finish
the marks, using a long section of the graphite to reach the left side
of the holes. The graphite broke several times, but it was worth it to
get the marks on. I then tested to see if the rack was crooked. The
mounting rack had a large hole on either side for a slim screwdriver to
fit through. I compared these holes to the edge of the bottom panel on
either side, but I could not tell which side stuck farther ahead of the
other. So I considered the two sides of the rack even,
and considered
the holes to be in the right positions. In order to avoid further
confusion, I erased
the original bolt marks with a paper towel.
> Once the bolt marks for the mounting slimline drive rack were in
place,
I decided to call it a day and clean up the
mess I'd
been making of
the kitchen table for the past few days, but there were still a couple
of things I had to do first. I had applied a second coat of nail polish
to the Fire Flower beam's peeled off section while I was working on the
bolt marks for the mounting rack. The polish had long since dried, so I
took it off the table's edge. I retrieved the rest of CES's chassis
from the living room floor, and bolted the whole thing back together,
but it wasn't easy. Not only did I keep putting bolts through false
holes in the chassis, but some of the bolts were an absolute bitch to
get back on. I had to use a tiny red mirror to get some of the bolts
back on, and my mother even helped with a couple of them. Once the
chassis was fully reassembled, I cleaned up the table, and brought all
of CES, as
well as Glamdring back upstairs. I finished around two or three in the
afternoon, because I was hoping to reassemble CES on time to go to the
post office for the weigh in. But unfortunately, it once again turned
out to not be a good day, so I guess I'll have to take care of that
tomorrow.
11-28-2004> I started working on CES again this
morning at 11AM. I needed to apply two coats of nail polish to the Fire
Flower angle iron where the black ink was missing, but I didn't want to
do it with the beam still on the chassis. I wanted it to tape it to the
edge of the table so it would lie flat, so I removed
it from the
chassis. But when I did that, I accidentally put my thumb on the part I
painted last night, and some of the black ink came off. So I applied
another coat of ink to it, and set it aside to dry.
> I put the chassis back on its back end, and once again put the front
panel
into place. I peeked through the hole in the chassis just
below the front-left 4" angle iron to get a look at the bottom panel.
Once again, the front panel seemed to be about a millimeter above the
bottom panel. I used the black faceplate for the slimline
mounting rack
to determine a position for the rack. I did this by placing the
faceplate on the front panel where I wanted the rack to go, which was
still about two millimeters above the existing bay hole. As I was
staring at the faceplate on the front panel, I noticed a fading
horizontal white line on the panel about halfway between the bottom
off the CD bay hole and the top of the panel's bottom border. I drew
this line several months ago while determining the position of the floppy
drive, back before I decided to switch to a slimline floppy
drive. I retrieved the broken
hard drive and the empty
drive cooler
from my bedroom, put the drive on top of the cooler, and stood the
front panel against
the drive, wedging it between the drive and a
mousepad so it would stand on its own. The distance between the white
line and the top of the hard drive was about eight millimeters. If I
put the bottom of the rack's bay hole along the white line, I should
have enough space between the slimline drive rack and the hard drive to
put
in the mounting square for the rack.
> JD showed up this afternoon to
collect our garbage. I took the
opportunity to show him my plans for mounting the drives. He suggested
that I mount the drives before I cut the bay hole in the front panel,
because if I cut the hole first, and it turns out to be crooked next to
the the slimline drive rack's faceplate, there's nothing I'd be able to
do to fix it. JD also suggested that I leave as much clearance as
possible between the mounting rack and the hard drive in order to help
keep the hard drive cool. We had a long discussion about how to mount
the drives, and JD eventually suggested alternate means of mounting the
drives, such as building an inner side panel just behind the right
panel to bolt the mounting rack on. But this would make it difficult to
remove the rack if I need to change the hard drive below it, and it
would add considerable weight to CES, so I don't think I'll go for
that. JD noticed how close the top-right bolt on the front of CES was
to where I was going to cut a rectangular hole in the chassis for the
mounting rack. He thought that I could end up moving the bolt to the
right, but I reminded him that this may bring the bolt too close to the
other two bolts on that corner of the chassis. One more thing that JD
suggested was cutting down the bolt on the top
hatch_knobs,
and that I
could use a hacksaw to do it.
> Taking JD's advice into consideration, I decided to not cut out
the drive hole in the front panel just yet. Instead I will duct tape
the panel to the front of CES, and I could then use the existing CD bay
hole in the front panel to establish the position of the mounting rack.
Now that I think about it, I may not have to cut into the right 4" beam
to make room for the mounting rack. I could simply move the right edge
of the hole to the left, so that the rack would miss the beam. In order
to do that, I may have to fill in the part of the existing bay hole
that's over the beam. I'm still making this up as I go, so I don't want
to do anything else that's irreversible until I have a solid plan on
how to proceed. It's just after 2PM, so I still have many hours in the
day to work on this thing.
