Before diving into building FreeNAS box #2, I thought I’d take a pause and take a closer look at the acrylic construction results of experiment #1. This is purely about learning to build structures from acrylic – independent from the positive or negative aspects of the project as a computer enclosure.

Since laser cutting acrylic is a fairly popular construction technique, there is a wealth of information on the internet. (To be taken with the usual grain of salt.) After getting some first-hand experience I now have context to better understand the information people have shared online. My favorite single page so far is on Makezine. After reading some of these again (with better understanding due to the new experience) I re-evaluated my design and decided my corners are bad.

For the corners of the enclosure, I had designed tongues for one panel to fit into another. On the upside, this helped with aligning pieces for assembly. On the downside, it made the design more complex to draw up and arrange. And even when well joined with acrylic cement, it is an visually unsightly interruption in the clean clear joint.

Even worse, this has introduced stress points that would otherwise not been there. As I recently learned building the Luggable Frame #1, a sharp internal corner laser cut into acrylic concentrates stress from surrounding components and is liable to start cracking from the point of the corner. Each of these tongues introduced two new stress points in each of the two sheets.

Since the only real upside here is making construction easier, I’ve decided this is not the way to build with acrylic. I should keep the edges for corners joints smooth and clear, free of these tongues, and figure out other ways to keep the pieces aligned during construction.

I’ll spend some time and effort to improve my acrylic joints before proceeding to build FreeNAS box prototype #2.