Project: XenoPredator [Updated 12 March]

Project: XenoPredator
After half a year of no modding, I and a friend (Kevin / Piet_Friet) felt it was time to start a new project. At the moment we have some other project running, but those are on halt because of the need of new materials and techniques. This time, we’re going to mod a somewhat weird and unusual case.

Casing
The case we’re going to use is Recom Backdraft. A pre-mod case based on an alien theme. We won this casing at the so-called Benelux Championships of Casemodding. Here’s a picture of the original casing:


As you can see, the Recom Backdraft isn’t to much of a mod-able case. It isn’t, by example, some expensive Lian-Li casing, which is useless to mod because it is already nice. We’re going to mod this craphole into something even madder. Well, let’s say, in a positive way of course.

Theme
We will use the original theme of the case: Alien-tech. Next to Alien-tech, we will use some (human) High-tech inside of the case. Outside will be alien, inside human. In this way, we’re trying to create some nice contrasts.

Colors and materials
We’ll be using a lot of UV reactive yellow acrylic. All lit up by some nice UV CCFLs and UV leds. The outside and inside metal will al be painted black by a professional painter (for free.) We’ll also be using a lot of smoked acrylic and last but not least a lot of mirror acrylic. Mirror will be mostly used inside the casing. The rest will also be used outside of the casing.



The modding, Side-panels
Enough chit-chat. Time to start modding.

But, before we start modding, we’ve got some things to admit. In first place, these pictures are only pictures of results. We haven’t got pictures of the actual work because we only decided shortly ago to make a project-log of this project. Second, we have already done a lot of more work. We’ve some Dutch worklogs running full of updates, but we also wanted to share our modding with the rest of the modding-community. However, we’re to lazy to translate al those updates in one night, so we will try to translate every night an update and post is, until the English version is complete.

Okay, ready to start. First of all, we started changing the original pre-mod window. Some shapes weren’t to bad, but the fan and the screw-on-piece-things-useless-pieces-of-steel had to go. We cut it all away, and smoothed it nicely up.


We’re not going to take the protecting tape off, because it will need to protect the sidepanel for a couple of more weeks.

With the left sidepanel all set, the right sidepanel needed some modding. This panel was completely clean (without minding the alien fan-inlet,) so enough room to do something nice. We decided to put the name “XenoPredator” on the side of the panel in a “XenoPredator-like” font.


All cut, with nothing more than a figure saw. We put the letters in mirror, so that they will be normal on the other side.




Once again, the protecting tape needs to do some more protecting, so we won’t take it off yet.

Radiator and fillport
We also cut the radiator hole, and made a fill port out of some simple parts.




The fill port is somewhat pointing out, but it is actually the right height. There will become some plating on top of the radiator hole, in an Alien style.



The radiator is partly hanging in the drivebay. The part hanging outside the drivebay needed some modding.


Anyway, in first place we only made a half shroud. Shortly we’re going to start to make a full shroud, because it will look a lot cleaner.

Meanwhile, we sleeved the PSU. In yellow, it was the only color we could get in a short period.


However, we decided to trash the yellow sleeving, because it doesn’t looks right in comparison with the UV yellow acrylic. There both just completely other tints of yellow.

More watercooling
For XenoPredator we’ll be making some unique reservoirs. We are planning to make a small and a huge reservoir, connected together with just one corner piece. In this way they will make one super-huge reservoir with some (hopefully) special abilities.

The small one has already been made:






And we started working on the big resevoir.




We use these taps, to make a ¼” screwhole, capable to hold our fittings.


All the watercooling parts. (exept for the fittings and tubes)




End
Tomorrow we will probably have another update translated from Dutch to English. Thanks for reading, and if you couldn’t understand something of my English, tell me!

 

very nice, keep up the good work, LOVE the reseviors!

 

looking good so far! keep it up, i'll be watching this thing very closely.

 

Thanks guys! I've got a small update ready in about half a hour.

 

A bit faster though...


Update 1: (translated from: 11 January 2007)

First of all, we’ve been busy completing the radiator shroud and drivebay cover. Behind the drivebay cover we’ll be able to stuff all kinds of cables away.


It isn’t done yet though. Most parts will be made as a base for the other high-tech parts which will be made and put on top of the baseparts.

