Let's talk sheetmetal (EDIT: Heck with that, let's use acrylic!)

[dremu]

I have a need to make some boxes, like, oh, 6" or so on a side ... specifically the size of three CD-ROM drives, see attached.

A sheet metal brake would be nice, right, to get good bends, as current my bending apparatus consists of my bench vise and a hammer (admittedly, Scott, now a *ballpeen* hammer )

But umm, what's a "shear"? As it it will CUT the sheetmetal in a nice straight line? That might be good, as a Sawzall just ain't accurate.

I know they're cheap, but as an example, HF has

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=90757

which is the combo brake/shear.

As opposed to the elcheapo brake only, which is like $30.

I looked on CL and the only stuff I saw local was freaking huge -- I mean, I only wanna do computer parts, ya know?

Alternately, anybody here in the SF Bay Area that does sheetmetal stuff for beer money or lunch, lemme know?

-- A

 

[gmc4cw]

what gauge are you working with?

I would use snips or a cutoff wheel before I used a sawzall.

visit a few metal fab shops in your area. one of them has a guy that will make you those boxes for next to nothing. My dad works in a shop where they do almost as much side work as they do shop work.

 

[dremu]

what gauge are you working with?

I would use snips or a cutoff wheel before I used a sawzall.

visit a few metal fab shops in your area. one of them has a guy that will make you those boxes for next to nothing. My dad works in a shop where they do almost as much side work as they do shop work.

I gotta go measure, but I'm talking about 18 or 20 gauge, I think. And yeah, sawzall would suck, but a cutoff wheel has the same issue with relying on the the operator's hand... well, maybe I could set up a jig or something

And I can't help it, I just like to DIY ... and buying tools is fun

-- A

 

[dhcomp]

as much as DIY is cool, isn't that stuff super cheap to buy? Why would you want to make somethign like that when you can buy it for less trouble?>

 

[smalltruckbigcid]

Spring for about a hundred on each if your only doing 18-22 gauge sheet metal. HF should have something decent for those numbers if IIRC. Doing the work ain't hard but you will screw some stock up along the way. Thinner stuff allows for some easier to correct mistakes

 

[dremu]

as much as DIY is cool, isn't that stuff super cheap to buy? Why would you want to make somethign like that when you can buy it for less trouble?>

I would if I could. The pictured one I can't actually *find* ... manufacturer's not been responsive. The ones I can get are like $100+ a pop 'cuz they have hot-swap trays ... I just need brackets, no hotswap crap.

So $600+ for sheetmetal bending makes me wanna DIY

-- A

 

[rdn2blazer]

Use double cut electric sheers, They cut thru sheet metal like butter. They deform the cut edge a bit but not bad. There good for .062, I think thats 18 gage thick. Or get a air nibbler with 18 gage capacity. There noisy though compared to double cut electric sheers.

IF you have a solid door with 3 good hinges you can bend thin gage 20/22 gage in a door jamb, I have done it many times. Or Use a hydraulic press and make a bending die, for thin stuff even a cheap HF tools bench press is fine. Use a piece of ohh 1X1X1/4 steel angle or whatever size you want as the female die (like a "V" block) and a piece of 1/4 plate sharpened to a tight radius welded to a spud that will addapt to the press ram. Perfect 90 deg bends. Inginuity is the key to success my firend.

 

[dremu]

Well, I found pricing on the pictured ones ... $38 a pop. I mean, they're NICE, but forty bucks for a fan and a box is hard to justify when I need four or five of them.

So, it occurred to me that the local plastic place ("TAP Plastics, The Fantastic Plastic Place!") cuts to size -- no charge, either, and while you wait.

So I set them loose on enough parts to make a half dozen big boxes like this, that hold five hard drives in three bays, and four smaller ones that fit three drives into two bays.

Total cost was like $65. For ten of them. Granted I have to drill and tap and glue ... but I enjoy that. I think It's amazing, but 1/4" acrylic will actually take threading, so I just drilled and tapped 6-32 holes in the sides with the 5.25" drive bay pattern. The drive mounts I drilled through, just hafta use longer screws.

I *really* wanted to put a 120mm fan in front, but it would have had to go on the outside, plus the screws for it would have been blind (as in behind a glued panel) which gets ugly in a year when the bearings wear out... and I didn't have a 3.5" or whatever holesaw for a 92mm fan... so it's got an 80mm fan. I think, given the sealed nature of the cage, that should provide enough additional cooling. The case will end up with prolly four or five 120mm's of its own, so it should stay cool, raise my electric bill, and sound like an F-16 in my office =))

Anyway, pix...

The eagle-eyed will note that yep, that is in fact a whopping EIGHT GIGABYTE drive there ... I mean, five of those, with parity, and you have redundant storage of FORTY GIGABYTES The five drives in there are obviously crappy old ones I use as mechanical models ... I don't mind having them right next to the power tools 'cuz I don't care about erasing them!

-- A

 

[nad]

And what are you using these for?

 

[dremu]

And what are you using these for?

Stuffing an inordinate number of 500GB drives into one box. At the moment it's got 24, in two towers. I have a 12U rack monstrosity on order; I'd like to hit close to 30 drives in the next incarnation, in one case.

-- A

 

[nad]

30 500GB drives? Some type of server or do you just like your movies and music?

