I'm building a tiny case out of laser-cut bamboo

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Sorry I am bombarding you with questions, how strong is the material? Are you going to need to reinforce it at all? After your build I might look into it for a NAS box

I haven't really put it to the test yet, but it seems quite strong in the direction of the grain. Against the grain, not so much (to be expected). This is exacerbated by the fact that it's a bunch of 6mm strips glued side by side and not one big contiguous piece. If you want unidirectional strength then Ponoko has MDF, veneered MDF, and various plastics. I just thought the bamboo would look nice.

I think it'll be fine for my purposes without any reinforcement, as long as I take the grain into account and don't make any pieces too small (I easily cracked a piece of the scrap, because it was only about 3mm thick and cut across the grain).

The thin, non-rounded rectangle piece (that says "this ring should fit around an atx io shield") is only 4-5mm thick on the long part and is pretty strong. I'd say that it probably compares similarly to a wooden pencil (if the wooden pencil were shaved down to the same dimensions)

Here's a picture of a cat platform made out of the same material: http://ponoko.com/showroom/CatterWallin/kitty-korner-by-catter-wallin--4330

 

[Evadman]

too bad ponoko doesn't have steel as a material.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

too bad ponoko doesn't have steel as a material.

They have aluminum, brass, and stainless steel at their New Zealand location, but last I looked, shipping is very expensive ($30+). The materials themselves are also very expensive and I'm sure the cutting goes more slowly, also raising the price. I'm scared to imagine what my $30 test piece would have cost to make out of metal.

 

[alfa147x]

I wonder how cheap a machine shop would be

Oil Rub Bronze would be cool too

 

[BentMyWookie]

It looks like that case is going to look fantastic. In terms of solving your heating issue, a friend of mine suggested that you can utilize one of those good ol' programmable thermostat. Keeping the designated spot cool will definitely help.

Mind you, this advice is coming from someone (whom I personally think) doesn't know too much about computers. And honestly, I'm just learning..

Either way, it looks like it'll be a fantastic and sturdy case. Good luck!

 

[Knavish]

Wow this looks cool. How are you going to mount the motherboard onto the wood? -- I'd imagine you can't quite tap a hole into the wood to screw in the typical mobo standoff. Perhaps you could use some kind of captured nut, or epoxy a nut onto the correct place?

Maybe it would be possible to hand cut a thin sheet of aluminum as a ground plane for the motherboard?

Lol they do leather. I wonder what a leather "wrapped" MDF computer case would be like

 

[gorobei]

too bad the oakland branch doesnt do aluminum, I'd love to try to make my own cpu cooler.

odd, i thought the bamboo was supposed to be large sheets of bamboo veneer cross layered into a plywood type of material.

your project looks interesting. good luck with it. Are you going for silence, compactness, or just style?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Wow this looks cool. How are you going to mount the motherboard onto the wood? -- I'd imagine you can't quite tap a hole into the wood to screw in the typical mobo standoff. Perhaps you could use some kind of captured nut, or epoxy a nut onto the correct place?

I just screwed a motherboard standoff into a 3mm hole in the bamboo (actually slightly larger than 3mm when you take into account the material the laser burns away) and it is quite snug and secure. With 4 of them holding the motherboard in, I'm not worried about them ripping out. I could be wrong of course, and that might catastrophically suck, but I think it will be okay.

your project looks interesting. good luck with it. Are you going for silence, compactness, or just style?

Thanks. Mostly for compactness and the fun of making it. Quietness is good too, but I'm not obsessed with it. All that I need to be happy noise-wise is an aftermarket heatsink that allows the cpu fan to be reasonably quiet under full load, and low speed case fan(s).