In dark


Work on the resevoir
We’re planning to make some High-tech / Alien-tech combo pieces for in the reservoir. These pieces will be slide on the inlet-pipe. First of all we had to design those pieces. We did this in Photoshop, because we will need a lot of duplications of the original piece, and it is easy.

Alright, some cheap-ass Photoshopping. (might even be a disgrace for the real Photoshoppers here. )


It is a circle.














Size comparison.

Let’s test the piece.

Seems to be right...

One piece on the inlet-pipe will look stupid, so time to print some more out.

It was a small update, for that, we will post another update with the pieces cut and placed on the pipe this evening.

 

Damn good work so far! it must be nice to work with a friend, usually modding is rather lonely work... Looking forward!

 

Looking very nice so far; I'm loving the UV yellow acrylic.

As for the PhotoShop guides, I'd highly recommend you use vectors and such instead of pixellated lines/shapes, etc... Doing this would ensure that you'll be able to enlarge the image without any loss of quality.

 

It really is a lot more fun.

Duste, hmm, you might be right about those vectors and so on. I might oughta check some tutorials about working in verctors. I'm not to good with Photoshop you know...

 

Update 2: (Translated from: 12 januari 2007)

In this update, we will be busy finishing the bigger reservoir.

The big reservoir
First of all, we started cutting out all those small pieces as designed in the last update.


A lot of glue, to glue the piece of paper with the designs on top of the UV acrylic piece.


Drilling the first holes


As you can see, all of the big center round holes have been cut by hand with a figure saw first. Secondly, we drill those holes completely round. In this manner, the holes will all be in de exact center of the piece, which is necessary to make the pieces fit nicely together. Those holes are being drilled to 10mm, making the pieces slide exactly over the inlet-pipe.


All holes cut and drilled.

Now it’s time to cut the pieces separate.



After some sanding, the first 7 pieces are done…

…and slided over the inlet-pipe.


With some UV light:




Side Fitting
Meanwhile, we have been busy making a small piece out of 8mm acrylic. This piece will be put on the side of the pipe, somewhere up high. So that we will be able to drill a hole in this pipe, make a ¼” screwhole in it to make place for a fitting.


It will need to be rounded on the downside of the piece, to make a watertight connection with the pipe.

By grinding it over a spare piece of pipe with some sanding paper on top, it will get the exact same rounding.



With te help of some Acrifix 192, we glue it on.

After glueing, we drill it and make a ¼”NPT.


Making the fitting fit nicely.


More resevoir work
The last 3 pieces had to be cut, also the top-cap of the resevoir still needed be done.





The final 3 pieces put in place.



Glueing it together
Time to glue everything together. Firstly the top-cap.


And the botom-cap.


After some hours of drying, we took of the protecting tape.

Needed some cleaning with white spirit, and it was ready to go!







We had a problem though; the inlet-pipe seemed to be somewhat crooked. You might even notice it on the pictures. In the next update, we’ll be fixing this problem, in a hard and painful way though.

 

What was the point of the things in the tube? Pretty time cum-summing for something that does nothing!!!!!!!!!!!! but restrict flow!!! Nice.

 

Thats (dunno if swearing is aloud but what the hell) ****ING BRILLIANT

 

man, it looks friigin fantastic with all that uv yellow plexi!
subscribed

 

That res looks fantastic!

What kind of glue have you use to glue all the pieces together?

Keep it up

 

looks realy nice with the uv-reactive plexiglass there ^^, gonna follow this thread lika a hawk ^^, keep up the good work

 

Thanks!

@Beats, We think the flow wouldn't be to much reducted. The inside pieces aren't really in the place where any flow should really flow. We like looks more than performance.

@Hellas91, We used Arcifix 192, but I don't know where you could get it in the UK / US. I only know a dutch shop: http://www.bouwplastics.nl

Futhermore, thank you all, we really like being appreciated!

 

sweet job.

How many uv lights are you going to include on the inside?

 

Hmm, a lot I think. Enough to light all things nicely up. We've to see how many we will need for that. Last mod we did, also contained a lot of UV reactive acrylic. We needed about 10 UV lights to make that look nicely.

 

Hey nice work with the acrylic!

 

whats the point of casemodding? its just a time consuming process for something that does nothing (!!!!!!) but look good.

the res looks really cool, good job man!

 

wow reminds me of an old school darkblade look
really nice!