Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Der_Meister - custom alu case *Epilogue Nov 8th, 2007*

isnt that plastic cement stuff (not normal concrete type cement) good for that type of join ?

 

use tec7 to attach the plexi to the metal

tec7 rocks (and it's a belgian product btw )

 

hmmm you may be right, I believe I've got a tube of it lying around somewhere.

 

I have never been a fna of wide cases with a large foot, they look old and outdated as well as being against the grind when refering to the modern design priciples of computer cases and hardware e.g. Thin and tall seems to be the order of the day when considering a new PC case. But I am still impressed with it and the design is attracter yet "low profile" as you put it...

Very good

 

Case-feet – final pics for now

I can’t send you guys into the week-end without an update, can I ?

The feet are done, at least all the pieces are finished and are now waiting until I get around to do the lighting and wiring. This is only a small update, just showing you some pics of the plexi pieces.

Here they are after filing:


After that the sanding, with 180, 320, 600 and 1200 grit. Here they are again after drysanding:


Then on to wetsanding. This also with 1200 grit. I decided not to polish the pieces (yet?) because there’s not going to be a lot of daylight underneath the case so no need for a high gloss finish to get the natural glow. And if I put a LED in the feet, the fact that they’re non-polished will create a nice diffused light-effect. I will probably sand the bottom side of each piece as well, to hide the glue/bolt/tape or whatever other mounting method I’ll use. Anyway, here they are after wetsanding, looking good:


That’s it for the pics.
I do have another thing to tell you, I ordered a new digital cam. Nothing cheap this time, I bought the Canon EOS350D. So I guess the quality of the pics will be getting better soon. I’ll make some nice shots about things that are already finished as well. Especially some flash-shots of the UV plexi, so that you can really see how nice it glows. I’ll get the cam in about one week.

So, with about all of the outside work finished, the time has come to turn to the insides of the case. First I need to do some fabrication work, there are a few more loose ends to tie up. After that, I’m going to start on cable management holes and holes for the RCA-plug wiring. Then testing of the lighting, and soldering and wiring. But that’s still far ahead, I’ve got my holidays coming up as well. Let’s just take it as it comes! See you in a couple of days with some pics of the first project: some changes to the coverpanels of the HDD area.

 

theyre cute...and veeery milky

 

wow love the way this is turning out
very precise and you are taking your time which is nice to see
i like the deisgn of the feet
maybe you could use a counter sunk bolt holding the feet together and put some sort of rubber covering on the bottom of the plexi to provide grip and cover the bolt?

 

Modding the HDD area’s coverplates – part one

The first thing I want to do on the inside is some work on the HDD area’s coverplates. Last time we saw them they looked like this:


Remember that this is a pic before I made some small adjustments so they fitted better. But it still wasn’t perfect, so…time to mod!

First of all, at the time I made two corner supports out of 0,5mm alu and I wrote at least 5 times that I thought they wouldn’t be strong enough. Well, in the meantime I became certain I needed to make a better version of the inner support. The outer one will manage by itself. So here goes. I used the 15 x 15 bar of 1,5mm thick alu again. Next to the bar is the piece I will remake:


Here you see how this is done, pretty straightforward right?


I then sanded the two pieces a bit and glued them together with JB Weld. I’m putting a bolt through as well so that will be strong enough. Here’s the result after glueing, looks okay! I also copied the mounting hole to attach the support to the case frame:


I didn’t take any pics of the measuring, drilling and filing of the mounting holes. Here’s the result of the test-mount:


It all looks pretty decent, but the left vertical plate is bent a bit, due to the lack of support but also because it’s pretty tight around some of the bolts. So I’m gonna try to get that one better.

Here’s a close-up of the section where the panels are mounting to the supports. They all attach pretty nicely. There’s a slight gap here and there though, it seems the 0,5 needs a bit more. I have something in mind


And a final pic of the top part. You can see that this piece also hangs down a bit in the front middle of the pic, because there’s no support there. This will need to be fixed, since the piece will become even heavier very soon:


I took off the top piece, since it needs an opening to allow the warm air of the HDD’s to escape. Above this opening, the radiator is located, so getting rid of the air is no big problem.
Here’s the soon-to-be ventilation hole all drawn out:


Of course that big gap in the panel wouldn’t look too good. So I’ll be putting some mesh over it. Here’s the hole all done with the mesh piece I made for it, all done as well. The mesh is pretty restrictive but it’s not that I’m going for polar freezing here, as long as the warm air gets out it’s okay.