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I did some more hardcore stress testing of M3 bolts in 3mm holes in the bamboo and it's quite strong. I put a C-clamp on a thumbscrew and tried my hardest to rip it out of the hole but I couldn't do it. And this was a hole I'd been playing around with a lot and was quite well worn. (that sounds bad)

Then again, it wouldn't be hard to fashion a motherboard spacer (out of bamboo)! and just use a nut/bolt to hold the motherboard on 100% securely. It'd be more crude/mechanical looking on the outside... which brings me to another issue:

I'd been going back and forth about how to actually join the 6 main pieces of the case, and I was mostly planning on gluing 5 of them and then somehow attaching the side door piece in a way that's easy to get on and off. Well, I'm not so sure about this approach for a few reasons:

1. The laser-cut edges of the bamboo aren't at a perfect 90 degree angle, due to the laser cutting more off of the "near" side of the material as it burns through to the "far" side. This means I'd have to do some sanding to get a 90 degree edge suitable for gluing, and that's getting into imprecise carpentry work that I dislike and suck at and am generally trying to avoid with this project.

2. I am not the first person to make stuff out of laser-cut wood, and other people have refined techniques that are probably more robust than my own half-baked ideas. These generally involve interlocking tabs and slots, and for something that needs to sometimes be disassembled, the joint used on the MakerBot looks like a good option. Here are a couple pictures of what that looks like:

Basically you have the tab/slot holding things stationary in two axes, and a nut/bolt secure things in the third axis, keeping it all quite strong and rigid. The downside is that it has a very mechanical and utilitarian look. I was initially trying to avoid that, but I should probably stop fighting and just embrace it. Another downside is that it's not quite air tight, which means it might get dusty. But at least it'll get dusty from the inside out since I'm designing for positive air pressure. One more con is that it makes the case slightly larger since there needs to be extra material hanging off the end to surround the slots and holes. But it'll still be quite small.

I have a distant dream that I could build additional refinements of this case, working out all the (inevitable) quirks, and when it's finally mature, start selling them for profit. That would be really cool. But I generally have terrible business sense, so this is probably just another hairbrained idea that will go nowhere.

 

[Zap]

Materials $2.47
Making (cutting) $19.77
Post & Handling $8.82
Total $31.06

As you can see, cutting complexity (i.e. time) is the biggest factor in cost.

Was that per piece or for all the pieces?

 

[sandorski]

This thread has totally exposed my lack of understanding of what Bamboo is. Was expecting to see a bunch of sticks joined together. D:

Any pics of final Build?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Was that per piece or for all the pieces?

It was just for the prototype piece, which I used to gauge the real-world tolerances of the material so my real pieces (which I haven't finalized yet) hopefully aren't loose and rickety.

This thread has totally exposed my lack of understanding of what Bamboo is. Was expecting to see a bunch of sticks joined together. D:

Any pics of final Build?

I'm still finishing the design and don't even have most of the hardware yet. I will definitely post pics as I make more progress.

Bamboo is neat stuff. This explains it better than I could:

Bamboo Basics

Although there are more than 1,000 species of bamboo, moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens) is the type generally used for industrial harvest. It can grow to a height of 40 feet or more, and the diameter at the base can grow to 6 or 8 inches, maturing in four to six years. Bamboo is hollow, but the wall can be up to an inch thick at the base, getting thinner towards the top.

Bamboo lumber products are made from bamboo strips cut from the thick walls of the hollow stalk. The strips are treated with a solution of boric acid and lime to extract the starch that attracts termites or powder post beetles. The strips are then milled square on four sides and kiln-dried to 8- to 10-percent moisture content. The material is then sanded smooth for laminating. The strips can be laminated edge to edge to create a thin single-ply panel, or laminated again to each other, creating multi-ply bamboo plywood. The pieces can also be face-glued to create vertical grain panels.

Carefully selected, bamboo poles are harvested from forests in the Hunan, Jiangxi and Fujian provinces, from forests under the control of the Chinese Department of Forestry. Unlike traditional hardwoods, bamboo does not require replanting. Mature bamboo has an extensive root system that continues to regenerate. Unlike hardwood with a growth cycle many times longer, bamboo is truly a renewable resource. It grows in very dense forests and has been harvested and used in Asia for hundreds of years. Anything from chopsticks, paneling, roofs, walls and flooring are made of bamboo in many Asian countries, especially China.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I think I'm going to have to concede defeat to front USB ports. I've looked at cannibalizing PCI brackets like this:

And front panels like this:

And individual ports on wires like these:

And even cannibalizing a USB hub. But each of these solutions is either going to be ugly, or impossible to mount to the front panel, or both. So I give up. Ugh! I'm unhappy with this resolution but am glad to be done dealing with it.

