Hey everyone.... this is a placeholder for the worklog on DST (Dallas Stars Tribute), my next case. It will be a fan case (as in, Dallas Stars "fan"...) based on influences from the Dallas Stars. The Dallas Stars are an NHL team, that I follow R-A-B-I-D-L-Y! I was introduced to the game of hockey by a very dear friend. This case, will be my attempt at repaying all of the kindness that she showed me by taking me to games and being patient with me asking questions while they played. Her two favorite players are Brendan Morrow and Stephan Robidas, two very talented (and hard hitting) players on the squad. I will be incorporating design elements of this Stars orginazion, their logo, and some custom picture work. It will be a sweet case!!!! I started tonight by stripping down the case into it's components, I'll get the pics uploaded tomorrow. So, it is now on the workbench, and is going to become an active project now until I complete it! So, everyone... welcome in..."Tribute"....
So, the luh-vuh-ly teardown pics... Take a good look, cuz it wont be in this state for long! Note in the fan grille, the power/front LED's/Reset wires running out and to the right to escape thru a hole in the case frame.... WTF were they thinking??!?! The lines are CLEARLY visable thru the front of the grill. The sides of the bezel are stepped, and that is giving me some ideas... This is pretty cool, but I can se why it was not implemented further... one screw allows for *all* of the pannels to come off! Everything stripped on the case... and now the case stripped and disassembled! I did some drilling/dremmel work tonight on the back panel to get the hole for the 80 mm fan, and get that crappy punched metal location off and out. I'll likely perform the same thing but on the front of the case frame, where the fan performs intake duties...
Nothing really exciting here... just trying to get a smooth finish on the rear, and cover up those blasted port holes. I built up the bondo, and put a tube of paper in place to try and round out the fan hole.
This is actually the front of the case frame. As you can tell, I hated the location of hte piddly 80mm fan... so I made it a 120mm fan!! Here I am getting the parts ready to prime. I'm using a white primer to brighten the white color coat that I will put on in a few days. first 3 items with two coats of the paint, I have not put the clear coat on them yet. Rear panel where ports *used* to be!!!
first coat of paint on some of the framework. Starting off with a semi gloss white. I have clear that will be added later...
ya know... the difference between living on a ventalator later in life and not: I can believe I went as long as I did without one... wow! Put the final coats of paint on a couple of pieces: And started clear coating a few other pieces: This was the back panel that had the port holes that I bondo'd over: I'll pop a few more coats onto the pieces tonight and let them be ready for tomorrow hopefully!
A busy night in the Tech-Daddy garage tonight! I felt that the paint had cured and hardened enough now for me to reassemble the frame: Nothing major, but I did mount in the 120mm intake fan, to be sure it would mount properly! Lit it with an external power supply to make sure I did not have it tweaked or out of round, nice and quiet!
Several things came out of a trip I took reciently that have allowed me to progress a few things on this mod... So, without further adeiu... I scuffed the top and sides way back in March. I also painted the pieces way back then too! The two uncut decal layouts... Robidas being trimmed up for decal removal. These are waterslide decals. Which means that when I remove them, they are completely emersed in water. Since I print these on an ink jet, I must shoot a solid layer of clear coat on top of the decal print job. If I dont get compete coverage... well, you can likely guess what will happen... 1st time, I did not use enough clear sealent and the colors bled out... Whoops... transparent is just that.... you need an all white background for phtography like this to work. Also, putting a tranparent decal on a black surface should be considered a general no-no, there is nothing to bring the colors of the picture out. Use transparent only on lighter backgrounds.... I have a friend, and he hooks me up so well.... Now, I also had several completely custom 80mm fan grills and several 120mm fan grills that are patterned after the Dallas Stars logo, incorporating the Star from the middle to make the fan grill.... Those are high res shots printed straight on the vinyl.
Cool, you got u'r custom grills. Good painting BTW, looks good. Yes tha mask makes a hell of a different when painting
Thanks guys! Yeah... got's mah grillz..... Some will be used on this mod, and some will be used on the *next* mod...
Weeded out the graphics last night. Going out to the garage tonight to prep the other two panels for a white primer. I've got 5 shades of green out in the garage that I need to test and see which one comes out the closest. Also need to clean up my work area! More tomorrow I hope!
I think everyone has had that problem at least once, if not all the time Show us what shades of green you've got
I did a similar case and I just can't believe that coolermaster didn't make a 120mm front intake standard. There's plenty space for it and it looks supercool through the frontgrill. Especially with a LED fan mounted..... It was also the first thing I did in my mod. And a nice job so far...
Yeah... however, in CM's defense, this is an older case, that was made when the 80mm fan was king, and the 120 was just a dream. I believe that all of their newer cases now come with dual 120mm fan locations... Thanks everyone! More coming soon!
The close up of the "T" is how this guy cut out the internal "spacers" for the R and the A's, so that I will have the little letter spacers to be glued in place once the acrylic goes on... YIPEEE!!!!!!
Applied the Vinyl graphics the other night, have them mounted and finalized... I was debating how to disguise the white vinyl edge of the raised vinyl surface, and had comtemplated just shooting another coat of black over the case, then removing the graphic masking.... then I got inspired! I am going to shoot either a gold or an emerald green fog around all of the appliques! This will set off the edges of the pictures (as I was worried about the black of the case eating up the black uniforms of the pictured players) allowing the images to have a ghostly/glowing feel to them. I'll likely do green, as the gold would be too difficult to match to the gold in the stitched lettering that I printed, as well as the gold "STARS" that will be back lit. So, I painted another test piece tonight, letting it dry out and cure for a bit... then I will be going out and test spraying the colors to see which one pops off the black best. More tomorrow!
