Case Mod - In Progress Dragon Revival - [September - New workshop, new WC parts]

Photos are perfectly sized.

Will be following this. Always nice to see the Dragons being overhauled.

 

Lightbox testing

I've read a few lightpanel guides and thought I'd post our efforts to help in case you want to make your own.

First we made the bottom panel out of 3mm mirrored acrylic, with side-walls made from 5mm white acrylic:



Test setup with transformer:



Power



At night...



Now some experimentation. First with a piece of sand-blasted 6mm acrylic underneath the top piece of 5mm white:



Actually makes it worse We're looking for a nice even light distribution here.

3mm white on top just for fun:



The light around the edges is still too bright compared to the rest of the panel, and is not being dissipated enough into the middle of the panel.

Tried turning the strips downwards so that I'd only have reflected light coming upwards:



Failed - ended up with two dark strips running each side.

Another angle. Took the edge of a saw...



And pulled it across some more clear plexi to make score-marks in the surface which would hopefully diffract more of the light:



You can just about see the score-marks here (we made lots more after this):


End result: another fail :-/ Didn't affect it at all.



The only thing that does seem to have a large beneficial effect is to raise the top panel up more (compare this to previous image - this one looks even better in the flesh):




But still not ideal. One solution would be to raise the top panel up even more, but the picture above shows the top panel already higher than ideal. I only have limited space in the bottom of the Dragon and would prefer the total height of the light box to be no more than 23mm.

Before I start investigating (expensive) electroluminescent panels, does anyone have any ideas how this can be made better (ie, give a more even light distribution across the panel)?

 

Oh wow cool !!

I had a Dragon in blue haha I crammed in a huge EATX board and dual P3 Xeons

I recently wanted to buy the Alienware version of it and mod it, now I can just watch you

Little tip though man for the future..

When you want all of the components off of a GPU simply stand it on some aluminium foil balls (make some by screwing it up) and then put it in the oven. Turn the heat up to 210c and let time and gravity do the rest lmao. Turn over, repeat.. The components will literally fall off leaving you with a nice clean PCB

I used the above method when I needed some spares off of an old 8800 Ultra (needed a couple of caps that are soldered underneath).

 

Ah no way - that's a cool tip thanks!
Bummer is, I won't be using it anymore, but more on that later

This build is proving to be tricky as the Dragons weren't really made for cramming loads of WC gear in, so well done for the EATX / dual Xeons!

Am trying to up the pace now - have pretty much all the materials / components I need, just need free time now

 

I had to cut a large chunk out of the DVD bays to get the board in haha.

I'm watching this with interest.. Do you still have the door for it or was that lost?

 

I think Dragon cases are the best, I used to have one many moons ago with dual PSU's

Shame I got rid of it, really miss it now

 

Well, I have some work related experience in this field and my first impression was that with the current setup you'll most likely not be able to get it fully uniform, but there might be some tricks to get it better.

(appologies for the following wall-of-text)

What you are basically trying to achieve is a mixing chamber behind the transluscent plate to get an even distribution. This means that you want to get as many reflections inside that little box as possible. Now this might sound counter intuitive, but using a highly reflective surface (like what you have now it seems) is actually not what you are looking for as it will have a very strong and directional reflection, and will bounce most of the light straight out, resulting in that brightly lit area just along the edge.

A fully white interior surface will act as an internal diffuser and will most likely result in a more even disturbution. You will still get a higher brightness on the edges, but it should be atleast a bit more diffuse. You can easily try this by sliding in a few pieces of white paper on the bottom of the box to see if this has any effect.

The second thing is that your mixing chamber seems to be a bit too shallow. In short, light needs room to mix. You can imagine that with each internal reflection, some of the light will either be absorbed or transmitted through the transluscent panel. If you have a shallow box, the ray's path will be very short between each reflection and you already will 'lose' a lot of light in the first few centimeters and as a result it will never reach the middle.

Now you could ask yourself, if light boxes need to be big, then why are TV's and flatscreens so thin nowadays. Well, simply because they use a different optical concept In TV's they also use a side lit concept, but its mostly coupled into the sides of panel itself (instead of under the panel) and you will get total internal reflection due to the material properties. They then use a very fine (laser made), pattern on the panel itself to couple the light out of the panel. This system however requires quite indepth knowledge of optical design and fabrication methods...

So concluding, my suggestions would be:
- Paint the inside of the box white (but first try it with a piece of paper)
- Make the box deeper (if the case/space will allow it of course)

I'm affraid though that you will never get a perfectly uniform surface...

Hope this helps!

