before i wanted to be a designer, i wanted to be an engineer, before that, an architect. before all of that, i was a gamer kid, who turned into the techie, building and fixing my first computer when i was 14. i’ve been trying to design my own small form factor pc since i first learned inventor in middle school.

this was my 3rd pc i built, vornado 1000W space heater. it was the beefiest (and hottest) pc i’d ever built, so i’d been wanting to solve the overheating problem for years.

for the nerds (like me):

ryzen 9 5900x with a rtx 3090, aka vornado

i’d often been told (and i agree with) that a lot of my furniture design concepts are best suited for metal, not wood. i’d wanted to challenge myself with a new medium for my capstone, so i decided to work with sheet metal and CNC processes. originally planned to formed of zinc, but aluminum was picked due to it’s resistance to the elements.

throughout my advertising immersion, there was one thing that primarily stuck: the volkswagen beetle lemon ads. a blunt, satirical, self-owning campaign that was so good, it’s commonly referred to as the greatest ad of all time.

the ad inspired the name, graphic design, and ethos.

the characteristics also closely related to my own presentation preferences, the adjustment felt natural.

they look nasty. the radiator vice’s closest aesthetic and functional parallel is window mounted air conditioning units, which entirely removes the windows’ functionality to open and close.

i wanted to allow users to keep the ability to use their windows, designing lemon’s slim parallel vice to be minimally obtrusive.

the predecessor, the corsair 1000d is as small as it is due to a few sacrifices. one of the biggest sacrifices was port and i/o access. by making the motherboard i/o face down while being enclosed in the case, plugging in cables required turning the whole chasiss over.

this second conceptual prototype: the access hinge, aimed to find an optimal cable clearance for a pc based on a hinged chassis design trialing with cables of varying bulk/thicknesses.

…is often the best solution. i worked on 2 major variations of my access hinge, but i landed at the same result. i was making the case physically larger for a solution designed to save space. instead of changing the motherboard layout, i left it in a traditional arrangement, and decided to shift where the “front” of the chassis was. no risers or complicated assembly, just easy access with minimal effort.

one thing i’ve been told a lot through my time time at school is that i have an ambition to be reckoned with. one thing i didn’t realize is that i would be reckoning with myself. since the beginning, i had wanted to bend the chassis myself. it’d be good process, and i started making tooling for it.

a good mentor will push you to fail on your own terms. a better one remembers to check the time and tell you when you’re a little out of your depth and very much out of time. i know you’ll be reading this, thanks Juan! i designed a chassis that would be nearly if not completely impossible to bend, so i started over using someone elses’s system, sendcutsend. my dfm goals (and my head) got a whole lot clearer.

i went into midterms with a few certainties that needed to be nailed down: first and most importantly, which yellow lemon had to be (didn’t matter in the end), also which of my dial types were most sucessful for the window vice (which did matter).

10 days. 3 projects. which one will make it? the one to show up on the portfolio first. welcome, you’re already here! i learned fusion sheet metal, integrated hardware, worked within constraints, designed packaging dielines and designed probably the most stressful glue up you’ll see this year. so much work, so little time.

especially when you bend the whole chassis inside out. i could still salvage the clearances i needed for a chassis redesign, so it wasn’t all bad, and left a commemorative un-lemon chassis.

my apartment isn’t messy, yours is the messy one.

ever done cam before? its much easier when you have someone who knows every single drill bit by heart. mech-e’s. we love em. we need em. they have the good numbers.

name (linkedin) and (name) ‘helped’ me out. please give them cool jobs.

i initially planned a ceramic coating for lemon, but that was before my chassis was inverted amongst other things (there’s advantages to both! advantages! advantages!). i needed my silver lemon to turn yellow, and i needed it fast.

when lemon was assembled and all i needed to prepare was my final presentations, i noticed one major flaw with my entire goal of designing for manufacturing. the case was far too expensive and too niche to justify from a business standpoint.

the case, the metro distribution system, the micro form factor, were all justifications for the one darling i couldn’t kill. the part that i had spent most of my energy and passion had to hit the reality of how production really works. the case stopped being viable and started being detrimental, so it was cut off.

the radiator would be usable with any liquid cooled computer nearby any window, it cost significantly less to produce at at scale, with a competitive profit margin to the users who already have personal computers/space heaters, as an add-on product.

despite everything, lemon made it to the exhibition in one piece. with one leak. it wasn’t running. after the exhibition, i found one mismatched fitting on the radiator.

it was time to put lemon to the test. before the weatherproofing i was terrfied to move it, let alone leaving it hanging out a window. i had IP67 fans, but the circuitry on board was still left to the elements.

after printing louvres and meshes out of tpu for ams (yellow), it was finally time for testing.

it’s getting sciency. scroll down to see the detailed results of: the lemon trials.