I bought an inexpensive mechanical keyboard from amazon with the intention of integrating it into the new body. I decided to use 1mm thick sheet aluminium for this purpose, since I could have it laser cut and use hex spacers to mount everything to it. Plus aluminium is stiff enough for this purpose

I then measured every single hole and dimension of the motherboard, screen, battery. This took quite some time. I spent ~3 week (few hours into the night, after work every day) to finally model everything in FreeCAD 1.0.0

During this time, I also got the keyboard from Amazon, so I disassembled it, and modelled the mounting holes for it into the design.

Finally when all the parts were modelled in FreeCAD, I designed the mounting plates for it. I used the fasteners add-on for FreeCAD extensively to have the hex spacers in the design.

Then I just ordered the aluminium plates to be laser cut and delivered to my house from an online service, which they arrived in about 1 week. I also ordered the hex spacers.

During the assembly, I removed one of the USB ports on the motherboard and directly connected a USB hub to it, to increase the number of available ports. Unfortunately, the port refused to work so I dropped that idea and just internally connected the keyboard to the USB port instead.

I got my hands on the schematics for the board so I figured out the power button line, to which I soldered a yellow pushbutton to serve as the power on button.

I had the intention of designing custom embedded dev friendly add-ons (like a logic analyzer + UART, always on board which is connected internally) but eventually gave up on the idea.

It took me many iterations of assembling and disassembling the entire thing to get everything right. I also used a lot more spacers and washers and nuts than I originally anticipated.

My models of the motherboard+heatsink, screen, touchpad, and touchpad mounting bracket are attached below, along with my FreeCAD project file. Feel free to use them as you see fit.

The weight of the laptop is 2.7KG now. Its a lot less portable but I don't mind. Its still very cool, and I only intend to use it as a home server.