Pelican Rig

[lochalpha]

So my gaming buddy got a new job that takes him all over the place for weeks at a time which puts a dent in my quality gaming time. He was going to buy a gaming laptop but he doesn't actually need a battery, just portable power so I proposed a solution: The Pelican Rig.

 

I wanted to build something that would offer power at least equivalent to a decent gaming laptop that was 1) Still portable 2) Cheaper 3) UPGRADABLE in the future. We decided straight off that a Pelican case offered the sturdy handled portability that we were looking for and went with the Pelican 1500.

 

We also decided that we didn't want to drill any holes in the pelican case to the exterior that would compromise the water-tight seal. We wanted a built in screen and, in a perfect world, enough room to store the keyboard and mouse inside.

 

 

To start, I cut a 16ga plain steel sheet to size. This plate is what the entire computer will "hang" from. It will form the rigid structure that all of the other components will attach to. I don't have a machine shop so this is hand cut with an angle grinder and dremel. This is the first pass before any smoothing/sanding.

 

The plate will be held in by Peli-quick mounts which will be bonded to the inside of the case with a polypropylene approved epoxy.

I'm using Makerbeam 10mm extruded aluminum beams for most of the interior framework. They're strong and adjustable. I needed something flat and small to power this guy as I want to maintain as much airflow as possible so I went with a SeaSonic SS-400L1U 400W Single Server Power Supply. The limitation here is that it will only support a single 6pin powered PCI-E video card. That is a limitation we decided we could live with.

 

 

Testing the fit of the 3 80mm exhaust fans (Noctua NF-R8 Redux) that will be mounted over the PSU. There will be 3 more on the other side as intakes hopefully creating a decent windtunnel.

 

Next up I added some framing to the plate. I used some aluminum angle stock to add rigidity to the steel plate and give me some nice hard-points to mount things to.

 

 

The screws will eventually be replaced with 1/8th inch rivets and all holes filled but I wanted to keep everything in pieces for now so that changes can be made and drilling mounting holes will be easier.

 

 

Testing the fit of the PSU before drilling mounting holes.

 

So far so good. More to follow.

[Firewrath9]

gl!

[lochalpha]

UPDATE: So, I got busy and forgot to update this post. The short version is that my buddy ended up getting another job just before we actually put the final touches on this thing and it has been subsequently cannibalized as he didn't need it. BUT: For those of you that might want to do something similar for yourselves, here are the pics and descriptions of what I did to finish it up. Sorry I don't have as many photos (or any of the fully finished product) as I would normally if I had been posting regularly.

 

Without further ado:

 

 

Using a hole saw, cutting fluid, and a drill that really did nothing to deserve the abuse, I cut the holes for the 80mm fans. Then I used a dremel to knock off any burrs.

 

 

Just a few more checks for fit. All looks good.

 

 

Using some black appliance enamel spray, I gave it a couple coats. You can see some additional cutouts here for the power cord and switch, card reader, wifi antenna, and HDMI out.

 

 

Fans mounted. Card reader mounted. I cut a notch out of the card reader faceplate to accommodate a hard ethernet connection. I also notched out the back right corner of the main plate to pass the cable for the monitor through.

 

 

Testing the monitor. Pardon the mess. It's part of my process lol.

 

1/2

[lochalpha]

These pictures are from today when I pulled the main plate out of the garage. It's a bit worse for wear from the rough handling/storage since the rig got disassembled.

 

 

Everything assembled.To the bottom right of the card reader I cut a small slot so that the fan controller can be adjusted easily. With this many fans in a tight box, I wanted a hardware controller.

 

 

A temporary solution became permanent because it worked! I used a scrap piece of aluminum sheet and a little velcro to make a hard drive mount. It held 2x 2.5" hard drives. One on either side with the plate sandwiched between them. Fan controller visible to the left.

 

 

Lastly, this mess. Part of the "finishing touches" I mentioned was going to be depinning and cutting all the power cables to length as well as terminating unused cables and nicely routing everything. Instead, enjoy this pasta. Also anyone that caught the fact that there's no power button: kudos. I simply hadn't gotten around to ordering a button and was jumping the wires until the end lol.

 

2/2

 

[lochalpha]

Hey I found a few other process pics in my discord server.

 

 

Fit testing the card reader that also serves as the primary I/O panel since the motherboard is inaccessible for daily plugging needs.

 

 

 

Mounting the pelican clips. Make extra sure to use epoxy that is made for polypropylene!

 

 

Motherboard mounting.

 

 

There you go. The closest thing to the finished product I've got. 15.6 inch monitor. The bright red and blue connectors are the aforementioned jury rigged power button

 

Hope this is helpful to you, or at least entertaining!

 

/fin