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What experience can anyone share in building a case for your computer

The 1980s China/Taiwan tools were a mixed blessing. Sometimes the iron was too soft and tapped holes would strip out. I guess that doesn't mean everything. Japanese exports were often awful from the getgo. Now Japanese stuff is crazy good.

HF charges as much as your brand named chinese export. And speaking generally about their tools, I'll pass. I've bought cheapo wrench sets 10-15 years ago to keep in the car for an emergency say. But then they were cheap. I've bought (I think) Indian made dollar store wrenches and had them around for years. But my tools get used 3x a year. You can luck out. I bought a Husky wrench set, 44 pieces, and some big sizes recently. Made in India. I decided that since I've gotten by w/o those big sizes into my 53 year, I likely will never use them. So I got my 50$ back. Love Husky

If you're options are very limited you can make do with a Horror Freight lathe or mill. Plan on spending a week or weeks dismantling and cleaning it. Oi vay.
 
I still have a set of "Flying Swallow" brand metric offset wrenches from the early 80s. I think my bench vise came from then also. Taiwanese (I don't think we had trade with PRC back then) gray iron machine tools used lots of putty in the castings, but weren't awful.

My opinion of HF tools dates back at least 10 years. I haven't bought anything recently from them, save for a wood spiltter, which works quite well for the money. Sure, a lot of what they offer is pure junk. but they're slowly improving--but that's true of Chineesium in general, save for the budget stuff. My English Wheel, for example, is from HF, and, while it took a fair amount of polishing and tweaking, still was a bargain at $100 and does the job well.

On a lark, I recently purchased a $29.95 impact driver through Banggood. I'm a Makita cordless user, so I've got plenty of batteries and charger. The durned thing is actually quite decent and a heckuva deal.

So every once in awhile you get lucky. But it's a game of roulette.
 
Chuck(G) said:
. . . I'm a Makita cordless user, so I've got plenty of batteries and charger. The durned thing is actually quite decent and a heckuva deal.
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I've had a Makita cordless drill set (12v) for over 20 years and it's on it 2nd set of batteries. Kicked, dropped, left in the rain, and otherwise abused - it still keeps on going like that TV bunny ad. at least +1 for Makita.
 
(grabs steering wheel and wrenches (no pun intended) thread back to the OP's situation)

Lathes, mills, spanners, castings are all fine in their own right but the OP's question was about building cases, with a folded sheetmetal one being posited.

Much as a lathe is 'the king of machine tools' (I have 5) it isn't really going to be useful for making a keyboard enclosure, perhaps maybe for producing threaded standoffs.
A mill, likewise, unless the table XY travel is long enough to mill the sides or the keyboard area.

Other types of sheetmetal tools that could contribute to your case build are hole punches, for cable outlets. This example is a round one:
https://www.carbuilder.com/images/thumbs/0033219_52mm-2-116-sheet-metal-hole-punch_510.jpeg

Guillotine. One this size has enough depth to trim the length of a keyboard enclosure:
http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2156/6801/products/hs-500-569872_1024x1024.jpg

Fretsaw or bandsaw. With a guide fence they will cut a good enough edge on sheetmetal that can then be dressed with a file. A bandsaw will only be good for the outer edges obviously.
A jigsaw with fine tooth blade may work, have the outrigger guide set to run along a piece of wood as a straight-edge. When cutting thin metal with reciprocating tools, clamping down is essential.

Get a laser cutting or water-jet cutting shop to knock out your design. For the sheet metal laser cutting I've had done, I just supplied a basic (the more basic the better) DXF file, I had to replace splines with arcs before they accepted it for cutting (this was some years ago now). Any reasonable CAD program saves or exports DXFs.

Tin snips were mentioned. Using tin snips instead of a guillotine, pressbrake or nibbler is like choosing to put insulation onto wiring using electrical tape instead of heatshrink tubing.
Tin snips are good for cutting ...tins.
 
You forgot a sheet-metal brake. There are plenty of DIY plans for those--they're not hard to use and make nice crisp bends in sheet metal.

