Case Mod - In Progress Night of the Living Dead 40th Tribute - Oct 1st - Completion and pic-bomb

But not on the palm, right?

\That's a very good idea. Might see what I can make work with that.

 

Hairy palms would indeed be scary, but in a bad way!

 

It would explain why everyone runs away from them...

 

Night of the Living Dead 40th Tribute - Aug 21 - Fun with lights.

Here’s a small update for you:

I have continued to work on a solution to my problem with the transparency. To recap, I really don’t have the room to properly light a window on that side, due to the mobo tray. (Probably why people don’t generally put windows in that side.)

Currently, I am playing around with LEDs to see if that will work. To work with them, I only taped them in roughly to place that they will go. If I go with this plan, I will mount them in a neater and more permanent fashion.



The white LEDs are for the title and Ben, whereas the orange ones are mainly for text. So that I could get a realistic view of the final project, I cut a piece of cardboard for this side of the case. This is easier and more reversible than cutting the panel and hoping for the best.



If this works, then I can simply cut the panel and hopefully have it looks something like this:



I’m not going to have time to work again until the weekend, so I am going to think on this bit until then and decide if I like it.

In other news, I purchased the miniature tombstones and some foam-board, so work will probably commence on the base soon.

 

how will you mount the LEDs? glob glue?

 

Hot melt would work, or I might run the wires under the mobo (standoffs give enough room) and then drill holes through the tray.

 

This weekend was very busy, so about all I got time for was to clean up the one window and cut the other.



Here is the first window. I used some spot putty on it to fill in the tool marks from the dremel. That’s pretty much the last step needed for that particular window.

Here’s the plastic panel cut for the other window:



…And again with the metal portion cut.



Since the LEDs were just scotch-taped on temporarily, some of them have shifted from their intended location, but that is not wholly important:




I’m going to have to paint some “black out” on to the plexi. Since the transparencies are sandwiched between two pieces of glass, the thickness of the front piece allows light through. When viewed from certain angles (such as above in these pictures) is give the picture some bright borders. No problem – this is an easy fix.

Next step is to make the mount for the HDD cage and cut the blow hole, and then preliminary construction is finished on the case. After that, I can begin the cosmetic work.

 

Cool case. Love the hand sticking out. Some trivia for you: the original Night of the Living dead was shot in the cemetery in my town of Evans City. Only like a ~7 minute drive from me.

 

Yep. I am familiar with the area. The sequel was the mall down the road from me.

 

My plan had been to find a piece scenery fence to use as a front fan grill. Well, I have had zero luck finding one. Therefore, I did what any modder would do: I made one.



What I did was sketch up something in a graphics program, printed it out, and glued it to some scrap metal. I used regular old Elmer's so that some hot water will remove it later. This print out will be my guide while I work.



Here, I have drilled guide holes in the center section of the fence. The smaller lower parts, and the scroll work at the top are going to require smaller than usual Dremel discs. This is why I always save my burned down discs instead of tossing them.



From there, it was a lot of cutting, more cutting and some trimming.




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After everything is cut out, a quick bath to remove the paper, and here is what I've got:



(NOTE: The above is not its final position on the case. I just held it up to see.)

I still need to do some serious work with a needle file, but this is a start.

 

Update time!

After a weekend of laziness, it was back to the grind yesterday. (The one time I attempted to work, I found my spay paint was defective.) Aside from getting the chassis primed, my main order of business was to get to work on the graveyard/base for the case.

I am using styro-board for this, as the layers of styrene on either side of the foam adds rigidity and protection to it. First step was to make out where the base frame needed to be fitted.



A good razor and straightedge makes short work of this stuff. I like to make a couple of very shallow cuts first so that the blade has a “track” to run in. Once cut, and a spare CD drive laid in place, the boundaries of the base can be seen:



I went two inches off of either side, and a few inches off the front. One thing is for sure: This case will never tip over.

I don’t have a lot of pictures for the next part, as it was a lot of repetitive cutting to build up the layers on either side. Essentially, they’re the same as the base, but with the center cut out for the drive.



I cut the top layer of styrene off so that (later) I can shave out a bit of the foam to drop the drive lower. This is because the height of the drive is just a little taller than the stacked layers of foam board.



Here is what it will look like when all is said and done with:



The top layer is not glued as of yet, so that I can still work on the drive cradle. Yes, I see that spot in the lower right that’s not the same width as the other layers. I had a piece that wasn’t quite wide enough, and since there will be a face piece, I couldn’t see the need to cut a fresh piece for that section.

Here is a side view with some fence pieces that will be painted and installed later to give you an idea:



I got a box of those fences (probably 60 pieces) for $3 at the hobby store. Someone had cleaned out their attic and dropped them off that day. Lucky me!

Finally, here’s a shot with the primed chassis on top:



I’m moving in to the home stretch here. This is where things will start to move quickly (and the part I like best!)

One of the next things I will do is to clean up the edges and putty them over. This will give the base it’s strength as well as give me a clean surface to do the cosmetic work on.

 

looking top notch. great concept, nice execution. it looks to be coming along quite nicely. one thing i was thinking though, for the lighting behind the transparency... instead of the leds, maybe elwire formed to silhouette the main shapes, the large face, the figures, and then a red piece around the text? would avoid having the bright spots, and provide more even lighting... and may even be easier to mount. or if not, then perhaps a coat of blackout on the black part to avoid some of the light bleed.

