Hi all, This is my first attempt of a pc mod.The inspiration for this build is from 50's retro style space ships with a bit of hot rodding and chopper styling thrown in as well.I will be using a lot of copper and black on the inside of the case with either orange or red windows in the side.This gives me an excuse to use some of the cool natural copper finned heat sinks,cpu coolers and such that are available now.Please excuse the quality of some of the pictures. comments,suggestions and feedback both positive and negative are most welcome.Hope you like what I have done so far. First the victim err... donor case that I got in a package deal of four cases along with a pile of other parts for $25 Here I have sketched up a design. Using sheet styrene to make the basic shape and to give a backing to the original front bezel ABS plastic plumbing fittings are used for ducts for the two 80mm and the 120mm Enermax vegas duo fans. The large fan duct was cut down to sort of look like the inverted nose of an F86 Saber jet The spinners on the front of the fans are made from Easter eggs from the dollar store. All the above parts will be filled in with rigid construction foam and covered with automotive bondo and sanded to the final shapes. A 200mm red led fan fwill be used in the side. I wanted the power button to look sort of like a headlight/taillight.It was made from a chrome plumbing fitting for the bezel,part of a clear orange plastic Yo-Yo for the lens and a chrome furniture glide that was attached to a stock power switch from the victim.The red leds will be on all the time,the blue led will fade on and off slowly. A circuit will be used on the green led HD activity light to fade off and on.It was made from a green plastic straw and some pieces of styrene tube and sheet. All leds on! More to come soon. Cheers, Ron.
Looks interesting so far, I'll be keeping an eye on this. It's unusual to see someone else using sheet styrene, it's such a good material to work with.
Lots of potential here. '50s reto-future styling is always fun. Any "typewriter guts under plexiglas" ~A-la Robbie the Robot head features planned?
Thank you very much,glad to be here Mosquito. Thank you AK71,I'm very used to styrene for building with,as I building a lot of large Sci-Fi models with the stuff.I still have about 2/3 of a sheet of .040 sheet to use up. Thanks a lot Njuso. That stuff is very cool,and I wish I could build something half as cool,jamsand. He-He,Cheapskate.No typewriter guts,but there will be lots of copper and black piping and such.I also found the font that was used in a documentary I saw,as alien lettering on some of the metal braces from the Roswell crash.I will use that to make some lettering decals on some of the internal parts.I'm going to paint the case with a dark cherry red candy apple finish. Hey Reconnec7ed,I will be using all kinds of dollar and hardware store stuff for this build,so it will be a low budget build for sure and about the only power tool I can use in my flat is a jig saw and elbow grease. The power switch that I made used red,green,and blue 3mm leds that came from a flashing bday party wand from the dollar store.Each wand had 2 red,2 blue and 1 green led for a buck each!!! Cheers every one and thanks for looking and for the welcome. Here's a little update on the work I did last night. Ron. I made a template for the right side window and played around with the 200mm fan and blowhole placement.I will cut out portions of the mbo tray out and the window with fan will be put on stand offs on the side panel and molded in.This should give me a little room to do some cable management. The blow hole bezel is from a 1$ travel alarm clock bezel and the black painted aluminum mesh from a 2$ waste bucket. A couple of pictures of the over all look with the red 200mm fan on.
How did I miss this one? Yo, people. One cheap source for some nice plastic is really cheap bath/shower panelling. Any board store. Turn it over and the nubbly surface is gone. flat and smooth. john
Thanks for the tip about the plastic,I'll have to check that out. Got a little more done tonight.Made some cardboard templates for the top section and mocked up the blow holes for the top. Thanks for looking. Cheers, Ron. These blow holes will be molded into the top,or frenched in as the hot rodders call it.
Thanks for the tip about the plastic,I'll have to check that out. Got a little more done tonight.Made some cardboard templates for the top section and mocked up the blow holes for the top.
