Amarth Dûr - on hold as of 6/18/04 - waiting for $$$ n stuff

I've been thinking about/planning a Lord of the Rings themed case for almost a year now, and I finally have the case to do it with. I just bought a Kingwin KT-436BK. Very nice case, but it needs some tweaking

The first minor mod is to cut out the stamped fan grilles covering the exhaust of the pair of rear fans, and replace them with normal wire grilles (coincidentally, the pair i took off the side mounted fan to run my watercooling tubes inside). -DONE

the meat of the mods will be:

Side window, cut in the shape of a Nazgul (ring wraith, dark rider, whatever you want to call them) using that as a template with a few minor changes from here except that i'll be leaving the window round. (my initial design was this but I had a friend offer to draw somethign better, and I like what she came up with). The window should take up most of the side of the case, but i have a handle at the back to work around, as well as the drive cages at the front. I'd like to use frosted plexiglass/lexan for the window, and backlight it with an LCD projection (thanks ZapWizard, it may not have worked for your radioactive fan but the idea is a great one) of the moon. (either printed in color or printed in b&w with 2 white and 1 yellow LED, i'll have to experiment). Ideally i'd also like to have a circular strip of acetate that moves across the image of the moon, with whispy clouds printed on it. I have some rough sketches for the idea but haven't put them online yet.

Second major mod will be a window in the top (hopefully large enough to remove the top fan) in the shape of Bilbo/Frodo's sword, Sting. now if you remember, Sting glowed blue whenever orcs were around, so i should be able to duplicate that effect one of 3 ways. With frosted plexi and 1) a mix of blue and white LEDs; 2) a pair of blue cold cathodes; or 3) a pair of UV cold cathodes(which i happen to have already) and some form of blue UV reactive paint that's translucent (or really thinly applied). I think the third might give the best effects, but again i'll probably have to experiment. I'll see if i can't add a throbber circuit to control the lighs on this. Canceled, fangrill on top too wide

other minor things include elvish script written on the case (i'll have to figure out how to do that), a gold ring around the power button (which is already gold, i might change that). replacing the (orange) hdd activity light with another color (possibly, not sure on this one). possibly replacing the led in my (already painted black) cd-rw, but it's SMT and 2 color, i doubt i'd be able to find blue/white or blue/orange) and replacing the bezel with an aluminum one(or just touching up the paint I have on there (repainted)). finishing painting my keyboard (possibly using gold lettering on the keys, maybe even in elvish, but i'm still pondering that). pondered. did. raging success

sleeving the power supply cables, painting the psu black (sleeving mostly done, psu black), maybe adding a baybus. Possibly moving the watercooling to the inside of the case (new reservoir and a smaller radiator required, as well as much shortening of the tubing). possibly painting the casing to my monitor black and changing the power led to somethign other than green (haven't even looked to see if it's normal 3 or 5mm or if it's SMT too).

other ideas as they come to me. most of these mods depend on free time and money, and of course, i need to procure a real dremmel tool (not the cheasy 'as seen on tv' rechargible piece of crap that broke after cutting a window in to an old hard drive, it's now permanently got the cutting disk mandrel in it and doesn't hold a charge for too long). some of my previous mods (Admittedly crappy compared to most of what i've seen around here) can be seen on my website

suggestions are welcome, critiques will be taken with appropriate ammounts of salt. and if anyone has ideas how to best go about doing some of the stuff listed above, by all means, tell me. (obviously) i'm a new member but i've been reading the mod logs on and off for the past few weeks, and i'm hoping to get some good information as I go about this project.



-PsychoI3oy

 

sounds like like a good project. It should gives uss some more meat (picturess) BTW: love the nazgul.

 

Wahoo, LOTR is awesome

Check out borumas's mod for ideas and I'm sure he would be glad to offer his advice.

 

yeah, I saw that just today surfing around here. very schweet etching. I doubt i'll be able to do anything like that. however, i'm still in the planning stages so who knows. For the most part, I want the case to stay pretty clean looking, I really like the sharp lines and sheer rectangularness (is that a word?) of it as it is. I just want to do a few things to it to make it look even better.


and, as requested, more pictures:

A better shot of my cd-rw, i still need to take it apart and paint that volume button. The color is matched better in real life (black is black right?) but for reference, it's Rust-Oleum black 'hammered finish' paint. Same as on the keyboard. I used rust-oleum plastic primer before the real paint.


These are the stamped grills on the back for the pair of exhaust fans. definitely gotta do something about that for better airflow.


fortunately, I don't have to worry about the fan on top lacking airflow, as this will be where the top window is:


The power supply (antec 400w, very nice ) Definitely needs to be black. probably not hammered though, i'mma see if i can sand it a lot in one direction to match the brushed aluminum look of the case then paint it semigloss black.



Now for the hard part. One of the reasons i got this case is that it has a pair of 80mm fans in front, behind a filter, pointing right at the hdd cage. My hard drive likes this new situation very much (<24c most of the time) but the square holes on the front don't look like they allow much airflow. I'll have to figure out a way to cut both the plexi bezel and the aluminum plate behind it for better airflow, but still have the case look good. any suggestions would be helpful on this one:



and just for kicks and grins, my watercooling setup (completely homebrew, gemini high flow waterblock, viaaqua pump, tupperware resivoir, and heater core for a 91 ford escort (my car's broke so i ordered 2) total cost $100 counting the gallon of distilled water and tubing/fittings from home depot. freebie sample on the zerex super racing coolant which is why the tubes are pinkish):


before now i was only concerned about mods for function over looks, but after browsing these forums i can't help but want to make something that looks Damn Cool(tm)

 

Sounds cool, it will be nice to see another project with that theme (I'm suprised there are not more out there already), and I like that window design you have planned. I had to cutoff the sword on my window as it looked to much like the guy had a big boner, LOL, that was how the pic looked but I guess it just didn't translate to well being a cutout.