> Sometime later in the afternoon, I began work to determine where
to mount the drives in CES. I rested the chassis on its back end and taped
the front panel to the front of the chassis with six pieces of
masking tape; three on the bottom and three on the top. The panel
wasn't on as securely as I would have liked it to be, but it wasn't
going to get any better so I left it as it was. I then returned CES to
its rightside-up position and separated
the bottom assembly, two front
4" angle irons, the top-front 12" angle iron, and the taped-on front
panel from the rest of the chassis. It took me a while to figure out
how to isolate these sections, but once I was able to do that, I put
the unneeded parts of CES on
the floor of the living room where they
would be safe. With the top hatch, back panel, and side assemblies out
of the way, I could work on mounting the drives a lot more easily.
> The first thing I wanted to measure was the horizontal positions
of the drives and the motherboard. I began with the slimline drive
rack, but I couldn't place it flat against the bottom panel, because
the screw that held the floppy drive mount of the slimline mounting
rack to the main rack was in the way. Once I removed this screw and the
floppy mount from the rack, I placed
the rack on the bottom panel as
far forward as it could go, and lined up its right edge (my left since
I was standing behind CES) with CES's right 4" angle iron. I then used
my black
Pigma
Micron pen to mark
the sides of the rack on the bottom
panel. Next, I needed to measure where the motherboard would end so I
wouldn't risk running the drives against it. But there wasn't
enough
space within the chassis for me to place my aluminum
ruler
flat against
the bottom panel. So I removed the panel from CES, used my red
Micron
to mark
a line seven inches from the panel's left side, and then put
the panel back into place. The motherboard is going to be 17cm square,
or about 6 1/4", but I gave it seven inches just to be conservative.
The left black line representing the left edge of where the mounting
rack is going to be ended up way to the left of the red line, as
expected. This means that the left side of the mounting rack is going
to hover above the motherboard when everything is mounted in place.
> Now that I knew the horizontal positions of the motherboard and
the slimline drive rack, I just had to find out where to put the hard
drive. The hard
drive cooler is only slightly wider than any standard
IDE hard drive, so I was able to use that alone to measure the hard
drive's position. After returning the bottom panel to its assembly, I
put the cooler on
the bottom panel upside-down in between the red line
and the right black line, and up against the front 12" angle iron. It
was a tight fit between the lines, and at first I was worried that
there would not be enough room between them to accommodate the mounting
rods for the slim drive rack's mounting plate. However, I moved the
cooler's right edge up against the right black line, and found that I
could push the two right rods to the right of the mounting rack. This
would place the rods right above the bottom right 7" angle iron, so I
may need to remove a section of it to make room for the rods. As for
the two left rods, it's going to be a tight fit between the hard drive
and the motherboard. I placed a nut just to the left of the cooler, and
it cut into the red line a little bit. But since I measured the red
line conservatively, the motherboard is actually a quarter inch to the
left of it, so it just might be OK.
> Besides avoiding the motherboard, another concern while mounting
the hard drive is the fan on the back panel. The hard drive's Molex
power connector is on the extreme left edge, and the plug sticks out
pretty far. I can only get, at most, one inch of clearance between the
fan and the back of the hard drive. So I'd like to prevent the Molex
connector from passing in front of the fan if at all possible. One way
I can do this is to push the drive to the left, but if I go too far,
there will not be any room for the motherboard. Another thing I can do
is cut a piece out of the back-right 4" angle iron in order to make
space for the fan. In order to get a sense on where the fan is going to
be within the chassis, I put the Fire Flower beam into place
temporarily, and put one of my unmounted 80mm thin fans against
the
beam's left edge. The fan ran into a tiny piece of the hard drive's
Molex connector, so I moved the drive to the left. When I was satisfied
with the cooler's position, I marked
its position on the bottom panel,
this time using the green
Micron. In order to make more space between
the hard drive and the back fan, I may need to remove a small sliver
from the bottom-right 12" angle iron so I can push the hard drive
forward over it.
11-27-2004> Today, I worked on stabilizing the front
of CES's chassis, and started just after 4PM. I prepared
for the
task by laying out newspaper on the left half of the kitchen table,
and setting
up Glamdring on the right to make notes
for this log, and to play mp3s.
I wanted to level out the two sides of the top-front 12" angle iron, so
that it was as high as the four inch beams on either side, but had a
bit of trouble keeping the beam level. When I tightened the top blots
that held the 4" beams to the top 7" beams, the 12" beam locked into
place, but opening and closing the top
hatch
often caused the beam to
rise and sink. No matter how I tried to keep them beam level, the right
side INSISTED on rising slightly above the left, and the top bolts on
the side assemblies kept loosening all by themselves. While adjusting
the bolt on the upper right corner of the front of CES, the nut dropped
off, and I had to remove the reset
button
to put it back on.