Here’s the mesh. It’s not that heavy, but hanging underneath the 0,5mm alu piece, it will be. I’ll mount it with double sided tape I think. There’s also going to be sound-damening matting on the rest of the top piece, and it will be put over the edges of the mesh. These two sticky bits will hopefully put (and keep) the mesh where it’s supposed to. If that fails I’ll just the mesh on top of the alu plate, but I like it better when it hangs underneath it and its edges are invisible.


There is more work on these HDD coverplates. Actually it would be better if they were 1mm thick. Since I don’t have that thickness of alu lying around, I’m going to use another way to make them ‘sit’ better. That’s for next update. Maybe even later, since the weather here will be very good the coming days and I’ve got some vinyl dying to do…it seems like a good time to get that out of the way as well!

 

A vinyl dye intermezzo

A short intermezzo…I already mentioned it in my previous post: we had some very nice weather here in Belgium for a change so I decided to do the vinyl dyeing that was necessary for this mod. It is always nice to be able to paint outside.

Okay, there are two things that needed the treatment: the Samsung dvd-rom and the floppy drive. Actually my keyboard could use some paint as well (has some ugly marks from a hand-rest that was attached to it when I bought it) but I’ll do that another time.

For those that don’t know about vinyl dye: it’s a perfect solution for plastics. The dye doesn’t really put a covering layer over the surface, but it penetrates the surface and colors it. So the result is very nice: it looks like colored plastic and not just plastic with a coat of paint over it. This has some consequences, the most important being that the dyeing doesn’t make the components bigger so that everything can be reassembled without a problem (normal paint adds some thickness so small tabs etc can cause problems because they don’t fit in their holes anymore) and the fact that there’s not a layer of paint means that it’s much more resistant against scratches etc. The dye also dries very quickly, when I did it it was about 25 degrees Celcius outside and each coat was ‘dry’ in about 5 minutes. Completely dry in about 10-15.

First step is of course disassembling the objects that are to receive the treatment. I took apart the dvd-rom and floppy. I then washed the pieces in water with some dish washing soap in it, to remove grease, stains etc. Another advantage of vinyl dye: the pieces don’t have to be sanded because the paint penetrates the surfact instead of attaching to it. Here are the pieces:


I covered the led covers and the cd-rom button with masking tape. Now, I didn’t sand off the logos from the cd-rom bezel because it won’t be visible in my case. But this shows after the painting (see the pic below). So if you’re reading this to try it yourself and your object will be visible after painting: make sure you sand the logos off. Also, sand fine scratches and stuff like that. Again, the dye penetrates the surface. If the surface isn’t even, the result won’t be either.

Then I did the painting. Everything went well, except the front piece of the dvd tray. This is because I already prepared it a bit for its end goal: stealthing it with the aluminium cover. So there where some marks of the double sided tape on it and the paint didn’t quite like that. It doesn’t matter because the alu cover will be covering it.

Here’s the result:

Looks good, huh? You can see an ‘ugly spot’ on the dvdrom bezel about halfway between the button and the slot for the volume knob. This is where the logos are located, hence my warning in the above text. Oh I didn’t paint the volume knob since it won’t be visible. I didn’t bother to try to get it off the dvd-rom.

The part that has the best result is also the one that will be most visible: the dvdrom tray. Here’s a closer look (white speckles are a bit of dust, not a bad paintjob).


I then re-assembled the parts and well, something went wrong. The latch on the floppy bezel is mounted with a small spring to keep it closed when there’s no disk in it; I managed to put the spring on the wrong direction the first time and when I got the latch back out, one of the little pins broke.
Oh well, it’s no big deal, the floppy works perfectly without it and will be hidden when not in use. I could always buy a new one, it’s not that pricy.

The drives are back in my current case, no pics of that but they’re exactly the same color as my black Pioneer dvd-rw and as the black plastic front bezel of the case. Jippie!

 

Looks like a decent paintjob

 

Looking very good! : )

Keep It Up!^^

 

Trip and bolts

I’m going on another small vacation, leaving tomorrow and I’ll be back beginning next week. This is another hiking trip, this time in the Belgian Ardennes. So, I will be quiet until I get back.

