I plan on making my proton pack out of some wood. Can anyone tell me what the recommended thickness is for the motherboard. thanks.
That’s swell when you make it out of aluminum, but a 1/8" thick wood motherboard will be waaaay too thin. I think that there’s a lot of fellows that made their out of MDF or something. Is 3/4" too thick?
Isn’t a wooden mobo a 1/4" thick?
Don’t follow stefan’s plans too closely, as they don’t match the rest of his parts. I would recommend building the whole shell, then tracings the outline on whatever you use for a mobo, and then cut it to fit.
Can’t recommend this method enough! It really does save you alot of hassle getting a pre cut motherboard to fit your shell.
Oh and as for the thickness I used 3/8" thick MDF.
You could use 1/8th in ply for accuracy sake and just use a few cross ribs ( mounted inside the pack) to help brace the wood…
You could use two layers of hardboard glued together.
It will be relatively thin compared to MDF or ply, and will not flex too much since you’re making it into a plywood type board.
Hardboard is the brown stuff they make peg boards and clip boards out of. Very smooth one side, little rough on the other. I’d glue both rough sides together and cut out the mobo after its dry.
My first pack was done this way and it performed very well.
For $20 I ordered a sheet of .25" thick black (eliminates painting) ABS plastic from this place: http://www.interstateplastics.com/ . I plan to trace my shell on it and cut it out with a jigsaw. We’ll see how that works.
I used 1/8" ply and can’t recommend it. I had to lay support rods and cut notches in parts so it’ll fit over the rods. Sure, it’s sturdy now and you’d never know they were there, but it’s not really worth the trouble since the easy fix is just thicker plywood
And this, thankfully I just cut a template of the mobo first to mock everything up and a couple edges were about 1/8" off (though that could have been just as easily my fault, I don’t know)
Wow, ok so would 1/4" plywood work the best? I have a friend who is going to help me make some in his machine shop. They will be exact size to stefans plans. Funny thing is that he told me the machine will get me 8 plates… lol. I was going to try and build 2-3 packs. Not 8..lol. Maybe I’ll have some freebies later this week…lol
You could build a “show” mother board that you can see on the outside. Then about 1/4 to 1/2 in glue a thicker piece of wood inside so it matches the inside walls of your pack.
It will look like the proper 1/8 thick on the outside but hidden inside is your thicker support base.
Sorry it seems easier in my head but writing it ain’t.
kind of a similar approach to Cpus but with a lip.