> Unable to keep the 12" beam level on my own, I asked my mother to
hold the 12" beam in place, holding the left side up, and the right
side down. Mom said she needed to do something before she was ready to
help me, so I used that time to fit an 11/64" drill bit into the Panasonic
hand drill. After I drilled the hole, I found that it brought
the bolt too close too the left edge, so that it ran
into the top-right
nut on the left
assembly, making it impossible to fit a nut on. In
order to fix this problem, I planned to drill another hole just to the
right of the errant hole. Using my aluminum
ruler, I measured 4mm from
the inner edges of the 4" angle irons for the horizontal
position. I
then measured the vertical
position of the bottom-left bolt on the
front of CES. The bolt was 13mm from the bottom of the bottom-front 12"
beam, so I made
a mark on the 4" beams 13mm down from the top of the
top 12" beam. This formed an T
shaped mark on either front 4" angle
iron, in which the intersecting point of each T marked where the
top-left and top-right bolt holes should go.
> I prepared to drill the top-right hole, and once again I asked my
mother's help to hold the top 12" beam steady as I worked. My father
came to help, and he drilled the hole while I held the 12" beam. But
before he did any drilling, he used a hammer and nail to punch
a
starting hole on the drill mark. As he drilled, I was sitting in
front
and to the right of Dad, and from my angle I helped him adjust the
drill bit so that it went in straight. He began with a tiny drill bit, drilled
a little into the chassis, switched to a slightly bigger bit,
and repeated this pattern until he got to the 11/64" bit. After the
second bit, I pointed out that the hole could be too close to the left
edge of the beam, so Dad corrected the hole when he got to the larger
bits by drilling
at an angle. When the hole was complete,
I put
the
bolt into place, and it was far away enough from the neighboring
bolts
for its nut to fit onto it.
> The next bolt hole I worked on was the bottom-right hole. This
hole was easy, because most of it was already drilled. There were two
holes on the bottom of the front-right 4" beam, and behind them, there
was a large hole in the bottom-front 12" beam, which partially showed
through the hole in front of it. All I had to do was drill through the
bottom hole in the 4" beam, and drill away a section of the 12" beam,
making the large hole bigger on one corner. It took three drill bits to
drill all
the way through both angle irons. Once again, when I put
the
bolt through the hole, there was enough room for the nut to fit on
the
bolt.
> The last hole I drilled today was the corrective hole
on the top-left corner. I began with a 3/32" drill bit, but soon after
the hole was drilled, I noticed it was about a millimeter too low. Not
thinking this was too big a deal, I continued drilling without
correcting the hole. I used two more bits to complete
the hole; a 1/8",
and the 11/32" bit. When I put a bolt into the corrective hole, the
bolt was now far
enough away from the top-right
bolt on the left assembly to allow a nut to fit into place without a
collision.
By this time I was out of nuts, so I had to open
my last bag of nuts to fasten the last bolt into the hole. Once done,
the front of the chassis held solid, even when I opened and closed the
top hatch.
> After I completed the job of strengthening the front of CES, I
noticed that a large black portion of the Fire Flower angle iron on the
left of the top bolt had peeled
off. Surprisingly, the pencil grid
under the black ink that peeled off was left intact. After removing the
bolt and scraping off some of the excess coating, I used my black
Pigma
Micron to fill
in the peeled off area. About half an hour later, I put
on another coat of ink. When I resume work on CES tomorrow, I will
apply two corrective coats of nail
polish to the damaged area, and if I
feel like it, two coats of Polycrylic
as well.
> I put the front
panel_in
place again, and found that I can stick
with my original plan to cut the bay hole for the slimline
mounting
rack two millimeters higher than the existing hole. This way, I can
ensure that there will be ample space between the rack and the hard
drive. I have made a slight alteration on how I'm going to mount the
rack. Originally, I planned to use four rods to mount the rack to the
bottom panel. The two on the right would be straight, while the two on
the left would bend in the middle to the right to miss the motherboard.
However, I could also mount a small, square plate to four short rods,
which would then be mounted to the bottom panel. This assembly would
resemble a table, with the hard drive and cooler
sitting under it. The
left side of the square will extend beyond the left legs, and hover
above the right side of the motherboard. The slimline drive mounting
rack will be mounted directly to the plate. I will have to somehow put
about three millimeters of space between the rack and the plate in
order to accommodate the screw holding the floppy drive mount to the
rack, and also the four bolts holding the plate to the rods.
