CD Drive Brackets Today I had some time so I fixed the CD Drive Brackets that I half made yesterday... First up, here's the stuff that I've been using to bend the Poly: The PSU chassis is just used as a right angle channel to bend against... And these are the screws that i bought to use later on... There's 8 Fan screws, and 10 Thumtack screws: Now, the brackets just needed cleaning up and re-bending... they ended up alright, and as it is they will hardly be visible anyway, so I'm happy to leave them as they are... Also, unfortunately one of the HDD brackets broke at the join, so I made a small right angle piece to repair this... It will not be seen anyway. And lastly, the pic of both things together: Hope you all like... Feel free to comment.
Top Panel Mounts Ok, today I got a call to say that my plastic is all cut and ready to be picked up, so I should have that sometime tomorrow... While I wait though, i decided to make some small mounts for attaching the top panel to the case. I needed screwable mounts so that the top can be removable to get into the top section if need be... I was originally going to buy acrylic cubes, but I think these look better and didn't cost me... I started by cutting 2 2.5cm blocks from a 2.5 x 3 acrylic block that i had laying around. Both blocks was market up to be cut to make 2 mounts (ie: 4 in total). And cut along the lines 1.5cm deep per cut (conveniently the depth of the blade) straight down with a hack saw. This gave me 4 pieces looking like this: I cleaned the cuts up and smoothed all the sides using a hand-held belt sander mounted upside down: Then I drilled holes for the three screws with the drill press... One small hole for the top screw (thumb-tack), and 2 bigger holes for the side fan screws... So I ended up with 4 of these: Lastly I flame polished them with my pencil blowtorch to finish them like this: Overall I'm quite happy with them and I think they will look a lot better than the cubes would have looked... Also I like the fact that I have a Thumb Tack on the top where I will need to take it off, but I have nice, neat, flush fan screws in the sides... As Always, Feel free to comment...
Very nice job on the mounts, they seem to get smaller and smaller. I also like the pencil blowtourch; how long does that thing last you on one can?
The blow torch last 10-15 minutes flame time on one fill... And It'll refill from my butane canister (only cost AU$4) about 50 times or somehting...
Acrylic Only one quick shot for you tonight... Today I got all of my plastics: The stuff on the left is the cut-to-size stuff for direct use in my mod... The stuff on the right is all the spare parts the plastics place kindly gave me for free... And in the middle is a tin of WeldOn 3... Happy modding...
Starting Work With Acrylic Ok, Yesterday I started working with the acrylic... I didn't got too much done, but i started by marking out and cutting out the curves sections (that will make the fees) form the bottom four panels. To round them i got my dremel with a sanding disk attachment and mounted it upright in the vice: And in the end i got them all looking like this: Lastly, i cut a whole heap of 4CM x 4CM triangles out of the spare 4.5mm acrylic i had: These will be used to make the feet, I just need to work out how to join them together... Does anyone know if you can use WeldOn 3 to join pieces flat together? And if so how? Because i quickly experimented but had no luck... Anyway, Happy modding to you all and feel free to comment...
Lower Half Started Ok, to start of today this is where I'm up to ATM: So I decided to start out with the feel made form those triangles... Putting them into groups of 5, I lined them up as best as i could, and drilled a hole with the drill press through each one in the group: Then held them all together using a small nut and bolt: Once they were firmly together, I held them in the Vice and sanded/filed them until they were flat and at right angles: Then I gave them a coat of WeldOn around each of the joining edges to stick them together... Also, while i was gluing, I glued a small piece of the 4.5mm clear to a piece of 3mm tinted just to check that the two would glue properly... Thankfully they did: Next I moved onto the lower back panel... Using a Hole Saw and the Drill Press I cut the hole for the rear 120mm intake fan. I also drilled the screw holes and mounted it in place. Then I Mock-built the lower section to check how everything would fit together: As you can see I have used many different objects I had laying around to hold everything in place temporarily... Then, once sure it would all fit, I marked out the hole for the PSU and cut it out using my Dremel: The Hole still needs to be tidied up once i find my small file, but for now i drilled the holed and mounted the PSU in place: Then I Mock built the lower section again to check it would fit: And Lastly Mock build the whole thing to get an idea what it will look like: So, What do you think? I'm liking it, but There's still a lot of work to go... Feel free to comment.
Nice idea and good work... But, the thing with the plasma globe is a little bit dangerous for your hardware. I'm not talking about the high voltage here, as high voltage could easily be shielded by your acrylic... I'm talking about high frequenzies. Plasma globes use something that is called a solid state tesla generator (sometimes referred to as alternator). Tesla generators put out high frequenzies and can interfere with modern electronics. The high frequency EM radiation will build up static electricity on insulated parts. Try it by putting Al foil around the globe while it's running, then use a metal object (I wouldn't recommend being in touch with that metal while doing the next step) and get closer to the globe... at some point a spark will appear. Or just put the globe somewhere near your keyboard while working on a normal PC, you might notice strange behaviour, like autonomous typing. There's however no guarantee that it'll fry your hardware, neither is there a guarantee that it won't. A normal computer case would be safer, because it's made of metal (conductor) and is connected to ground. So you might want to put some grounded metal grating around your hardware(read: construct a faraday cage). However, it's possible that you won't experience any problems at all, the effect of the globe on your hardware is just highly unpredictable. I wouldn't do the first hours of test running with expensive hardware, though.