If all of this is overwhelming, consider wood. Much easier to work with simple tools and can be made to look exquisite . After all, they used to make radio and TV cabinets of the stuff.
 
Sheet metal brake was discussed earlier in this thread. You can make your own (also discussed) but as the Old Engineer said the the Young Engineer "Why make what you can buy?".
We live in an age of cheap CHEAP tools with a quality trade-off acceptable to the low-use home consumer.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Believe that I mentioned that at #3.

The trouble with doing milling with a drill press is that the quill and bearings aren't engineered for substantial side loads, which puts a limit on what these can do. Of course a real vertical mill can do both drilling and milling, but that's what it's engineered to do. If you're willing to do a fair amount of "tweaking", the small lathes and mills from Harbor Freight can be good deals--there's plenty on the web about this.
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Chuck, I saw your post, but wanted to add the link. I would only use my drill press to punch corner holes and then use a metal saw to cut the rest of the outline and finish with files. If a bit of extra metal needed to be removed in places I have a nibbling tool that I've owned for 40+ years. I'm luckier than most and have a small metal brake plus a mill and 7x16 lathe in my shop, but hand tools plus a Dremel could do the job as long as one takes their time to do the work. Measure 3 times and cut once. (I'm famous for needing extra measuring. :p)
 
I have been working on an adaptable wood case design for single-board computers. Here's the link to some photos of a prototype.

For simplicity, this design doesn't have a flat place on top to rest a monitor. That way, the case can have a nice finish without worry about the monitor scratching it. Instead, I have a little glass stand for the monitor that fits over the case (as shown).

I have the design in Vcarve format. It's directly CNC-able, if you have access to a CNC. Otherwise, the pieces can be traced onto plywood and cut. I would like to prove out the current revision before posting to GitHub, but I'm happy to share it with anyone interested.

Dave
 
Some of the Chinese mini-mills can be made good. The key is to get one with a solid column (the tilt head inexpensive mills will chatter, but the solid column prevents it), and you'll probably have to adjust the gibs yourself, as it often isn't done well at the factory (this is a routine maintenance item anyway).

Little Machine Shop sells a very good chinese mill, built to their specs, at a fair price. It's not $300, but it's a good hobbyist tool. https://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=4962
 
DeltaDon said:
Chuck, I saw your post, but wanted to add the link. I would only use my drill press to punch corner holes and then use a metal saw to cut the rest of the outline and finish with files. If a bit of extra metal needed to be removed in places I have a nibbling tool that I've owned for 40+ years. I'm luckier than most and have a small metal brake plus a mill and 7x16 lathe in my shop, but hand tools plus a Dremel could do the job as long as one takes their time to do the work. Measure 3 times and cut once. (I'm famous for needing extra measuring. :p)
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You might want to consider one of the inexpensive oscillating saws for cutting blind holes. I use one a lot in woodwoorking and there are metal-cutting blades for those.

At any rate, I don't mind building things of wood--I've got the tools and have built furniture for the house. It's different from metal work--it's more forgiving and the material has lots of character. There are some stunning examples of PC casework on the web. To be frank, if I had to live with a piece of gear, I'd take the warmth of wood any day over painted metal or plastic.

My late father grew up during the 20s and was a fan of building radio gear on real "breadboards". I've got 30s radio handbooks that even show rack-mount construction using masonite panels.
 
Might be off topic, slightly, but last year I was given a working Superbrain II board. I soon had a PSU and made up the "intermediate" (provides access to the serial ports) and video mixer (to give a composite video signal) boards. It booted with an HxC floppy emulator. So far so good, but there's no case. So I wondered if the Superbrain's case shape could be approximated using thin plywood bent around formers (possibly with steam). The main problem is the compound curves at the rear upper corners, but the rest of it should be reasonably do-able. Naturally, it has to be done in sections and these can be affixed to a frame, then filled and painted like the Superbrain itself. Certain features, such as the raised edge around the keyboard and the ridges on the drive bay panel can be glued on (as I have no router).