But I’ve got something to think about, and I won’t take the pleasure (or agony) away from you guys to think about it as well

The issue of the week: which M4 bolts am I going to use (on the outside of the case)? I’ve got a choice between:
- regular hex-head bolts
- low profile hex-head
- buttonheads

Of course, all this keeping in mind that I’ve got a lot of full-sized M5 hex-heads on the outside panels. And they are staying, I don’t want to change them to buttonheads.

Take a look at the pics I’ll post after the text. I think the buttonheads are drop dead gorgeous, but they don’t really seem to go very well along the M5 bolts. Also, all the Aqua-Computer stuff has low profile bolts. SO, the logical choice would be low-profile hex-heads, right?

Well, see you next week. And here are the pics:

 

I would go for the normal sized hex screws.
Although, I would suggest you get Inox screws match the other screws used on the outside.
Have fun on your trip!

 

another option: use countersunk hexheads

 

Back to the loose ends!

Well, I’m back. During my absence I got some nice replies (most of them at Wizdforums -c'mon guys!) and I’ll go with the low profile hex heads. That was my preferred option as well, so all is good!

After all the intermezzo’s, it’s time to get back to where I left off. As you recall, I made a ventilation opening in the cover plate of the HDD area. But with the mesh attached and due to the fact that the whole side of the plate has no support, it bends:


Something needed to be done. I could of course make a thicker plate, but that was not a modder’s solution. So…


I made a nice support that will be glued (and secured with a bolt on both ends) to the plate!


The support is a nice piece: it looks good, has a neat design (at least imho) and is still a simple piece to make. So…I made a few other supports that I will use in other places where there is a need for one. I made them so their looks match. Here they are:


The bottom one is the one in the pics above. The middle one will be used to keep the front cover of the HDD area from bending a bit between two bolts. The top one will be used as a support for the plate I’m making to cover up the front right section of the case.

Here is that plate, or at least a coardbord model. There are some notches and stuff to be made.


And here is the finished plate.


I doesn’t fit very well against the 2mm plate that covers the pump. But this is planned, the whole pump area is not entirely fixed since it rests on rubber dampeners to kill pump vibrations. The plate I made now also needs an opening to accommodate the tubing that goes to the pump. Once that’s all taken care off, I’ll make two small tabs to close the gap between the two plates.

One of the main things to get right is now okay: the vertical front cover of the hdd and wiring area will be straight once I make the attachment for it!


So I made the corner pieces to attach the plates. I also made a few other pieces:


The two pieces at the top are to attach the plate I just made. The long piece underneath them will make sure the small gap between the two backpanels of the case will not be letting light through. The three pieces on the right will improve the look of the back of the mobo tray (remember there were a few gaps in it).

A close-up of the pieces for the mobo tray. These have a lot of small notches and stuff, they were a pita to get right! They are all a tad too big, so I can file them down to the correct size once they’re glued on.


On to the glueing, with JBWeld of course! Here are the two cornerpieces for the front plate:


Then to back of the mobo tray. First of all, a piece to cover the wide gap that is there because of the original construction of the tray (see one of the posts in the beginning of this thread). This took the longest to get right, but now it fits perfectly.


A small piece to cover the gap in this corner:


And finally the piece to straighten out the top edge and also cover the gap in the corner:


The results of these three pieces on the mobotray are very nice, they blend in very well and will even more when I file them down a bit.

Finally, I glued the long strip to the lower backside panel. The top panel needs to come off easily to get the PSU out of the case. The strip covers the small gap between the panels and will make sure I don’t get any unwanted light-effects.


Next time: finishing the work on the loose ends. See you soon!

 

The end of the loose ends…for now

I’m finished with the loose ends for now. Meaning there are still a few of them, but they’ll have to wait until I get further with the remaining stuff to do on the case. You can’t make a cable cover in mesh until the holes for the cables are done and a test-routing is done, right? Stuff like that is still to be done, but as I said will have to wait.

So, back to the end of the current loose ends. Last time I showed you guys a lot of small work, now I’ll show you some work I did on the optical bay and the mounting of the plate next to the pump cover. Only a small update, I know this is hardly exciting work (as was the previous post) but I want to make this a complete log.

First of all, some work on the optical bay. To do the wiring-stuff I’ve got planned for it, I need an underside cover for it. Now, at first I thought of making an alu plate for this, but I changed my mind and made a mesh-cover. It’ll look better since there will be some other mesh-accents (there’s the lcd back cover which is nearby and there will be a few covers to ‘hide’ the psu-cables.