 

Thanks for the feedback!

To answer your question, blackout is the plan.

 

oops, you did already say that. i must have skimmed right over it...

 

XD Looking nice so far, first time I've ever seen Strofoam used in a mod tbh though

 

I like it, it's freaky and weird

Another idea: make 2/3 of the white leds flash like lightning, like you always see in horror movies. That would really complete the theme. You'd need a switch to turn it off though, or you'll go crazy if you actually think of using the PC

 

Good thing u found a case about the same age as the movie

@ Xtrafresh idea: OR, you could use those white leds to flas with the HD activity

I am liking the idea so far. Keep it up.

 

It's an under-used material that you see every once in a while on cases.

Pros: Lightweight, shapable, sound dampening.
Cons: Weak, heat retention.

The cons are countered in this case by using bondo to strengthen it. Heat isn't an issue since it's only a part of the lower case, and not the whole thing.

Yemerich : Good thing u found a case about the same age as the movie

Yeah, I got some oldies in my basement. People keep dropping them off at my house instead of throwing them out. I wonder why...

Just to let everyone know, work continues on schedule. I haven't done an update because I am in a bondo-and-paint section of the project. This means that I'll do a bit, snap a picture, wait for it to dry and go work on something else. Therefore, there's not enough of any one thing to give a proper update. In the next few days, I should have an update showcasing the progress on the base, which I am very happy with. Thanks for checking in!

 

As mentioned, I’ve been trapped in the “work a little and then do something else while that dries” stage of the project, leaving me with bits and pieces of a number of things that don’t lend themselves to a full update. Finally, I am moving through that and will hopefully have several updates this week. Today’s update will deal with some work on the front bezel, and the fitting of the PSU.

First, the PSU:

The power supply for this project is coming from my gaming rig, and is a SeaSonic 600W PSU. This thing is pretty much the whole reason that I had to make the base for this project, as it wouldn’t fit in the case with a full ATX board. Mounting in the base is fairly simple, as it rides the rails of the metal cage part. All I needed to do was to fashion a back plate for it.



I cut this out of some standard metal sheeting, using a stencil I made from the back of the case the PSU is currently in. Then, it was just a matter of Dremeling it out, drilling the screw holes and mounting the PSU to test fit.



There we go. After some finish filing, this will be good to go.


The bezel certainly required more work.



For one thing, I won’t be keeping the lights and reset button section, so that will need to be filled in. Also, there is the spot towards the top where the Packard logo was. Finally, there is the power button hole. When I knocked the old one out, I found that the hole was about a millimeter too big for the button I will be using. Therefore, that will need to be filled in and re-drilled.



The bondo here is partly that I wanted to fill in some scratches and gouges, and partly that I mixed up too much.  Oh well, that’s what sandpaper is for.




After I sanded it down and sprayed a light coat of primer on it, I was able to see that the filled-in needed some more work to blend them in. So – more Bondo.



This time, I intended to mix up the amount that I did.



This time, when sanded down, everything is looking good. Now, there are only a few pits that need to be filled in with putty and it is structurally done.



After some finish sanding, I will get this primed and painted. I will be back in a day or two with another update, so stay tuned.

 

Back again. First off, before I forget: I added a power button to the bezel.



Just thought you’d like to know.

Today, we’re going to deal with tombstones. I’m going to need a bunch of these, but I only made a few as prototypes to see if my idea was going to work. What I did was to first cut them out of the same type of foam board that I made the base from.



Here they are in context:



The next step was to use some of the spot putty on the edges to cover the non-ridged internal foam.



Oddly enough, the spot putty reacted with the foam core and made it collapse in on itself, where-as the Bondo (which creates heat when it dries) did not when used on the base. I had chosen the spot putty because A.) it allowed me more working time, and B.) didn’t require me to mix up a batch of anything. Even with the reaction, it just took me an additional application to get where I wanted:



After some detail sanding and some primer, I went back and filled holes. After this was all finished, I went over each piece with some stone-texture paint to give them the right look. It turned out great…and….I….don’t seem to have a picture of it here in my PB account. I will remedy this later and add it to the worklog


Next, I’m going to touch base on the top of the case. The only modification that needed to be made to it was the blowhole, which I cut in the chassis. Instead of cutting a hole in the corresponding plastic panel and adding a grill, I decided that I wanted to just have a drilled vent. The plan is to use a red LED fan under it, and put a bloody handprint over it.

For the vent, I actually found one that I liked on another computer chassis – but I didn’t want to cut it out to use as a template…so I balanced it just so, and then maneuvered the drill inside as best as I could and buzzed a few guide divots. No pictures of this, because the job required three hands as it was, so there were none spare for the camera.

In the end, though, this gave me some guidance to start the drilling…



…And drilling some more…



…and then reaching this:



To shamelessly toot my own horn, this was a step back and take a good look moment for me. For something free-hand, this looks almost machined, and I’m damn proud of it.

Which is good, because the paint-job brought me right back down:



The paint that I used ended up not hiding any sins. Every imperfection in the surface – ones that are normally completely covered by the paint – shown through, clear as day. This is what I get for saving a few bucks.



So, I sanded that bad-boy down, added some putty, and then hit it again with the fine-grain stuff. It’s looking better:



Currently, it is in my garage letting another few coats of paint dry. I’ll take a look at it again tonight and see if it’s ready to move on to the hand-print stage of the game.

That’s it for today’s update. Let me know if you have any questions.