Project: Delta Force [Updated 30-March *now with extra bright GREEN*]

I originally posted these first 3 posts on another much smaller forum, but I like it here better.


Originally posted on 7:32 pm Friday, Jan 28
My wife's stepdad got his tax check and handed over $1400 to me to build him "The best gaming computer you can get with this, minus a little for yourself". He plays only one game in the seven years I've known him.

Delta Force

Seeing him hunched over my Mother-In-Law's 800mhz, spyware riddled, win2000 compaq with a 15" monitor, blasting away his buddies on a virtual battlefield. Its painful, especially the way the hard drive just stutter-grinds with any disk activity. I think the TNT2 is being grossly tasked, even for such an old game.

Turns out, there's a new expansion out with much better graphics, and the ability to net play with 128 or 150 players simultaneously. The old mans eyes light up when he tries to explain it to me.

I'm not a big fan of the online games, but I can really understand how it might feel to someone so invested in the community, that he meets up with, and shoots, the same regular players evening after evening. He wants a new system with all-new everything, including a 21" monitor. Something that will smoke in the game, and provide bragging rights with his local buddy that he has serious system envy for. (all I know is he has had a P4 for at least 2 years, I guess that would put it in the 1.4ghz to 2.4ghz range).

Being the nice guy I am, I decide that not only am I going to build the best system I can (and not even worry about a fee), but I'm going to blow him away with a custom creation designed just for him. I've had a fair amount of experience modding stuff (you can see some of my other creations at http://www.unixmonkey.net)

So begins; :ROJECT: DELTA FORCE::

I have a case lying around, that I got a long time ago, and I haven't used in years. Its an ugly case, but is pretty light, and has plenty of room for a mid-tower. Here's the Before Picture.


Stepping back and looking at this, I can only think that that green piece is hideous. I figure I could get rid of it, or I could make the best of its unique styling. I think I'm going to pop it off, bondo the floppy hole closed, and wrap some Camoflauge cloth (I'll probably cut up one of my old Army jackets) around it and put it back in place.

Of course, I'm getting a black monitor, black keyboard, black speakers, and a black blue mouse; so I'm going to paint the case black as well. I mean, I've got to paint it anyway after cutting and sanding and stuff...

Some drawer handles at the top might make it look a little more military, and provide a decent way for him to drag his computer to the aformentioned buddy's house, so I'm going to add some of those.

And for the main centerpiece, I have to do a custom, lighted cutout of the Delta Force logo in the side panel.

Here's a little mockup I did in about 10 minutes to illustrate what I'm doing, and to give me a better idea of what the final project will look like:


I don't know if this is the "new" expansion he's talking about, but all the delta force games have the same logo, and this is the best picture I could find online, so I prepped it to help me make a template, and also help me visualize how the pieces will be cut.


Here it is after meticulously erasing all the background.


And here it is after getting rid of all extraneous information, and leaving appropriate material for the cut. I'm not going to be glueing "floating" pieces on my plexi if I can avoid it.


and here is an alternate, that I decided against.


Since I made my choice, I resized it to the appropriate size for the side panel, and changed the colors to black on white. I then taped the logo to the panel, and started cutting out the smaller and more intricate stuff, where I would start cutting first. I used a straightedge and an xacto knife, so even if I smudge the pencil, I should still be able to work.

Here's a shot of the work-in-progress of cutting and pencil marking the sections to be removed.


Here's a closeup, so you can get a better idea of what I'm doing here:


More to come. This is a high-speed mod, and I hope to finish by next weekend. Wish me luck.

 

Originally posted on 7:27 pm Sunday, Jan 30
I finished tracing my template friday, here is what i looked like when I finished.


That night we stopped by my mother-in-law's place, and my wife's stepdad was there with his buddy, who brought over his P4 system to play some of the new Delta Force game. So I watched over his shoulder for awhile, and it really does look like a lot more fun than the older one he has played for years. It looks like someone took the far cry engine, and removed about half the foilage, and turned down the detail a bit, but while the graphics are a lot better now, they take backseat to the gameplay. There are choppers and tanks and boats and motorbikes, a plethora of weapons and some really neat online gamplay elements.

I forgot to mention last update, but I'm building this case in secret, for a suprise a-la Extreme Makeover: Computer edition. I know its just going to blow his socks off. But since he doesn't know I'm doing this, I've got to do it as fast as possible, so it doesn't seem like I'm taking forever putting his parts together, which are due to arrive late this week.

Yesterday, I cleaned out my storage closet and tried to get eveything needed to do this mod. I found my old army bag and pulled out a hot weather jacket (thinner material), and some various spray-paints, and of course, my dremel, safety gloves and goggles. I set up a work table on the back porch of my apartment and clamped my workpiece to a milk crate.

This is good for a few reasons. I can cut my piece up without worrying about cutting through to table surface, and it will provide support to the back of the piece, so I won't bend or warp the piece. It worked out quite well. Its around 30 degrees here and was snowing half the time I was outside, but I have overhead cover keeping me dry.

About 2 hours and 15 or so cutoff wheels I had a rough cut-out. The last 15 minutes or so it was so dark that I could only see when cutting because of the flying sparks, and my back porch light was burned out, but it turned out okay. As long as I'm still inside the lines, I can smooth it out later.


Hindsight being 20-20, I realize now that I should have just cut out the middle pieces, the blade and the handle, and left the triangular pieces (7, 9 & 10) in place for extra support while I manually file and sand down the more intricate stuff.

Oh, well. I just have to be more careful now.

 

Originally posted about 10:00 am Monday, Jan 31
If my pictures disappear, just reload the page. My webhost is experiencing some timeout issues today it seems.