Anyway, I went from this…


…to this.


The two cd-roms are old units, I obviously needed them to get the right spacing between the side pieces of the optical bay. The mesh is bent over the sides (instead of doing the bends on the inside) because it’s much easier to fasten the bolts this way. It also looks very nice in real life, hard to capture on photo though.

Here’s another pic from a different angle:


I did another thing to the optical bay. You may remember it hangs from the upperside of the case frame. It is connected to the frame with 4 bolts, each with a rubber dampener and a toothlock washer. Now, it was a horrendous task to put the bolts through the holes in the side pieces, with a washer and rubber on the end of the bolt, and then into the holes of the caseframe. The rubbers and washers kept falling off and stuff.
Sooooo…I had a good thinking about it, and after a while it hit me. If I made a channel in the side pieces I could slide the optical bay on without having to completely remove the bolts. I only needed to make sure the original holes were only touched on one side, where the channel is.

It went a lot better than I thought. It doesn’t look like much, but it works perfectly and that’s what matters:


Now I can just slide the optical bay up and then to the front over the half-loosened bolts, and then fasten the bolts. You may notice (best visible on the black side) how I kept the original hole as well as possible. When it is put in position it needs to be ‘pushed’ over the small inclination and then it ‘drops’ in the right place. When the bolts are fastened it stays in place. I specifically wanted this effect, if I made the channels completely smooth the bay could move backwards when too much pressure comes on the front. If you don’t understand this, don’t worry

Here’s a pic of one piece in place (taken from the back). I don’t have to worry anymore about the less-than-ideal access to the bolts either.


Okay, the other thing that wraps up the loose ends: fitting and installing the plate that comes next to the pump cover and bottom panel assembly. In my previous post, I glued the mounting brackets for this.

Here is the plate all mounted. You can see the support I made at the right side. This will also be glued to the plate as well, to keep it from bending. The support is mainly there to make this side a bit firmer, because it also holds the vertical plate in position.


A closer-up of the area I mentioned in the previous sentence.


The vertical plate is now perfectly straight from the top to the mount. You can see a small bend in it underneath the mount. This is no problem though, since most of it will be cut off. You see, I only recently came up with the idea of doing this to this side of the case. Underneath the plates, I have a nice room to put the power supply of the LCD and to route a lot of wires to and from the bottom panel.

A final pic. Although in this pic it looks like the plate bends a bit, it’s in fact almost completely straight.


Finishing this plate is also one of the loose ends I need to tie up later on. It needs a few holes to put: tubing that comes from reservoir and goes to pump, wiring going to the reservoir (temp probe and leds), wiring to the logo panel and front panel of the case (optical bay). Maybe it will need an additional support on the front cover, but I need to make all the holes in it first.


So, what are the next steps? Well, here they are:
1) support for graphic card that also accomodates for its wiring (it needs two molexes and a led connector)
2) cable management holes, mainly from the psu and to the mainboard (20 and 4 pin atx, s-ata cables etc), but also things like cutting off the piece I mentioned in this post
3) holes to accommodate the wiring (for this I’ve got special plans!)


I’m starting with the first on this list: graphic card support! See you soon!

 

Lovely, just lovely

 

your gonna have fun taking this to bits to remove the tape...!

top work as usual..

 

lol...not to mention sanding !

 

Before we enter the week-end and since I haven’t got much yet to show you of the vid card support, I wanted to show you guys something I think is superb. Hope you do to.

I live in Belgium, more specifically in Leuven. It’s a university town with a historical town centre. One of the most beautiful buildings is the town hall, the next pic shows you what it normally looks like:


There are lots of small statues everywhere, they depict people like saints, important historical persons etc. The whole building is very nice, maybe I should have looked for / taken a better pic, but it’s what coming next that really matters…

A couple of weeks ago, there was an event on the main square. There were artists for a audio-visual experience that was called ‘Leuven in scene’. And oh boy…it was really great! The best part of it: the town hall was lit with monochromatic light. An artist made a lot of pics of it and based on that made templates to put on several spotlights, each emitting a different monochromatic tint. The result was breathtaking in my opinion. I thought I’d show you guys, since it’s actually a kind of ‘mod’ right? Anyway, enough babbling. Here are a few pics (pity I didn't have my new eos350d yet!):







See you after the week-end!