 

great information Azariel, i got the same kind of problem in my box and will definetly try the paper, cause i dont have more space to expand the box

 

Well I've removed the whole of the front inserts including DVD / floppy cages - still need more room!!
Yeah I've got it - there should be some pics of the window being cut out earlier in the thread. Actually might have been good to cut a smaller window but I'll work around that.

Always some on eBay ;-)

Azariel, thanks very much for the helpful info. Afraid I didn't mention that I'd tried substituting white for mirrored acrylic (see the penultimate photo above) and it did make a slight improvement. So I'd agree - white acrylic base and more height seems to be the way to go. +rep, cheers.

I'll stay away from the EL panels - too expensive and one thing I like about this project is working around certain limitations.

Tomorrow I'll try and do another test - two layers of acrylic above the LEDs separated by a space of approx 10mm - I'm hoping that having two panels separated from each other will help with the spread of light, so long as it remains bright enough...

 

So just to be on the same page, you already tried replacing the underside of the box with a white acrylic instead of the highly reflective one we see on this image?



What did the white acrylic look like? I'm not sure I've ever seen a matt white acrylic as plates usually tend to have have a very smooth (almost polished) surface (and as such are still rather reflective). If this is/was indeed the case, I would look for a matte white surface to put at the bottom of the case causing a difuse reflection instead of a specular one. Also, it goes without saying that the plate at the bottom should also be an opaque plate, not a transluscent one as that will just eat the light...

Anyway, doubling the plates might help a bit, but I'm affraid not that much as the only thing you will do is get it slightly further away from the rim (but not too much I think) and still not get enough light in the middle...

What you could also try to do is make a makeshift parabolic reflector to put under the LEDs to direct the light more towards the center...however, with such a high gloss reflection, you will most likely also see the individual LEDs better.....(not to mention that bending a parabolic reflector by hand is not something easily done )

 

Dont know if this will help you, but I just made a light box for my PC and this is the list of layers I used:

Frame made of black 5 mm acrylic. There is no light bleed from this at all.
1. Mirror acrylic at the bottom
2. LED strip attached to the frame, pointing into the box
3. 6 mm piece of clear acrylic block, scored with horizontal and vertical lines. Maybe one line every 3 mm.
4. All covered with a 3 mm white acrylic sheet.

Works very well, but yes, unless you cover the edges you can see that there is spot lights where the LED's are. I rather not close it with a frame on top as I would need to change out LED's and stuff as and when needed, secondly, I dont have the space to add anymore to the height of the box as its too close to the motherboard already and I have issues connecting the 8 pin. So no more height.

And this is how it looks:

 

Yes that's right, although I only had translucent arcylic and didn't think to use opaque white - might place another order for some of that soon...

The acrylic has a high-gloss finish. It's interesting you said about the reflectors - I saw that little shavings of acrylic on the middle of the base panel lit up quite brightly as they reflected light produced from the edges but wasn't sure how this could be turned into a useful effect. Perhaps if I had some small pyramidal-shaped pieces of clear acrylic / glass I could arrange them scattered across the base to diffract light that way...

Quite possibly. My idea at the moment though (didn't manage to test it today) is to place many upwards-facing strips in parallel lengthways along the panel, with the two panels one above each other - there would still be some non-uniformity of the light distribution but but this would be reduced by the two panels above and if the strips were arranged neatly this could be made into more of a deliberate effect.

One final thing is if I can get hold of one of those diffusers used around fluorescent ceiling lights in offices then I can use that as a primary layer with opal acrylic on top --> quick search revealed these opal diffuser clear diffuser - what do people think? I might order one of each tonight

Hey thanks for sharing that - so yours is quite similar to the one I tried with the scored acrylic. I tried covering up the edges a little on the top to see if I could mask the bright bits on the sides but turned out I'd have to use pretty wide borders for it to be of any use and I don't want to do that.

On another note, these little boys finally turned up today - to be used elsewhere in the build



So, try the ceiling diffusers? [Edit - minimum order quantity is 4 - will see if they're willing to supply one of each]

 

I don't really like the source-marks idea with the saw because the score marks aren't straight. If I would do this I will use a plank and saw parallel to this.

It's very cool to see that people also use old cases to built a case mod!

 

Well, my work related experience is actually from the luminaire/fixture business Anyway, what you also have to keep in mind here is that the luminaires these are often used for (using fluorescent lamps) are often still quite deep. I would say depending on lamp type (T8, T16 etc) and optic they are often between 6 and 10 cm deep.

Next to that, the basic idea behind the opal cover is to just make the light nice and diffuse, whereas the prismatic plate is already a bit more pointed towards creating the right beam needed for lighting the space in a more efficient way.

