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Build Your Own Lego Computer Case
PuppiesOnAcid writes "Here is what comes about when you cross a case modder and an AFOL (Adult Fan of Legos). It would be interesting to see how he got everything mounted in there since there don't appear to be any screw holes." Not just a Lego shell around a case, he's used the Legos to support everything. Impressive.
I also built a computer case made out of Legos. It isn't as nice as the one shown but I thought I would share it with the rest of Slashdot. You can view some pictures on my website at http://home.comcast.net/%7Esessions9/lego.html.
I love it. It seems silly at first, but Lego makes a great material for prototyping case designs.
A case made out of machined metal and plastic is better, but you can't move things around easily.
once upon a time.(Scroll down.)
Not nearly as artistic as these, though.
After seeing all these projects done with legos, I wonder how you can obtain this much lego. Stores do not seem to sell much more than kits, or very simple buckets with varieties of pieces. Where can you get a ton of just plain bricks?
Is it just me or has building weird things out of Legos become about as original as posting half-eaten food on eBay?
C as e
Anyway, here's another one that I built 3 years ago. Someone said it'd be a hassle taking this to LANs, but I took mine to about 30 LANs. It was stable, self-supportive, and didn't require anything but gravity to hold itself nice and tight. I took it apart a few months ago. It had become a bit passe already.
http://kahn.caglan.net/~dan/images/gallery/Lego
It seems kinda weird that an article about it got posted here. :P (Tin-foil hat time?)
As I told my friend, I'd be worried about heat issues, and ESPECIALLY static. I mean, think about it... When you were little, playing with those things, you'd often get shocked when you were reaching for another piece out of the bucket. Wouldn't that be kinda hard on your $150 video card?
In general though, it's kinda cool to see something like that actually done.
Back in the 80s I built a Lego monitor case. (I bought the guts of a monochrome monitor for $15 and I needed a case for it that did not consist of foil lined cardboard.)
In the end it cost more than if I had just gone out and bought a brand new color monitor. (Not that color would have gotten me much. This was an 8mhz XT clone. CGA was pretty ugly.) Legos are not cheap. Even if you buy the big huge buckets, it takes a lot and you always need something not in the bucket.
You also have to cement the legos together or the heat will pop them apart.
I still have it in a box somewhere. I will have to dig it out one of these days and post pictures.
It is not something I would want to use on a regular basis. I swear you could feel the x-rays pouring off the screen. It was pretty evil. But it looked cool.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Here is a thread from rec.toys.lego from 1994 with the same arguement. If you plan to reply, I would send it to the thread and email the authors as I doubt anyone is still monitoring that thread for replies.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Look at her website for a while, and you'll just say "wow." She has the most amazing designs, and stays as true to the equipment she's modeling as she can.
John
The case itself is going to look pretty much like a standard (if not a little bigger) full size tower. It'll have an opening door on the front that allows you to get to the removable hard drive bays. I'm only using black bricks, I tend to be somewhat anal that way, I can't mix brick colours, (well, unless it's symetrical.. heh).
I started off with designing the hot-swappable removable hard drive enclosures, followed by their housings. Then moved on to the 5.25" enclosures. Everything is pretty much as breatheable as a screen door, so no fans in the removable enclosures are required. After the enclosures and their respective enclosures had been designed, I moved on to the case itself, which was pretty much a breeze except for designing locking mechanisms for the enclosures that made sense. (Ie, accessible.) I have a number of fans strategically positioned around the inside of the case, and the intake and outtake air is channeled in and out of the case respectively.
Once I had the case completely designed, a quick export of a parts list later, I was on Bricklink.com [http://www.bricklink.com/] to start searching their online stores for parts. (They have HUNDREDS of stores accross many, many countries, they're online auctions, you can find pretty much ANYTHING there, with many degrees in price to chose from.)
And that's where I am today, I'm slowly (it's expensive to buy 30,000+ single lego pieces) getting parts in the mail, and saving up for more. I'm taking pictures of the entire process, and I have renderings done by MLCAD, but I don't have a website to host them. If anyone would like to see it or would like to help me host it in the near future (read: a week or 2), you can always drop me a line at 'PseudoSchizo@gmail.com'.
I should really sign up for /. so I can post under an actual name.. hrmm.. ah well, perhaps next time. ;)
Cheers,
Ben 'Jammin
If the entire thing is made out of legos, electromagnetic shielding is going to be a bitch with those rigs. I wonder how much his portable phones / 802.11 / microwaves goes haywire when he stick one of those near it.
Also got to wonder about cooling. I'm not sure of the thermal properties for legos, but I imagine they're not the same as regular metal...
Anyway, many people are Lego purists, and refust to use clone brands. My experience with them is that the quality isn't as good. But they are about half the price sometimes.
I count as such a purist myself - Lego simply makes the highest quality Lego-like bricks out there.
However...
Tyco makes two lines of bricks - One has a sort of "soft" feel to them, and one feels much like Lego bricks. The soft ones absolutely suck and will not stick together unless they have gravity (or some sort of glue) helping them. The other line, however, comes very near Lego for quality. I mention this for one reason only - Lego plates only come in 1/3 brick sizes, whereas Tyco plates (from the higher quality line) come in 1/2 sizes! That alone makes them worth buying a few boxes, because between those two sizes, the number of small vertical spaces you can create doubles from 3 to 6 (of course, unlike the 1/3 lego plates, the Tyco ones won't fit sideways between studs, a way of attaching Lego plates that expands the possible vertical spaces even more; but I find that method of attachment somewhat weak, and would not use it for any structural element of a design).
As for making a Lego PC case... Yup, done that. I'd link to pictures, but my camera recently suffered an unfortunate fate (I healed, it did not). But it has a mini-tower form; what you'd normally think of as the back, I put at the top (easier access to the connectors); I used a gear-driven fold-out tray (no, not PC-controllable, the gears just make it open slower to prevent it from slamming) for the floppy and CD-ROM; And unlike the linked article, mine has an overall consistant color scheme - All yellow, except for green trim around connectors (hey, how many yellow plates (or green bricks) have you seen? I have a 20-gallon bucket literally full of Lego parts, and probably only have 50 green bricks and half that many yellow plates). And the front face of it (the large side opposite the fold-out tray) has the words "LEGO PC" in an italic-ish font spelled out in blue and red bricks (blue for "LEGO", red for "PC").
And no, I don't mean that to brag, or call myself "better" than the submitter - But really, he could have done better. I do like how he dealt with the CD-ROM, but the rest? Needlessly bulky. If he did the same in 1/4th the volume and managed to come up with a non-random color scheme, I'd consider it kinda neat. Otherwise? Sorry, but anyone can build a box out of legos and throw a PC inside.