Drive Bay Drawer Unit (and Badge Mount)

thingiverse

This design works just fine without a badge, but it will result in a recessed drawer front. Alternatively, you can use the space for your own unique badge design. After resizing Reactron's HAL9000 badge (Thing 579607) to dress up the front of my ancient PC case, I was feeling pretty smug. But something was bothering me: There was wasted space behind the blanking plate that could be put to better use in my cluttered environment. In this age of redundant disc drive bays, I figured I wasn't the only one who noticed this wasted space, so I did a quick search on Thingiverse. Sure enough, there were several different drawer units designed by others. They were all great designs, but I wanted to keep my new HAL badge as a feature. I also wanted to use up all of the available space (some only use half), and I wanted the fixing hardware kept to an absolute minimum. Although the internals of my PC average around 3 years old, the case itself dates back to the mid 2000s. This was when rectangular blocks of dull beige were finally giving way to aesthetically pleasing uses of color and shape (and not before time!). So my case has a distinctive bow-front design that allowed me to use the top of the drive bay recess to incorporate a very usable handle. Moreover, it doesn't stick out like a sore thumb, and avoids putting a large hole in the front (which might cause things to fall out!). Other than that, there's nothing particularly innovative about this design (it's just a drawer!). I deliberately left out adding fixing holes into the drawer case because I had alignment issues on my first couple of tries. It's possible that my drive bay has become bent at some point in the past, or the case is shoddily made. Either way, I could only get 3 holes to align at any one time. I found that I could force them to fit, but it made the drawer stick. In the end, I did away with the printed holes and simply drilled and tapped the sides once I had it all in the right place. This does mean it needs packing washers to space out the bolt heads from fouling the drawer, but, at the moment, I haven't added these and it hasn't moved yet (so far!). The only part that needed printing support was the drawer front. I tried several alignments and concluded that the way I have oriented it in my STL gives the best compromise between support and unsightly filing on visible surfaces. More annoying is that there appears to be something funky going on with the drawer front's lower face. It seems to slice in a slightly unexpected manner that suggests it's not square. It was fine until I watermarked it, so I guess I distorted the surface when I added this. It prints OK though, so I don't think it's an issue. The drawer assembly clips together well enough (some fine adjustment may be required) that adhesive isn't necessary. But, once I was satisfied that it all worked as it should, I applied cynoacrylate anyway to make sure it would stand up to abuse. The plan was to use the HAL9000 badge that I had previously scaled from Reactron's design. But, because I'd made it a friction fit for when it was just attached to a blanking plate, it now stopped the drawer from closing. Rather than print another badge, I slowly filed down the mating faces of the two badge pieces until it was a perfect fit. Yes, it has altered the letter spacing a bit, but I don't think it's enough of a difference to be noticed by anyone (barring an OCD purist with a vernier in their hands, that is!). Glued in place, it looks exactly the same as when it was just wedged onto the blanking plate. So that's it. I'm not sure if this will be suitable for anyone else (I can't imagine anyone else being too cheap to buy a new case after all these years), but it's here if you can use it, and the SketchUp file is there for those who want to remix it. That's all for now, folks! We're off, buh-bye!