Aluminium Case - versatile housing for Rune/Other

[Dohmar]

Hi Folks
I know a few of you have seen my post about how I'm using rune to make a multi purpose hifi...
Well, I've gotten down to the planning stage for the housing. I was considering wood, plastics and other things, but I'm thinking of aluminium with a powdercoated exterior. When I do the sums, the major expense will be the design/r&d of a proper metal exterior, so that leads me to wonder, would any of you be interested in a bulk buy of a custom made case. I have yet to come up with a design as I'm waiting on parts to do measurements with, but the specs would be;

-Aluminium housing, fit to take the 7" Waveshare (C) touchscreen, flush mount to the front panel
-Front panel angled at 45' so it can be used vertically and horizontally.
-Case as small as possible
-5 1/4" drive bay so you can fit your preferred solution whether it be a simple optical drive, or a raid chassis
-Mounting points for the pi
-HDD and optical drives isolated in their own metal chassis to prevent motor noise leaking into the pi/dac
-Removable mothertray (containing the pi and the 5 1/4" devices), affixed with 2x screws at the rear of the enclosure, sliding out from inbuilt rails.
-Removable rear tray with the option of having either cutouts performed for you, or completely blank
-Room for USB hubs, extra power supplies, and at least a couple of usb dongles (will need extension cables however).

Metal cases won't be cheap, but they are far more durable than wood or plastic, plus they act as a faraday cage and shield stray RF, so they actually do have a practical bonus. Aluminium is also a great dissipator of heat.

I'm thinking of building a prototype in a couple months time once I have everything, and then get a 3d printed model built. Once that QA's OK, I'll get the template made so I can build a run of 5-10 chassis, and after I get those chassis sold, I'll open source the design and anyone can use it with their own 3d printers (naturally, i'll work out a deal with the local 3d printer so they can sell copies to the public, but as a business they will need to charge prices to make it worth their while).

TLDR? - EOI - Aluminium Case

-D

PS- The aluminium case could quite easily be incorporated into a wood chassis or any other chassis. I plan to make everything as user-maintainable as possible. And thinking beyond rune, given that it has a HDD and optical drive + 2 usb ports, inbuilt wireless etc, the case could be used as a general pi desktop pc enclosure

[hondagx35]

Hi Dohmar,

i'm also planning a custom made enclosure and like your ideas.
I have access to two cnc machines, so i could help in making the prototypes.

Frank

[Dohmar]

Hi Dohmar,

i'm also planning a custom made enclosure and like your ideas.
I have access to two cnc machines, so i could help in making the prototypes.

Frank

Sounds cool, I dont have access to CnC but I have a friend who is good with metal work, I would have to buy sheet aluminium and get him to cut and weld it which is time consuming and expensive, are you good with CAD? I have 3 potential ideas for chassis layout depending on the size of lcd screen (im reckoning that the 10.1" screen will have an IPS replacement before too long).

I would like to see this thread become populated with sketches and ideas, and since I prefer to work with pencils I will need to do a nice isometric sketch and upload for you all to see. I imagine with a 5.25" wide bay, I could keep the enclosure around 6" wide max, have a shallow depth and keep the screen at a tilt. I think it is worth pursuing several designs, based around their use. Obviously not doing things like a simple pi enclosure, but rather a chassis for touchscreen rune, another for headless rune + options, another for rune in a car, etc... the possibilities are endless if we can standardise certain mounts. Consensus is very cheap compared to reverse engineering

-D

Edit - This is the last project I did, which was a stereo guitar power amp. I did the chassis and I had a pro amp builder do the point to point wiring inside. I plan to make this next chassis better, as I'll be able to design it from ground up, rather than mod an old box....
http://www.thegearpage.net/board/index. ... d.1466904/

Edit 2 - Frank, what kind of materiel can you fabricate? I was thinking 2-3 mm aluminium would be a strong, lightweight and easy to mod platform. First betas could comprise of only the base plate and the backplate, and after 2-3 reviews could fabricate a front/side/top/underside chassis to slot the base plate into

Edit 3 - The 5 1/4 bay device I'll be buying next week is this -
http://www.amazon.com/Syba-Adapter-Opti ... B0081IOSOW
The baseplate of the case will have an iso standard single 5 1/4" chassis mount so I can mount that above, or even something simple like a stock 5 1/4" optical, or a 2.5" raid chassis

[rikardo1979]

I always like to see people doing DIY stuff.
I am an DIY guy, all my life
I would like to bring to your attention tbis great online cloud CAD solution which is great for community projects as it can be shared and access by all who would be interested to participate
https://www.onshape.com

I used it recently to make a simple project, an acrylic cover for my turn table.
(picture later)

So if you like give it a try


OP2

[ingohz]

Reading your comments I remembered a for my taste very nice and professional project from Tobias Scharmann I saw a while ago at the HiFiBerry site: click here. The plates were manufactured by by Schaeffer - with access to a CNC milling this should be an easy task...