Also here the previous comment comes back to mind. The optics work for fluorescent because the lamps are placed directly above the panel and for such a square panel, multiple lamps are used to get that uniform look.

So this is actually a nice bridge to your other idea, using parallel lines of LED strips on the bottom, shining up. Using that setup, it will most likely be easier to get a uniform surface of light and using diffusers will help with making it more uniform. However, also here the depth plays a big role.

From memory, in the signage business (where they make these letters for facades which light up) they use the rule that the height of the box has to be equal to the width of the panel you are trying to light. So for example if you would try to light the letter "i" with one strip of LEDs, the depth would have to be the same as the width of the letter i. So for you this would translate to the fact that the height of the box would have to be similar to the distance between your LED strips to avoid getting bright lines of light.

Keep in mind that these are just guidelines

 

Glad you like the project subway I see your point about being neat but the score marks wouldn't have been visible at all and in any case that 'prototype' isn't going to happen. See below for more!

I think we're singing from the same hymnsheet my friend, read on

Firstly, Azariel's suggestion for using paper on the base. This would work if only the LEDs didn't have to be so close to the base - I have a little room for manoeuvre but the priority here is allowing for more space *above* the LEDs.



LEDs have to be high up to project well enough (see pic below). At this height the top would have to be very close to the LEDs which would create points of light anyway.



Deep breath...

Here is the setup for the "upwards-facing strips close together" method:



The paper is just there to see if it will help with diffusion - it didn't so I removed it, and the end result?

Success!!



The upwards-facing LEDs are bright and all it needs is for there to be lots of them close together to stop the brightness from tailing-off around each one (obviously this is just a test and I'll cut more strips to cover the entire width of the box). The picture above is taken with the top at double height (30mm), as this was the lowest it could be to produce a great effect. This is still within acceptable limits, just means that the side of the box will probably be visible through the window.

I've calculated I have enough LED strip left over to make this at the current spacing (5mm gap between each strip) so next step will be to cut the strips and join together into a grid.

Further thoughts...

I'll look into getting a diffuser - purely for the purpose of being able to make the box height lower, as we already have a way to create an even spread of light. A further improvement could be simply putting the strips right next to each other with no gap, all the way from edge-to edge.

Would this (probably 7.5 metre total length of 60x 5050 LED light-strip) be ok to run off a 12V lead from the PSU? When doing these tests we found the brightness was a lot greater using shorter lengths of strip... No bother, I could always use 2x 12V leads to power the box, each powering half the LEDs.

Exciting!

 

This is what I'm talkin' about:



Just waiting for connectors then will set it all up. The strips don't cover the full length of the box due to only being able to cut the strips at certain intervals. However, the top of the box will be partly covered by the radiator and fans at the front of the case and so I don't need them to stretch all the way along.

I want to control the on/off and brightness via software. The product info for the LED strip states a current draw of 6A for the reel (if I'm reading it correctly) and the PowerAdjust2 is supposed to handle maximum 14A.

Questions:

1) Will the PA2 allow me to power the light panel and adjust brightness using the Aquasuite software?

If not...
2) Will I have to power the LEDs directly from the PSU?

 

So I cut and mounted the LED strips onto the mirrored acrylic:



This one sticks out to make sure this little corner is well-lit:



My soldering station. Here you can see the original connector (red and black wires) and my modded one (white wires), with one already attached to the panel.



Panel being tested. At the far end you can see I've directly soldered the wires onto the little terminals - this is to allow them to go further towards the end than they would have been able to if I'd used the connectors.



This is it placed in the case, with the top sheet of plexi mounted on 20mm high supports - a perfectly uniform spread of light :-D (doesn't matter that it's darker towards the front of the case, I've got plans for that)



Case with side panel on:



What do you think?!

The paint job is obviously unfinished (a mix of white primer and red top coat at the moment) - the paint will now be the last part of the project to be completed.

Next steps: glue the light box then start working on the front of the case

 

Not bad. That solution is easy and looks really good

 

I dabbled with a lightbox a while back when my mate asked me to "do something cool" for the top of his case.

It ended up a bit of a mess as the pic shows, the light didn't diffuse as I expected so I got bored & gave up . I think he uses it though.....don't know why.

Pic :-



I just used a bit of scrap perspex, found an image somewhere & then used the cnc to engrave it.

I think if I had known how to diffuse the light better it would have been ok. Reading this thread has made me want to try again.....maybe with something a bit more tasteful this time lol.

 

Well the best way to diffuse light is how the LCD panels are made take one apart.