 

[dremu]

30 500GB drives? Some type of server or do you just like your movies and music?

Yes?

Music isn't a big deal any more, 250GB of MP3's ... but we rip all the DVD's to hard drive and watch 'em on the PC's... one in the bedroom, one in my office, one in the living room.

And 2800+ DVD's take up some space ... especially them newfangled highdef ones ... and I'm cheap (spend all my money on DVD's =))

So it's big-server-on-a-budget time. The movies proper actually live on a "real" server with a hardware RAID card, SATA 750GB drives, etc etc. It's the TV shows on DVD that kill us for space, and that box doesn't have to be so high-falutin' as the other one (less bandwidth for non-HD.)

Jeebus, long answer, but it 'splains the why as well as the what.

-- A

 

[pvfjr]

How many of these drives do you have so far? I assume you've gotten good deals, where at? I'm looking for a second to round out my puny little terabyte, best I've seen is $85 for a WD.

 

[dremu]

Umm, too many and yet not enough. I swore off WD's a few years ago after a bunch of failures, and went back to Seagate when they went to the five-year warranty. I figger if they think it's that good ... and thus far, they have been. 'Bout a dozen 750's in the one system, and 'bout two dozen 500's in this one.

Seagate seems to be discontinuing the 16MB cache versions of all their drives (well, at least the 500's and 750's) and replacing them with 32MB versions, which are cheaper, oddly enough (newer drives usually are)... I'm hoping someone will dump the old ones, but Outpost's great deal was $95 for a 500, and limit one per customer. Doesn't do me much good. I need like six or eight more to really round this box out.

Anyway, some guys collect Dana 60's, and some guys collect movies and hard drives ::shrug:: The phrase "It's a hobby" is a great excuse, right?

-- A

 

[pvfjr]

Ha, that's funny. I actually got stuck on WD's after I swore off Seagates a few years ago, following an uncanny number of failures. I've never had a WD go down though, go figure. I guess we've had different luck. I don't trust Samsungs either, had a few of those go out.

 

[dremu]

Ha, that's funny. I actually got stuck on WD's after I swore off Seagates a few years ago, following an uncanny number of failures. I've never had a WD go down though, go figure. I guess we've had different luck. I don't trust Samsungs either, had a few of those go out.

Nah, I'm with you ... I was a Seagate guy back in the days of the 40GB, and had some IBM's just before they sold out to Hitachi. Switched to WD for the 100 and 250GB drives... but they gave me trouble, and when Seagate upped their warranty, I tried 'em.

Still don't trust Maxtor, even if Seagate bought 'em. ::shrug::

Didn't know Samsung was even still making drives ... I mean, there's WD, Seagate/Maxtor (Quantum, Conner, who else did they buy?), Hitachi ... I guess Toshiba still makes laptop drives maybe. Not a lot of manufacturers any more.

-- A

 

[pvfjr]

Yeah, I just pulled a bad 160GB Samsung out of my stepmom's computer. I don't trust Maxtor either, always had problems with their 10-20 gig drives, and swore them off years ago.

 

[dremu]

Yeah, I just pulled a bad 160GB Samsung out of my stepmom's computer. I don't trust Maxtor either, always had problems with their 10-20 gig drives, and swore them off years ago.

Samsung ... wow. Didn't know they were making drives recently ... I have a 4GB from them I was using as a template when I made those cages =))

It's a crapshoot any more, but RAID exists for a reason... as do DVD+R backups!

-- A

 

[AZ79K5Project]

The acrylic looks nice but it looks like the top and bottom drives aren't going to get any airflow.

Is it just the angle?

 

[dremu]

The acrylic looks nice but it looks like the top and bottom drives aren't going to get any airflow.

Is it just the angle?

Ya know, this occurred to me afterwards, that the steel and aluminum cages you buy, have the advantage of thermal transfer off the drives. Acrylic is not such a good conductor of heat =))

However, since they're glued together the cages are basically airtight, so the air basically has to flow over the drives to get out. I was clever enough to leave a gap on top of the topmost drive instead of fitting it to the top of the cage, so that all five get some airflow across the top. My trusty infrared thermometer says that all five are about the same, maybe 2-4*F above ambient. (Which is actually pretty good, especially for a smaller fan!)
The one thing I'm seeing is that the cables in the back are blocking the airflow a bit, even with the round cables ... I do SOO hate PATA for this, but it's so *cheap* Anyway, the drives are a coupla degrees warmer in the back than in the front, which worries me a bit, and I may put in extra cooling in the back.

The case in question...

And with its cover on... the pic is fuzzy 'cuz I turned the flash off to get the fan colors, which don't show up with the flash on The important things in life =))

The green 120mm fan in the upper left covers four 5.25" bays, which hold six 3.5" drives.

The red 80mm's are the things that started the whole thread, three 5.25" bays with five 3.5" drives.

The bottom two green 120mm's on the right have a set of five 3.5" internal bays behind them, and the top one has the fan controller and some other minor crap behind it.

Crazy, I know, but before, I was using two towers sitting next to each other with cables strung between and it was just UGLY messy, so this allows me to tidy up considerably. I'll have to put the damn thing on the floor under a table or something, cuz it's way too big for the shelf, but c'est la technologique.

-- A