Case Mod - In Progress PROJECT#001 | Update 18 July 2013 - painting and fixing

Nice start, will be watching.

 

Love the little screen. Without sounding like a noob, easy to set up?

 

Yes, mesh does often seem to made of really soft ally that marks easily, clear lacquer it maybe, you can get it satin finish as well as the usual gloss.
Hint, when marking out ally or most metals really, don't go scribing deep lines on the material, they might not look like much but they are a real pain to polish out if that part of the material will be visible

 

Hey Falqoon,
Sorry I missed your post before my last update.
I found a an ebay shop (from china though)
LEGEND OF ZELDA I mean LINK
prices arent that expensive not sure what is expensive with these to be honest.
They are arduino controlled though.
BTW Stealth is looking awesome dude

Thanks dude. Really appreciate it. Its not the best build on this forum by miles but its becoming my little baby, and i love it!

Hey Scuppy. very easy mate. plug and play, well, display . its mini usb or you can solder wires to a header from the back. With me sounding like a noob now 'solder scares me'.
Theres some software to install to display core temps, fan rpm and custom images etc but everything else is PnP. You can create your own software as well as the dude gives the source code.

Heres a video the guy put on Youtube

Thanks for the tips and the heads up dude. I've already scuffed around the edges loads filling off little niks.
Still not sure whether to paint or not but thanks for letting me know about the Lacquer.
you seem to know what your talking about dude, what would i use to try to get rid of the small scratches and scuffs?
and any tips on prep for lacquer

 

Hey my images on the first page on my log have come down in quality - is that normal?

 

Hey Scott,

Cool update Starting to look great

All of those 20x4 or 16x2 screens you have to connect with a lot of parts where I do not have the knowledge of, I think I'll let that idea just for what it is, or maybe later on, or somebody likes to create it for me.

Thanks for the compliment of Stealth, update will come maybe next week, some photo's of new parts .

KEEP UP THAT GOOD WORK!!!!!!

 

Depends how deep the scratches are really and if you want a shiny polished ally finish or if it will be painted, if the scratches are light surface scratches you might be able to polish them out with some metal polish but if they are deeper you'll have to use some wet and dry emery paper, try starting with 600 grade and if that removes the scratches then use smoother grades, 800 then 1000 then 1200 etc, until you get a finish your happy with then use metal polish for a mirror finish then lacquer to protect the finish.

You could also use polishing mops on a drill just depends what equipment you've got, have a look here in the guide modding section of the forum for more info on polishing etc.

If the ally is going to be painted then obviously it's easier, you just use the wet and dry paper again but you can probably get a smooth enough finish for paint just using the 600 and 800 grade then apply some paint primer and if it's nice and smooth with no scratches/marks showing through it then it should be good enough to apply the top coat on.

 

I just got one of those screens today

I'll be playing with it later

 

Honk Kong, already (mmm, might have to get one )

 

Nah I got mine here ! was lucky really, got it within 24 hours

Been playing with it, they're definitely cool as hell.. Got nabbed by my lady though as it was kinda hard to hide once it started giving readouts

 

Hey dude thanks
looking forward to your update. Got so much work on at the minute, cant seem to to find the time to mod myself

Awesome thanks dude. All is new to me so the help is appreciated.
THIS was awesome. really great tips for ally here

Yeah it rocks
do you know any C# by any chance. You can really have fun modding it. I know javascript and I hear its similar. once Ive completed my build I'm gonna have a crack at it and see what it can do.
How did you get it so quickly? It took 3 weeks to get to the UK.
Make sure you let me know if you end up putting it in a build

 

Little Update 02July13

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Hello all
This is a really quick update on my progress.

So in the time since my last update my power supply which, if you read my last post, I painstakingly sleeved died.
Not sure how, but it be dead. It was free anyway and quite old so am waiting on the postman today to get my new PSU.

In the meantime...

I needed to think about how I'll be mounting the front I/O, optical etc
Originally I wanted these at the top of the case but it proved too difficult in mounting everything else around the optical drive.
So I moved it to the bottom front. but with my limited modding skills I wasn't sure how to fit the optical to the bottom of the case.

then I came up with the idea to use the casing from an old 5.25" to help me mount.









also as a tip to anyone; there are a plethora of screws, bits of plastic and metal that can be used inside these old drives. Screws like M1.6 which cost me money to order and were sitting in an old drive in my cupboard.



the bolts are temporary, I'm waiting on 4 20mm standoffs to arrive



Some extra bits of wiring here and there need to be coloured black as I'm using some crappy thin sleeve for small wires.



