Glad I came across this, what a great project! How's it all worked out? any issues/problems, e.g. with heat, grounding?
Unfortunately I've had a number of stumbling blocks and my motivation has taken a beating.
I got the design working reasonably well, shortly after which Ponoko discontinued the 5.2mm bamboo I was using. I was then forced to either choose the 2.7mm bamboo ply, which is slightly more expensive, or 6.7mm bamboo ply, which is like 2 or 3 times more expensive. I went with the cheaper one. The different material of course requires adjusting all of the geometry of the joints and making a new prototype or two to make sure everything fits well.
And it turns out, the 2.7mm bamboo has warping issues. This makes assembly trickier and it feels... cheaper... until you get it together. Once it's assembled, the slight warping is all straightened out and it looks good. But since you already have to fiddle with several nuts and bolts just to open or close the case, it really sucks to have to fight against the material the whole time too.
Then a couple months ago, I ran into this guy on the interwebs who coincidentally lives like 2 miles from me, has a laser cutter which he sells time on, and knows all about the various bamboo ply materials available from a company in town who makes this stuff. Seriously, what are the odds? Only in Portland... Anyway, Ponoko only offers a small subset of the bamboo plies available, and there very well could be one that's the right thickness that doesn't have warping problems that would be perfect for this project. I just need to go, like, talk to him in real life and check out the bamboo he has... which I haven't gotten around to.
Long story short -- there is a version of this case that basically works. It's just a bit fiddly to put together, so I'm not comfortable trying to sell it, and I'm going to continue with more prototypes with different materials. Maybe I should release the mostly-working plan for free or something. Maybe that would drum up some interest and I'd be more motivated to finish the better version. I don't know.
So I wonder how they get round this in laptops?
I'm guessing laptops have internal, thin metal shields. If not, then they probably use stricter circuitry that doesn't leak as much interference. But I'm not very knowledgeable about laptops.
Barnaby, if you still need front panel connectors I have some samples from
Jinmaoelec, am going to stick them on eBay soon.
Those look like they would probably work, and I actually have found one or two similar items that would also work, but one big problem I have is that they're from these no-name manufacturers in China -- how can I have any confidence that the product and/or company won't just disappear? I don't want to design the case around something that is sort of mysterious and of questionable availability. The other issue is that I'm really just trying to keep the design as simple and cheap as I can until I finally get something that I'm happy with -- then I might start adding to it.
Also, why did you not go for the ECS board in the end?
I don't think I had any specific reason, other than just a strong personal preference for Gigabyte.