Besides, Mac Minis don't have front USB ports...

 

[Knavish]

Could you glue (hot glue?) the usb-ports-on-wires to mate with their respective holes on the panels? Maybe the glue wouldn't be strong enough for repeated plugging / unplugging ??

Also, could you glue and/or screw the sides together with brackets like these:

from here:
http://www.mcmaster.com/#corner-brackets/=71k2px

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Could you glue (hot glue?) the usb-ports-on-wires to mate with their respective holes on the panels? Maybe the glue wouldn't be strong enough for repeated plugging / unplugging ??

Also, could you glue and/or screw the sides together with brackets like these:

from here:
http://www.mcmaster.com/#corner-brackets/=71k2px

It's possible, but this gets into precision handiwork that I just don't like doing and generally suck at. The reason I love this laser cutting stuff is that I can do high-precision design on the computer and take all the time I want, and then just spit out copies with almost no effort. I'm decent at designing things but I make a crappy craftsman.

Also, as I will possibly be selling or at least just sharing this design with other people, I don't want to also require them to have these extra tools and skills.

 

[RaiderJ]

What about if you design a bamboo PCI bracket shield like in the picture above? That could be made with a thin bamboo sheet to cover the USB ports. Then, you could inset that bamboo bracket into a thicker bamboo case wall? You'd have to use a router or something to cut away a portion of the case wall. Maybe that can be done by Ponoko?

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

What about if you design a bamboo PCI bracket shield like in the picture above? That could be made with a thin bamboo sheet to cover the USB ports. Then, you could inset that bamboo bracket into a thicker bamboo case wall? You'd have to use a router or something to cut away a portion of the case wall. Maybe that can be done by Ponoko?

The PCI bracket one is terrible. It's molded in rubber and is all crooked and not precision-built at all. Also, the thickness of the bamboo is 5+mm, which means you can't just drop it in as a replacement for sheet metal.

 

[RaiderJ]

Too bad, I was thinking you could get a really thin bamboo sheet to use. Maybe another type of wood ~1mm thick? Might provide some contrast, especially if you stained it a different color.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Too bad, I was thinking you could get a really thin bamboo sheet to use. Maybe another type of wood ~1mm thick? Might provide some contrast, especially if you stained it a different color.

The thinnest is 2.7mm bamboo. It'd probably work, but I'm really just tired of thinking about it. I'll save it for revision 2, if there ever is one.

 

[Zap]

You may want to look for USB ports that are on a little PCB. Some of the drive bay ports use that, and some USB hubs. I just found this thread with pics showing one example. The ports stick forward so it should be able to peek through bamboo thicknesses. This example doesn't, but I've seen ones that have mounting holes in the PCB.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

I got some dremel-ing done today on some hard drive brackets.

The brackets were originally in a U shape, like this:

and were meant to fit two 2.5" drives in a 3.5" slot. I just want to use them to mount the drives to the inside of the case, so I cut off one side to make them into L brackets:

But I'm thinking it's really a bit overkill. I think just a couple random pieces of plastic or even rubber (bike tube) could be cut into similar shapes and have holes cut in them and serve the same purpose. The rubber would probably be a bit quieter too. And they would be done in a few minutes with mere scissors instead of an hour of flinging steel dust all over the place (mmm steel boogers).

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

Submitted another test print, this time for the new interlocking joints I'm going to use. Last time it took 15 days to receive... seems like an eternity! Hopefully it at least doesn't take any longer this time.

Cost breakdown for this one:

Materials $2.47
Making $2.47
Post & Handling $8.82
Total $13.76

Oh yeah and my 100 ea. of little screws and nuts to fit these joints arrived today from McMaster.

 

[thescreensavers]

Cant wait to see how it turns out!

 

[alfa147x]

Cant wait to see how it turns out!

Me too!

 

[ElFenix]

ponoko looks pretty sweet

now i just need access to a 3D printer