Lab station tutorial

Now comes the obvious part, fitting the motherboard mounting points. After looking at several wild and wacky methods that have been used by others, and discounting them, we decided to go with the simplest method possible. Firstly we plotted the 15 mounting points that will cover all of the E-ATX, ATX and Micro-ATX variations on to the upper platform, and drilled them out using a 4mm drill bit. The mounting screws only require a 3mm hole, but using a slightly larger drill allows for some latitude in their final positioning. The mounting points were created using 15mm high nylon spacers (Jaycar Cat # HP0926), 3x 15mm screws (Jaycar Cat # HP0406), and 3mm flat washers on either side of the holes.

To add tactile and aesthetic appeal to the Station, we covered the upper platform with 5mm thick Noise Isolator Flex Pad. To get the pad to fit properly, the mounting points were marked out onto the backing sheet, and then a 10mm hole punch was used to cut the slightly oversized holes. The pad was then laid straight over the top.

The motherboard can now be secured using standard 3mm computer case screws.

To create a fairly ‘normal’ amount of airflow over the motherboard we added a 120mm Arctic Cooling PWM fan in a position that would closely resemble a PSU air intake. A 150 X 170mm piece of 6mm acrylic off-cut was cut to shape, had the centre hole cut-out and drilled for the four retention screws. Once complete, the lower 20mm section was heated with a hot air gun and bent at 90°, and three mounting holes drilled. The fan assembly was then screwed to the upper platform with 3mm screws.




Under control
On to the control panel! Using some motherboard headers rescued from an old case we fabricated ‘On/Reset’ switches and ‘Power/HDD’ LEDs. The momentary switches are Jaycar Cat # SP0711, soldered and insulated with heat-shrink. The LEDs are just boring LEDs that were lying on the workshop bench! The mounting bracket was made from an 80mm length of 25 x 25 x 1.6mm aluminium angle, mounted to the right-hand side of the upper platform. Rather than polishing it to a chrome finish, we opted to leave the bracket in its native dull finish.



One ugly situation that can occur when bench testing outside of a case environment is that an AGP or PCI card becomes dislodged and shorts out. Our final step was to fabricate a solid support for the expansion cards. An aluminium bar, 480 x 25 x 6mm, had an 8mm hole drilled at each end so that the threaded rods could pass through. The positions for each of the nine retention screws were marked in the standard ATX form factor, and then a 2.5mm drill used to make the initial holes. A 3mm tap was then used to cut threads in each of the holes, and Lian Li thumbscrews slotted in.



The final assembly was really just a matter of stacking the components together, and screwing down the chrome dome nuts at each of the four corners. Once that was done the project became extremely rigid and stable. The SATA drives were connected, and the leads passed through the righthand-side of the upper platform; similarly, the IDE cable running through the left-hand side shares a 90mm hole with the PSU leads. After assembly and cleaning, the station was loaded up with a Micro-ATX board to give a better indication of its physical dimensions.

The final pictures show that we added some Noise Isolator Flex Pad to each side of the lower platform, mainly to create a non-slip, non-conductive environment for stacking up highly sensitive electrical components. We r clevar!

The one thing that occurred to us is that there is plenty of spare room on the lefthand-side – a great place to install a water-cooling loop at some later stage!