After posting yesterday's update, I kept going and spent several hours with my precision hand file set cleaning up the rough cuts of the center piece. About 2 hours and a very sore thumb later, I put it down and decided to shift gears for a bit.

I took a flathead screwdriver and carefully pulled the clear green thingy off the front of the case. I was pretty proud that I didn't break a single connecting stand that pushes through the plastic.

Here's a shot of them pulled apart.


I took my Army jacket I dug out of storage the day before, and my wife ironed and cut out the back.


I went digging around for my hot glue gun, and found it, but not the gluesticks. So I got out some packing tape, and positioned the piece of cloth around that green thing to where there was a good variation of the camo colors (the back of the jacket didn't have much green on it, mostly black and brown), and taped them down and cut holes for those plastic standoffs to pop through.

Here's what it looked like when I was done wrapping it. I know it isn't completely tight near the bottom curve, but I'll be sure to fix that when I hot-glue it after I find the darn glue sticks.


And to see how it would look on the case front, I pushed it halfway on. I'm sure it will look much better when the front is black.


I also had another idea while putting this together. I've asked my wife to get my mother-in-law to find one one of my wife's stepdad's old Marine Corps name tapes to put approximately where the floppy hole used to be. If she can't get one, I might take a trip down to the alterations place by the local Post Exchange and get one made if it won't take too long.

Its going to be pretty tough to do more cutting and painting now that its the work-week again. Its usually already dark by the time I get home, so working outside is probably out of the question. I did pick up some large cardboard boxes from a local wendy's restaurant to use for backing when I do my spraypainting though. Maybe big enough to set up, and put the piece inside to protect it from wind and flying debris that will screw up a paintjob in no time.

I'll keep you all posted.

 

lol that is complicated

the fabric outside the case actually lookes a lot better than I had imagined. just stretch it a bit very nice cut outs as well.

good luck

 

That's cool, especially if you're taking all that trouble for your father-in-law! Cool! I want an army-style case now.....

 

like the camo ^_^ hope it turns out good

 

Attack of the red X's.

 

This is cool!
Love the cut out! Good job keeping those triangles in check and not bending the crap out of them!

I love surprise jobs! I look forward to the progress and delivery on this machine. If yo uread Blu-V in my sig, you'll see that I enjoy doing the same type of work!



Mod on bro!

 

looking good

one tip though, went using hot glue on fabrics some times the glue comes though or you can see the glue paths. Just a tip

 

IMHO, for the camo cloth, I would use some epoxy resin made for fiberglass, that way it will be nice and hard, maybe even......dare I say it.......SHINY? Plus, It won't really have a chance to come off in the process, or over the years. Just my 2 cents!

 

interresting start. gonne have an eye on it how it turns out.
keep on modding

 

The hot glue won't be used at all on the front, only on the back of the green thing where it is wrapped around. It won't show at all.

Thats a really good idea, but I'm shooting for finishing this by the end of this weekend. That would add at least another day to my already cramped schedule, and I'd be afraid of messing it up (being my first time working with firberglass resin). I'll have to keep that in mind for a future mod, though.

Thanks for the suggestions and kind comments. Now I'm going to get back to more hand-filing.

 

I like the idea of the fabric looks good

 

One thing, you have to videotape his reaction so we can see

 

Looking good!

How many hours have you got to spend on it, are you just doing bits and pieces after work or just weekends etc?

Following this one

 

have fun doing the mod, put some serious effort in it and i'm sure he can appreciate it

 

i think its gona look damn good with a litle bit of paint on the right side, keep on modding

grtz,
Thomaz

 

Damn, I want someone to give me money too, to build them a modded comuter , I got a little idea from that fabrique theme... Even I just ripped off my furries off my computer...
Nice cutting btw

 

Hmmm, apparently I'm the only one that can't see it. The pics must be hosted on a college server.

 

No, but the past 2 days I've had some trouble myself every once in awhile. Try hitting stop, and then reloading the page. This has been working for me.
Maybe its a 'too many connections' or a DNS issue. I hope it gets resolved soon.

These past few days have been pretty rough for this project. On Monday, I took the side panel outside to to cut more precisely the larger, rougher cuts (the ones made last, when it was getting very dark outside). Satisfied with the more precise cuts, I once again took to hand filing with my $5 radio shack precision file kit, and I broke one of the two flat files.

My fingers hurt just thinking about filing now.

Last night, I was finally satisfied enough with my filing, that I broke out some heavy grit sandpaper and used it to clean the edges up some more. That broke way into sanding the whole panel. Not too hard, but enough to prep it for a lighter grit sandpaper. My wife even wanted to get in the action, so she took the opposite panel and started sanding it as well.

Here's a shot of it as of this morning.


It was a slow morning at work (and I bring my project in when I anticipate it being slow), so I decided to break out the bondo.


The instructions say to use thin coats and let it dry for 25 minutes between applications, but I've got these deep holes to fill, so I just slathered it on. The surface dries so fast, that it ended up looking pretty messy by the time I got finished, but it should buff out, right?


Here it is after a few minutes of drying. I guess you can probably tell I'm new to working with bondo.

I decide to play it safe, and let this first coat dry the rest of the afternoon.

So I turned my attention to the camoflauge wrap. Remember how I said I was going to ask about getting the recipients name-tape sewn on. I pulled out one of my old ones, and laid it on to get a feel for how it would look.

It looks pretty horrible in any position in my opinion. The only place it might look semi-decent is on one of the empty drive bays. I decided against it for now, and that freed me up to undo the tape holding the cloth to that clear-green plastic piece, and redo it with hot glue as planned.

It went great, and I totally got all the bunching out of the curvy areas, but unfortunately I ran out of hot glue stick (I only brought one with me), so I'll hold of on showing you all a picture of it until its finished.