Day Two of Building My MT Box

So woke up earlier to get a ton done on my table today.
I started with making the top frame, using a dremel to cut the pieces as I dont have a fine tooth saw :)

Put the LCD on top of the acrylic to get a visualization:

Used a white board marker to draw lines since I can just wipe them off when I'm done:

Cut the metal LED rails with the dremel and placed them on the acrylic and drew lines to visualize:

Began to make the LED rails. Figured out the measurements for the LED spacing:

(The shorter sides are spaced 3cm apart and the larger sides are spaced 3.8cm apart)
Drilled holes in the rails and covered them in electrical tape. Pushed each LED through the holes that I drilled, which now had two layers of electrical tape on them to hold the LED away from not only itself but also the metal rails. Twisted the leads together and hooked it up to test it:


(Notice the red/pink color that they glow. IR LEDs, but 850nm so close to red visible light)

(Comparing the prototype to the final rail)

(All four rails)

(Soldered and trimmed leads)

(Rails getting taped to the acrylic)

(Bottom view: All rails taped to acrylic)


(Frame getting put on that will hold up the lip which will cover the LED rails)

(By far the hardest thing so far. Making the LED rail layer frame, and making it a square enough to not only go around the rails but also work evenly with the top lip)

(Top lip on top....It's looking closer to being done!)

(Cut a hole in the acrylic for the wires to go through)

(Soldering and taping down the wires)

(Hehe...I idiot proofed my wires by putting plus and minus signs on it so that as the night got later I wasn't hooking stuff up wrong)

(Top lip off, Top lip on)

(Bare LCD and it's circuit board. White piece of paper is the diffuser out of one of the dead LCD's backlights. I was going to use vellum, but it was late at night and didnt want to wait til tomorrow to go buy some)

(Circuit boards of thd LCD still in metal frame)

(Elongating the power wires of the backlight)

(Laying out the LCD and figuring out how to secure it)

(My roommate suggested taping the flimsy ribbon to give it more strength, so I grabbed some packaging tape and went to work. It greatly reinforced the ribbons.)

(The similar evil side tabs that I punctured on my nice Samsung the other night. Taping the ones on my DELL to give them strength)

(Taping the Diffuser onto the acrylic)

(Putting the taped LCD onto the box)

(A shot of the pieces roughly placed into the box)

(The monitor's power switch taped to the metal frame. I dremeled out a chunk of the metal so that the monitor cable could reach the monitor. Notice the nice wires that go to the monitor circuit board instead of the stupid flat cables from my first LCD)

And below is what the box will look like when done.
(Without any nice cosmetic stuff done to it of course)



So I'm pretty happy with it so far. Need to go to Home Depot to pick up some bolts to mount the LCD power/logic assembly to the inside side of the box, and get some more wooden rods.

Still to do:

• Measure and mount the web camera
• Attach the LCD boards
• Secure the top down
• Wire everything up
• Go to Frys and buy a vga and power plug so that I can just plug two cables into the side of the case to make it work
• Cosmetically make it beautiful