I decided to stick vinyl on the acrylic boxing. I wasnt very happy with the finish of the acrylic. I'd scratched it everywhere on the surfaces, probably owing to my lack of experience but the carbon wrap came rather nice.



heres the cable I coloured and sleeved earlier





I will eventually make a little frame for this out of metal




Ive installed the system but it looks a bit shoddy at the min with a spare PSU so once I get the PSU sorted out I'll post more pics of her

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Thats all for today folks

...

Thanks for the feedback and views from everybody btw. really enjoying this build and its a bit of an honour to have my build log up next to builds like GUILTY by Kier , REVELATION by QuzzKid , TENIUS2 by Gtek , ARCTIC WATER by B Negative ,
MINI MOTO by Asouter . It flippin rocks Loving being able to contribute to bit tech forums

Stay Awesome peeps

 

Ah, the old spare parts box, good work and lateral thinking, now your thinking like a modder.

Good to hear you didn't get too bogged down with one idea and found an alternative which in turn lead to using some spare parts, modding is a state of mind but often good old serendipity plays a part.

I've built a few scratch builds but not on this forum yet, I like watching other peoples builds and the way things work out and evolve, creativity dictates that if ten modders had to sort out the same problem there would be ten solutions, I really want to start my next build but I can't quite get the design right, trouble with sketchup is that it's easy to come up with new ideas but then I keep changing my mind on the final design

 

Thanks bro.
Appreciating your comments and tips mate, really keeping me going.

Yeah, I took your advice from earlier and falling off that proverbial cliff.

If you have any links I'd love to see your scratch builds dude.
I have about 20 different iterations of sketchup designs for #001 alone. I also have some plans for a HTPC build after this one while I save up to watercool this, gonna try and scratch build the next one.

 

Trouble sleeping

So thought I'd upload some pics of my new PSU as it arrived today.
Got a little excited actually as its my first modular power supply.
ooooh wires





Shame it wasn't blue but had a big discount on it so...

Stay awesome

 

LUNCHTIME BOREDOM UPLOAD

work is boring..

..so have a little look at my distraction to sleeving lately

My daughter Willow!

 

Update 18 July 2013

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Hey everybody
Been away from the project for a bit. Work and daughter taking up a lot of time and my wife and I are expecting another in September. So busy preparing the house!



... but got a little time to mod over the last week so thought I'd collate the log till now.


First up- I need to change the shade of blue in the logo as it does not match at all and annoys the bujeesus out of me




- stripped the case bare getting all the aluminium ready to paint












- once the legs etc were painted up it was time to attach them back to the case.




- Fed the wires for the optical into the bottle of the case




- Got some cool thumbscrews that match all the Mobo accents - I think they look pretty cool








- So my sleeving disaster before left me with very little MDPC heatshrink left so thought I'd try shrinkless sleeving.
The result came out pretty good IMO. muuuuch better than before!







- I also made a plate the wires will go through next to the mobo out of acrylic and covered in vinyl wrap.




- GPU installed and nearly there






- after a bit of panic and fiddling got the buttons in and working





- So here's where Im at now




Just a few more bits and bobs to complete.
> Sorting out lighting is one of them - have no idea what to do with LED strips but good time to learn.
> One of the corsair fans is buzzing like a nutter. RMA possibly, loooooooooooooong.
> another fan issue I bought two of these Artic F12 fans as I wanted two white fans behind the mesh but my god they are so freaking loud - they have to go
> Got some nice decals planed

> and of course the front window!



but more about that next time...


hopefully I'll get back to it soon

Peace out peeps
and stay awesome

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Looks good, Seeing some of the builds is really making me jealous. I'm still waiting on the release of the Asus VI Formula but otherwise I have everything else ready to go

 

The trademark on that picture should say Project #002 Congrats!

 

Thanks dude
You should start building now and then wait for the mobo!

lol your right!
Thanks dude