[rikardo1979]

I always like to see people doing DIY stuff.
I am an DIY guy, all my life
I would like to bring to your attention tbis great online cloud CAD solution which is great for community projects as it can be shared and access by all who would be interested to participate
https://www.onshape.com

I used it recently to make a simple project, an acrylic cover for my turn table.
(picture later)

So if you like give it a try


OP2

missing pictures

[Dohmar]

Hi All
Nice idea with the open source cloud cad software, however I have to admit I'm quite useless when it comes to cad. I've drawn my idea in PSP so u guys get the idea. Basically the grey part is the small case, and the sides are addons for a revised design that can cater for the 10" screens.
The middle of the case has a 5 1/4" bay that has the iso standard mounting holes and is fully enclosed (except for the rear)to keep the hdd/optical motor noise away from the pi and dac (there usually isnt any but it doesnt hurt to be sure. The pi would have mounting lugs close to the front of the case without interfering with the touchscreen. The touchscreen would have lugs to screw into on the inside of the case, so no screws will be visible on the outside except for the rear panel, where there would be a thin strip of metal at the top and bottom for the rear panel to mount onto.

The case bottom, front, top and sides are all one piece. The rear panel and mounting panel slide into the rear of the case as a whole unit (makes building easier, and maintenance/modification too).

(I know its quick and dirty but I usually draw my projects out on paper with lead pencils ;\)

I'm buying my 5 1/4" bay device and a bunch of cables next week and they should arrive a week or two after that, so I'll be able to fit them all together and take photos with measurements. Positioning the mounting lugs for the screen will be the biggest challenge (and by that i mean we can easily mount it if we take into account that the screen itself isn't perfectly symmetrical, so we would need to offset the lugs in relation to the hole cut for the screen.

I dont know if anyone can sketch up a design using the above url based upon what I've drawn. The 5 1/4" bay fortunately has an ISO spec which we can draw measurements from...

-D

Edit - Depending on peoples preferences and space avail, the pi lugs might have to be located more towards the rear, to allow the pi and the hat and anything that comes out (im thinking of wires that need to have space to bend etc). The rear panel can also be provisioned with 2 usb ports, a hdmi port, 3.5mm headphones, etc. One thing to consider, by enclosing the pi in the case, we do get to shield from RF interference and other ambient electrical noise, however the onboard bluetooth and wireless would stop working. In the purposes where people want to use that, we can have the design 3d printed in a plastic. I personally would prefer to use ethernet and disable the onboard wireless but I know not everyone has that in mind.

[Dohmar]

I've just place the order for the following bits;
7" Waveshare (C) screen
7 port USB hub (powered)
5.25" Drive Bay (Syba, Optical Slim Drive+2.5" trayless caddy + 2 USB ports)
USB Analogue to Digital converter
USB to optical sata adaptor cable
USB to sata hdd adaptor cable
USB header to dual USB A cable
12v to 5v/5amp converter to power the hub (which will power everything else)

They'll come in the next 3-4 weeks, so now I just gotta wait for bits to arrive and then I can start doing measurements to build the case.

Just a quick case regarding CNC from those that know, can CNC machines bend and weld or do they only cut?
Thanks
-D

Edit- looking at dimensions provided by the manufacturers of all the bits I've ordered, I should be able to integrate all of this into a cube, 23cm x 23cm x 23cm with an angled front panel. Already started drawing some sheet metal cutouts to get started. The hard part will be finding the screw offsets to weld onto the underside of the front panel, then to weld the box together, smooth off the edges/seams and ensure everything is sturdy. I'm building the pi and 5.1/4" bay adaptor onto a separate sheet of aluminium that can slide out once the rear panel and the rubber feet are removed.