Oh to dream a dream. This intrepid machinist apprentice was looking for a front end media streaming PC for a home theater system he had yet to own. After searching around, he couldn’t find anything that quite fit his needs, and began to become frustrated. But he had time and easy access to a machine shop, so like any computer geek would, he looked into building his own home theater console PC and decided to go one step further. But this geek knew this was going to take a while to get right, and began to document his journey under the screen name Acrhon calling it “Scratch Project: Acronym”
Starting in 2009, Achron began listing his purchases and documenting the fabrication process for the custom casing that would house his dream Home Theater PC. SolidWorks render images of the original concept, pictures of the shop and each component being crafted, as well as some hiccups and stumbles along the way are all detailed on his forum post at Hard Forums. Over time, he earned a bit of a following eager to see his progress.
Three Years later we get this:
Now I fancy myself a Cinephile (Tangent: I have always felt uncomfortable with that word. Sounds like Pedophile, and I assure you that I do not have relations with my home theater! End Tangent.) and I have to say that if this was a mass produced product I would certainly covet this set top design.
Considering this is a fully realized concept to finish project, this Achron fella didn’t cut any corners… well – any figurative corners. This design is staggeringly beautiful and no easy task to accomplish. One would think that doing all this himself he might just go for a standard console box with simple geometric dimensions. He even involved some of the readers of his forum to vote on a faceplate design which he implemented later in the process.
This is unbelievable. Seriously good work by a dedicated geek!