Scratch Build – In Progress Project Air Cube v2

Just so you all know, I'm having a small time out, I managed to remove the plastic piece I think it was a bit of a wreck when I failed doing a grill & then made the hole to cut out what went wrong, it was hellish to get the bolts out too, all of the allen head sockets lost the sockets so had to use mole grips for all of them (lucky there was something to grip), It's off now, there was a moment where I thought I messed it up completely.

I did some more testing with the extra fan & found an even better spot to place it, looks better & cools better, pretty much just above the bottom side fan so the left side panel will require an extra vent which will probably be the most difficult part to do with it already having a window there.

Set myself a realistic goal of having the top & side done by the time Mafia II releases which is 27-aug (game I'm most looking forward to this year ) I'll probably have it done way before that date but gives me a chance to step back & really think this out & do this properly .

I'll try & save the next update for when it's finished .

 

Too bad on that

good too see theres more progress to come though!

 

Well that was a small time out .

Was going to make my last update my final but delivery delays so why not a quicky before the finished pics .

Ok so here's the new top, made a frame from 20mmx3mm & 40mmx3mm flat bars to cover up the mounting holes from the previous plastic top piece, painted them same colour as the fan frames, stuck them down with 2 part araldite epoxy resin, put my left over ac-ryan mesh x to use, barely had enough to do this, painted it the same colour as the fan blades, for the time being the mesh is held in with scotch mounting tape & for the finishing touch 2 3mm thick windows that slip into the 2 vents in the top making for a flush fit, the top windows can easily be removed just by poking through from underneath & lifting out, the side panels needed a means of getting fresh air so I went with the mesh on both sides so the entire case is awesomely air cooled & very well ventilated.

Excuse the nasty surroundings, my room is like a bin at the moment lol .















Here is the new revised placement of the extra fan, I stuck a 1/2 inch angle bar to a 40mmx3mm flat bar for extra support & stuck the flat bar to a middle level flar bar, it's a very close fit for the fan mount but is just perfect, honestly amazed at the temperatures now.





Re-made the front spacers & added 5mm LED holes, 8 LED's for the tripple mount, 4 LED's for the single mount & going with blue & green, waiting for the extra LED's (tested it with 2 green LED's & it looks good glad I went for it .



Still waiting for sewing machine oil so I can fix the fans, must have wiped whatever lubrication was on them off when I painted them all.

All in all this is mighty close to finished & I'm far happier with the new top, can't wait to get all the fans lubricated & install the new front lit up spacers & call it finished.

 

Wow brother you are taking this mod in a total different dimension, I really love it, is pure awesomeness, simple, functional and beautiful! Mod on mate

 

Thank you AnG3L, appreciate the comment m8 .

Here's a little wip on the LED spacer .

 

Now thats just sexy!!

MOAR NAOW!!

 

Okey dokey .

Still got the other half of the LED's to come tomorrow, once I place them where I want them, I'll work out the wires so it all uses 1 molex for each spacer instead of 6 & so it can be switched on/off, yet to figure out where to put the switch, here's some daytime & night time pre final shots .

Day















Night













Another thing kind of off topic but, my razer lycosa keyboard has been playing up by blacking out for a second now & again so I dug deep & ordered a steel series 7g, looks a great no nonsense quality keyboard, the lycosa had issues with the media control panel not long after buying it, I fixed that by snipping the connections to the boards internals & now randomly blacking out making me miss letters in words now & again not even a year old, so after looking at gaming boards they were all overpriced gimmicky nonsense types, the roccat valo v2 would have been a good choice if it weren't for the extra 100 macro keys lol, the logitech g19 needs ac power for the bling it carries, thought there were no good gaming keyboards anymore & then read up about the 7g & my mind was made up almost instantly so should have it soon woo hoo . Razer make awesome mouses though, had a copperhead & now the lachesis I love my lachesis, best mouse I had so far .

 

Dayummmmmmmm! thats nice :O

 

Thanks DeadP1xels, it's kinda northern lightsish but static .


Got the extra LED's today but need to wait for braiding supplies because all the LED's have piled up the wires so I'm going to modify them all to be nice & neat so with luck I'll have them tomorrow.

 

Woo hoo, all main work finished, but yeah you guessed it theres still more to come lol (most unprofessional worklog ever) .

Had a problem with compacting the pre-made LED cables combining green & blue LED's to use 1 molex passthrough, the green ones were wired funny compared to the blue ones so had to do them seperate so the front lights use 4 molex passthroughs, originally had it all nicely heatshrinked & sleeved for the first 2 times, then lost the will to sleeve them properly & instead used thin strips of gaffer tape wrapped around them & used my glue gun to stick the cables to the plastic spacer so at least it's tidy wires, just not pretty looking like sleeving is , next time I'm playing with LED's I'll be making them myself, still got to make it so the lights can be switched on/off.

I removed the meshx, like I said earlier the panels I cut barely fit so if looked at a cirtain angle I can see small gaps so it's not a perfect fit, also tested if temps were affected with solid covers for the sides & they were not so I have some 0.7mm sheet aluminium spare & since the air compressor is back up & running good I'm thinking of doing some designs for grills to fit inside where the mesh was & then stick a window behind them, need to think up a nice design first though, want it so you can still clearly see the insides which the meshx failed on imo so I'm chomping at the bit to do some dremel work after struggling with human jigsaw method lol .