As it stands, it's a bit of a mess.

SB Lashup II LabelledJPG.JPG

But can I build a copycat case?

Hmm, just wondering if fibreglass is a better solution...!
 
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I don't do a lot of wood working but you likely would have to soak the material to get it to bend.

You could also consider plastic sheet. Hobby Lobby for instance sells iirc 24" x 36" clear acrylic? sheets. With their persistent online 40% off coupon, it's 4$ and change. As is it's very very flexible. I'll measure it when I get a chance, but I think it's about 3/32" thick. Ideal for curvy stuff. If that's too thin, just overlay (or underlay?) a second layer and glue it together. Scratch up the outet surface with very fine grit sandpaper and paint. If you're trying to create compound curves, first you'll need a methodology to create the shapes, or a form/pattern made of wood, then use heat.

That material may be a little thick for vaccuforming. But don't rule that out. You can fenagle an "oven" with 1 or more heat guns I'm thinking. A catdboard box as an enclosure. And you could likewise overlaymultiple layers to buildup the thickness I think.
 
If you don't want to bend thin plywood around corners or use a curved router bit on thicker panels, you might try making your rounded edges from quarter round mouldings, of course subtracting the moulding radius from each edge of the plywood panel. There are all sizes at your local hardware store.
You could probably produce something approximating an Apple ][ case with this material.
QuarterRounds.jpg
 
If you design your own boards, you can pick out an enclosure first and then design a board for it. I find Arduino Mega enclosure nice & cheap for small designs. Pactec CM5-125 clamshell is a nice enclosure for the economical 100mm X 100mm pc board format. I saw an enclosure made out of Lego blocks that was very cute!
Bill
 
I'm sorry we seem to have gone a bit off the OP's expectations but I'm really happy to discover how many workshop-folk there are on here :)

Hardwood, ply, sheetmetal, lasercut plastics... there are any number of ways to build a case. The only sensible approach I can see is to pick one that gives the impression you want (some beautiful things could feel incongruous on a 1970s/80s pc... ) that's not too big a stretch in terms of the tools and techniques available (however nice milled titanium may be, I'll pass). For a one-off, I think it's fine to do workarounds for not having all the perfect tools for the job. It's great that there are a lot of tools available relatively cheaply now if you're prepared to pick carefully and work on them a bit to get them set up well, but it's still only worth getting the ones that will see a reasonable amount of use.

Something we didn't discuss is whether or not an all-enclosing earthed sheet-metal case is wanted as a guard against interference. If not, I agree with the suggestion that plywood could be great for a 70s-homebrew-style machine and pretty easy with limited hand tools. Sort of an "Apple I prototype" feel. It'd still be handy to have a bench drill :) To steam ply you really need to be quite picky about the quality of the chosen ply, some is simply not up to it.

On the forever-fraught question of Chinese machine tools: on average, I like them. That's an average with a very wide variance in it and a willingness to dodge a few particular importers who seem to bring in others' QC rejects. The OK ones are never as smooth and sweet as the best old tools but you can fairly easily get one that gets the job done and can be made able to do good work, which is usually all I want.
 
justanotherhacker said:
Something we didn't discuss is whether or not an all-enclosing earthed sheet-metal case is wanted as a guard against interference.
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Probably because it's easy to line a non conducting enclosure with metallic foil and ground it. In the case (geddit? ;) ) of the Superbrain, there is no shielding anyway, apart from the mains filter.
 
Or zinc-laden paint, like some of the plastic/foam/fiberglass enclosures.

Sheet steel is useful to corral magnetic fields, but otherwise there are other solutions for EMI.
 
Must admit, foil had occurred to me (seeming slightly inferior to sheet metal, but not by much)... but zinc-laden paint hadn't. Interesting. Didn't realise that could be up to scratch.
 
Yeah, practice in the good old days--either nickel, zinc or carbon on the inside of enclosures. Paints made specifically for EMF shielding are quite common. But I suspect that a rattle-can of Rust-Oleum Cold Galvanizing spray would be quite adequate.
 
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