Scratch Build – In Progress Halion Design [FINISHED] final product photos

Another small update. I've added a beam across the bottom in order to support a piece of MDF where the hard drive cage will be resting on.







Just using a bit of cardboard to check my dimensions...



So the hard drive bay should be supported like so. I'll be cutting a hole in the MDF at the back to allow cables to pass through.







Now onto the aluminium (or aluminum if you prefer ).
They look so SHINY!, I still would rather have a brushed finish, but I'll decide once all the aluminium is in place to see the overall effect.











Time to cut it to size!






Guess which one's the new blade

Ta-da! The new orange blade cut through the aluminium like cheese through butter. (hang on, that doesn't work).









That's all for now, stay tuned!

 

Looks very nice I like your design!

 

Thanks very much Boscoe . Another update coming soon!

 

I found the problem, tried opening one of your images in a new tab and this is what I get:

 

That's odd. Your Antivirus program seems to be blocking the website where I uploaded the images to.

I've uploaded all the photos to photobucket: http://photobucket.com/sebpruiz

 

Now the images are visible, seems odd that ESET would flag the first site you used.

Is it a site where you can upload anything? In Sweden there's a site called Fuskbugg to which you can upload any file and Avast flags it with the same reason.

Anyway, looks like this is shaping up to be a nice build .

 

It looks a bit like some hi-tech hard drive contraption...







This plastic XPS thing on the side looks horrible. They only stuck it on with double sided sticky tape so it wasn't difficult to remove.



It needs to be made shorter now. I've cut the left and right side so its rectangular. If you have a look at the original XPS computer you can see that its at an angle.







I bought some new blades for my jigsaw, I only had ones for wood and I didn't want to mess them up trying to cut through 3mm of aluminium.







Nooo! My Canon Camera is hallucinating and seeing the world in pink...









That's both done.

 

Did I mention this little piece?
I think I forgot to add photos of it after I'd made the cardboard mockup. Anyway, it's not very exciting, it's only going to hold up the hard drive caddy.









I have not yet drilled holes in the aluminium so it is not yet held onto the wooden frame, but here is what it should look like:

 

Very good start. I'll be watching this one closely.

 

It's good to see some people are interested. I haven't done an update in a while so this one will be loaded with photos on what I've been doing. Hopefully, once the actual mod is finished I'll try and get Mac OS X Lion working on the Asus Gene III, it should not be too difficult as I've managed it with other 1156 Asus boards.



Just to show how the wooden frame interacts with the aluminium. Although the aluminium would be able to hold itself together with a bit of welding, it would not be as elegant (in my opinion).











Drilling holes in each piece of aluminium so that it can be screwed onto the frame. I am using premium screws for this: Aluminium ones, countersunk with an allen head.







Countersinking drill bit... I have a sinking feeling that it's meant to be for wood only, it took quite a while on the aluminium - at least it did the job .



Spray painting the metal pieces. I think I will spray paint the backplate PCIE bits white so there is some contrast.





This looks awful... I really need to work out how to make it look clean.





Quick view on how things stand:





Bit more spray paint...





Put it all together...









I added a hole for the air intake for the power supply which will be mounted underneath.





I made a little dowel to hold up the power supply.



Like so: (wow that sofa looks bright )

 

Here are the final photos of the frame after applying the last few coats.

 

Halion Design, Brushing Aluminium and coating the MDF black

I'm having a bit of a hard time trying to focus on the aluminium with my Canon point and shoot camera. The idea is to remove the polish coat that was applied to all the aluminium sheets by Dell. The main reason I'm doing this is so that when I spray paint it white, the spray paint will stick to the aluminium much better. Another is that the aluminium is a bit scratched in places and making it brushed will tidy it up a bit as well as making it look professionally awesome (hopefully).

Before: doesn't look too terrible does it?









Time to reveal the real metal: The sanding process is quite time consuming however the results are well worth it. Unfortunately I have to do 4 sheets of aluminium, all of which contain some kind of curve.











My friend advised me to coat the MDF in PVA glue so that the MDF would stop absorbing the spray paint and so an aesthetically pleasing even layer of paint can be formed. The PVA first needs to be mixed with water. This is done to a ratio of about 3:1 for best results. Apply this mixture to the MDF in a thin layer using a brush. The brush I used was 50mm wide.
I think my approach ended up being slightly too enthusiastic with quite a large coat of PVA on the wood, so I had to spend a little bit more time than it should take to get rid of the brush marks using steel wool.











I used a 12ml tube of black acrylic paint to make the edges of the acrylic black, as this was difficult to achieve using a spray paint can without using up a lot of paint.



Results:





















Finished brushed aluminium using 180 Grit sand paper. I will be going over it again using 230 grit most probably.

 

Smallish update. I've been playing around with some spare acrylic and a slot loading dvd drive that originated from my macbook, but I will try and use it for this mod. I'm still waiting for the 2 A3 pieces of acrylic that I ordered, they should arrive any day now, once they do I will be able to start work on the front and the back.

























I think I will have a go at making the piece of acrylic "glow" somehow. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to do it as I would like to have an even patch of light across the acrylic rather than lots of pinpoints created from LEDs.

 

I like how this is turning out!

For photographing the aluminum, maybe throw something on there like a penny or a screw, so that the camera can focus on that...

 

This is looking very good You're keeping the styling of the original Dell case nicely.

It might be a little late but the best pure black i've managed to get on wood/MDF was a couple of coats of blackboard paint and then to give that a couple of coats of satin finish varnish (or gloss/matte if you prefer that of course). Just a suggestion, maybe try it out on some scrap if you're unsure but it gives a very deep and even covering

Looking forward to seeing more.

 

Thanks for the suggestion Throbbi, I'll have a look into the varnish, it will probably make the paint less likely to wear off as well.

I would like the dvd drive to be mounted on the side but the bump in the aluminium is making it difficult because I will need to raise the dvd drive. I'll try and mount it over the weekend.

mm... looks a bit like a submarine now doesn't it? I made the window panel yesterday, it only just fits but all those aluminium screws are showing up quite well.











My Corsair HX 520W modular power supply and A3 acrylic sheets arrived today so I'll try and do a photo update tomorrow when its light.

 

How did you make those bends in the covers?? I really would be interested in seeing those photo's!!

 

They're already there. He's modding an old Dell XPS case which has those styling elements already

 

oh I didnt know that, wack!!!

 

Very good. I like the mini XPS look. But why did you brush it and put in a window? Imho it looked better without a window and brushed finish.