Thanks for yor concerns... I've already looked into all the aspects ou are talking abour, and like you I too am unsure how it will turn out... I have done some study on how Plasma Bals work, and the electromagnetig interferience they can cause... The two things that I am woried about most ar the frequencies produced by the plasma's Inverter circuitry, and the ball's attraction for electrons from earth... I did look into a grounding wire, however with the strong attraction f the bass it woud probably end up causing more problems... Overall, I am definatly planning on testig first thorougly with an old system. If absolute need be i will invest in a glass top panel to ad in insulation, but hopefully all this won't be too much of a problem... (fingers crossed)... I hae seen first hand the effects this thing can have on electronics, and have used it before to mess with a few circuits (including a anamatronic toy that went spaz) but it still needed to be relitivly close to have an effect... As I said, I'm still not 100% sure, but I'm hoping it will all be OK...
Sadly EM interference can't be shielded with insulators... that's what I was trying to say... Think of it as radio waves... with your normal radio you'll have a better signal through your window than you would have trough reinforced concrete. And that effect is not caused by the different thickness of your glass window compared to your walls. To effectively shield EM interference you'll need grounded metal. And to not destroy your design I would suggest you wrap a metal grid closely around your Hardware (at least motherboard and cards)... The holes in the grid don't have to be very small, as the wavelengths emitted by a plasma globe will be quiet long. You can see through the grid and you'll only need to cover a small space with it, therefor it won't interfere much with you initial design(actually I think an acrylic case design could benefit from a grid cage around the motherboard... just think about it).
What? Anyway, I'm planning on running some tests tonight with some old computers to see the effect of the plasma ball on a PC in close range...
Plasma Interference Tests Ok, just a quick update for now... I've been having some concern from readers about the effects that the plasma ball will have n the PC... I had considered this in the past, but in light of new information i have decided to run some tests and experiment with the effects of the plasma ball on all aspects of a PC system. To do this i setup an old PII era system with a full setup including full case, mobo, ram, HDD, video card, etc (IE: full complete running system with XP installed)... I also attached a full setup including keyboard, mouse and 17" CRT monitor... I used the plasma ball to test each component to look for any effects... From my tests i have deemed that in this setup, the plasma ball had no effect on the keyboard, mouse or any part of the computer system. Also it did not cause fragmentation of the HDD or any cluster damage. The only notable effect was screen flicker (more like horizontal sync issues) when at close range this, however, should be easily avoidable by moving the ball a little away from the monitors... The other thing i discovered was tat b tests conducted with a small circuit that was effected by the ball 's interference, the most interference is present at the bottom of the ball housing (ie: the plasma inverter circuit) and at any point on the ball where you touch it or make contact to ground. So, from all this, the only change that i will be making to my design will be to efficiently route the plasma ball's power cable to avoid any sensitive components, and more importantly to create a steel mesh grounded frame under the ball's inverter circuit to stop any interference heading down to the Mobo and etc. Thanks to 'elctroJunky' from Bit-Tech for his help and suggestions regarding the interference problem... Happy modding...
Well well, let's see how it goes then... A suggestion, you might run grounding wires from the grid trough every corner of your case, that way you'll have a little more shielding and the wires (if you use thin wires with lacquer insulation) won't be visible. To ground the grid you should use the neutral wire of your PSU (be careful not to use any other line). So long, keep us posted...
Bottom Half Glued Ok, today i finally got some time to get back to this project... I started by cutting out a large rectangle in the front panel that will later be used for the CD drive Stealthing: Then came the all important time to start gluing! I began by gluing the four feet to the bottom corners on the base panel: Then I glued all four sides on and together using a variety of angles and support items to get everything right, square and glued tightly... Lastly, I decided to make new HDD brackets as the old one's were messy and broken. This time I made them out of some spare tint Acrylic, and used thumb-screws for the drive... I think they turned out heaps better overall: I probably won't get any further until the weekend, but I am running out of things to do before I have to buy some of the components... Feel free to comment... Happy modding.
Fixing Drive Brackets Just a quick update today... Basically I started by remaking the CD drive brackets out of some spare tint acrylic: Then i moved onto the front drive stealthing... I got the piece that was cut out of the front panel, and filed down the edges to clean it up: Then cut it in half to make the two pieces for the two drives. I then needed a way to attach it to the drive, and looking through what we had i found these: They're small patches of double sided tape intended for mounting mirrors... The only problem is that they are white, but they will do for now... I used them to attach the stealth plate to the front of the drive tray: Then i got to work drilling and fixing all of the drive brackets using some coarse thread, self tapping wood screws that i found. The only drive that I haven't attached yet is the RHS CD drive, as I am still waiting on the burner that will go there... So after all that here's some pics of where I'm at: Hope you like... Feel free to comment.
Smoothing Edges Today i started to get into some of the finer details of the parts that I've already made. Using various wet and dry sandpapers including grades 240,320,400,600,800,1000 & 1200 I sanded back all the edges then polished them to smooth. So far I've only done the 4 Drive Brackets, but I'll get the the lower section of the case sometime soon. Here's some brief pics to show: Process should be self explanatory... Hope you like, feel free to comment...