On with the latest pictures without the mesh & side windows & LED's done & plain windows in the top for now until I make the new grills , night & day pics.









































Can't wait to get busy with the air dremel again.

 

Wow the front looks so cool!!

Great work Waynio!

 

Thanks mate .

Woo hoo the new keyboard came but is that a home key I see missing.




then an 8 key



then a hash key with the missing keys in the box.



They plugged back on easy , decent sturdy board, nice keys, no silly touch sensitive panels just a straight up good board.







I've always ditched palm rests from keyboards but with the height of this board it actually makes it better so it went back on & here is the design I'm going to do for the side grills & mini ones for the top, the nice thing about these grills is I'm taking zero risk in damaging the already made panels so no pressure I'll hopefully have at least the side windows done & smoothed out today will be a joy to do on 0.7mm sheet, maybe an update later .



The air compressor is working again so it's air dremel time .

 

Lol, didn't even get around to do any dremel work, but did cut pieces to size, masked up & drawn the pattern on, the thin lines are what will be staying the rest is what I'll cut out.

Sides


Top pieces


This new keyboard is ultra sensitive, only bad thing about it is the small backspace which I should soon get used to, other than that it's perfect .

 

Nice hardware bro cant wait to see what you going to do with it. Seems though that carriers play football with packages!

 

Ah, just typing/gaming/general usage, no plans on modding the keyboard (yet ), not brave enough or skilled enough to do a mod good enough to do it justice lol, just wanted a very good keyboard & this one fit the bill perfect, after the list of problems I had with my razer lycosa within a year & finally the power blacking out on it randomly while typing, it was good when it worked but the touch panel started messing up by turning the volume down when I wasn't touching it & as soon as I turned the volume back up it went down again lol, the only way to stop it doing that was placing tape over the panel & I eventually just opened it up & cut all the connections to fully disable it.

I just wasn't sold by some of the gimmicky gaming boards available at similar & higher prices so done some research & found this to be a good one, I wanted a simple but great gaming board, it's the best board I have ever used so far, 9/10 because of price but even so I don't feel mugged with it being such a quality board so may as well call it a perfect 10 .

I'm off to test it on a game, not been much of a gamer lately with all the modding & forums, man I'll be rusty .

 

A little step closer to finished .

Refined part of 1 of the panels design (was a little off, fixed).



Cut the most difficult incisions to keep it all accurate to the drawing so the rest will be easier to do.



First piece out .



Some more.



All out, now time for a little filing & then a good sanding session, the sanding will be the most time consuming.



Messy



Clean



Ready for filing then sanding .



Started late today so only got this far, took just over an hour to get the dremel work done on 1 of them don't want to be making much noise past 6pm, I'll try to start at 10am tomorrow & get the other 3 done, the side panels are done with 0.7mm sheet so were nice & easy but run out of 0.7mm so the top panels will be done with 1mm.

Colour wise, I'm thinking ice blue for these panels .

 

Well, got up bright & early with full intent to get the new panels done, just smoothing the edges of 1 of them took near 3 hours , then I went to work on the next panel, made a couple of incisions then the cutting disc got stuck & when I freed it the mandrel screw top snapped off & have no spares arrrrrgh delayed by a mandrel typical lol , bit gutted but these things happen.

But I did a test fit of the one I made, still needs a little work on it as noted in the picture & the surface needs a good sanding but I'll save surface finishing till last .

 

My dad bought a couple of new air tools just before the gasket blew & he reminded me about them & suggested to try it out on some scrap so I did & wow I'm very impressed, bye bye dremel days lol no more metal dust in my face & no need for steaming up hard to see through glasses .

I don't know the name of the tool but it's cross between a jigsaw & small hacksaw & prooved relatively easy to cut out complex shapes, the 0.7mm sheet didn't go to well though so I might re-do the side panel.
I had to learn how to use it, it's like a dremel but you need to lean way over the piece your working with so you can clearly see where your cutting but cuts far far easier, after the side panel I had it sussed, I mostly needed to clamp the work piece down better to minimise vibrations, this new tool will be absolutely awesome for thick materials as the 1mm sheet came out very nice & will need minimal cleaning up, also the blade is still good & sharp after doing these 3 panels, on with the pics .

This was the 0.7mm one which came out quite badly before I had the technique & clamping sussed.



The wavey strip above the workpiece was my practice to see if I could follow the lines & could fairly easily .









On with the 1mm sheet which went quite perfectly .





I think I'll have to throw the 0.7mm sheet, it needs a lot of cleaning up & is bent all over the place, tried whacking it into shape with a mallet but it's still not so good, I'll try a couple more things to fix it but not worried about having to do a new one now I know how to do this .

 

wow thats cool!

 

Thanks DP.

When I said no more dremel I was a bit hasty, sitting here looking at the front grills I highly doubt I could do that with the saw but the saw will replace quite a bit of what I do with a dremel especially for simplish cuts like what I just done.

I have a couple of new pictures showing the new grills overlapped, my bro says I should do it, but I'm not so sure about it especially the double the work bit lol takes a fair bit of effort to make all edges really smooth.

Standard intended piece which still needs smoothing out


Double overlapped piece


The thought of the effort is making me cringe already , possibly 3 hours to smooth each piece about 25min to cut each piece, so possibly a couple of days solid cutting & sanding , suppose I could spread it out over a week, dunno what do you all think?.