 

yeah, i was pretty suprized when i started looking last year for other mods that nobody had anything. i mean, they're geek books, geek movies, and we're a bunch of comptuer geeks, come on

yeah, i gotta give mad props to my friend for coming up with that design, the original i had would have been rather complicated and her design is just more 'alive', i guess.

 

OK, here's my idea for the LED projector:

the projector housing is tan, the film with clouds on it is green, spools and motor for the film are black:

from the top:


from the front:



(note my Gimp-foo is weak today and these are .png images, let me know if you can't see them, i know IE has had problems with png's in the past...)

ideally I need to find a small DC motor that spins slowly (or has a gearbox for really slow spinning). My first thought was the little motors you can buy to make christmas ornaments spin around, but then I remembered when my mom was playing with some of them that when they encounter any resistance, they reverse. So that's probably not a great idea. The other thought I have is how to get a loop of acetate (or similar clear material) to go around without having a seam in it that'll show up on the projection. Still pondering that one...

 

another concept picture: the moon (as projected) behind our friend the nazgul:



and the moon there was the first big one i could find quickly with google image search. i would obviously have the whole moon image in the projector.

 

Looks cool, don't know how you would fit all that in the case though, good luck, I wound up putting some LED's behind the Nazgul to give it the effect of the moonlight shining down on him on my project. Hope you can pull that off, it would be a very cool effect if you can.

 

ok, i found this calculator online (google is your friend, when you know what to look for) and played with the numbers till i figured out the focal length lens i'd need to go from the back of the case (at 2 inches) to the front of the case (at ~9 inches) and found that such a lens is rather improbable. i went looking around at the lenses at American Science and Surplus and found that they actually had some projection lens sets. so with the focal lengths and barrel diameters they had there, i used the 'Image size' calculator (From the first link above) to figure out how far back i'd have to have certain size originals to get a ~9 inch projection. i found that at ~1 ft, a 7/8" original through a 1inch focal lengh lens turns out to be about 8 and a half inches. the easy way to get an image projected a foot inside my case is to use a mirror, so i added one of those to my cart, too.

then i went to the tools section and found what they called a decent variable speed rotary tool (8,000-30,000 rpm) with a flexi shaft attachment for $30 (the cheapest dremel set with the flexi shaft is closer to $80 at home depot). so i threw that in the cart.

total damages:
1 92283 MINI GRINDER EACH $29.95 $29.95
1 68989 PROJ. LENS, 3/4"-1" F:1.4 EACH $2.75 $2.75
1 22770 RECT. B.S. MIRROR EACH $1.75 $1.75

with shipping for about $41US. should be here in a week or so (coming from illinois to colorado).

anywho, i've looked through there after placing the order and found a 12v DC 21rpm motor that's rather small and would work perfectly for my cloud idea, as well as 2500mcd 3.5v 5mm blue and white LEDs. I also found 1oz tubes of blue glow in the dark (and more importantly, blacklight responsive) paint for about $10 (a bit expensive) that i may get to use on my top window with the UV ccfl's i already have. (i figure diluting the paint with water and creating a wash over the back of a frosted plexi window should make for an interesting effect. i might also etch the designs on sting into the plexi, taking an idea from borumas' LOTR mod)

on that note, does anyone know if ccfl's work with the 'throbber' circuits? i haven't really looked into it but i'd think that the inverters for the tubes might not like having < 12vDC input. EDIT: nevermind on that question, i found the ccfl throbber circuit and will be building one sometime

 

i had an idea today, and did some GIMPing and printing to see how it'd look.

on the blank drive covers, cut out the outlines of different swords in LOTR. the 5.25 drives (3 blanks, though i might put in a baybus later) will be gandalf's, aragorn's, and the witchking (head nazgul dude)'s swords (i forget their names at the moment, and don't have my copy of LOTR handy...)

the 3.5 drive bays might have some of the smaller swords on them, but the only small one i can think of is sting, and that'll be the top window so i dunno.

here's a pic for reference (using gandalf's sword, which is named something like glamdring):

 

"named something like glamdring"?

you're not sure of the name? you're not much of a lotr fanatic. but anyways, it is called glamdring (aka Foe-Hammer )





feeling a little loopy

 

like i said, i didn't have the book handy and i wasn't 100% sure of the spelling

 

I true LOTR fan has memorized it! Like me!






P.S. I'm joking!

 

LOL, yeah Glamdring, Foe Hammer, the Ork and Goblin's bain.
Sounds like a cool idea to use the swords, you can just make up a few small swords after all the other Hobbits did have small swords that they got from the Barrow Downs that were Elf blades if memory serves me correctly.

 

lotr totally rules read the whole piece the first time when i was ten since then i read it like 10 times, 3 or 4 of them was the english version and i think thats the best one. I read other fantasy too, but lotr is special the wheel of time isn't that bad either. Anyone who doesn't like lotr i give a look somwhat like this: love them books anyway

 

your memory serves you correctly

 

noooo not the second page...

ok, my stuff from sciplus.com should be here friday so maybe this weekend i'll have a proof of concept for the projector. and dremmly goodness

for now, i have finally downloaded and installed sketchup, and after watching a handfull of the videos, I created a basic layout of my case. well, the box and the stuff on the front pannel, at least. the stuff on the front panel isn't 3d yet, but i'm getting there.

here:


I'll be messing with that more tomorrow. it's only accurate to within a couple of mm, cause i had to eyeball a few things. and yes, that is a blue tile pattern on the front. it looks like my square hole stamped fan grills (see the link in the top of the thread for actual pictures of the case and front fan grill).

on another note, after some basic (paper) sketching, i'm not sure if i'll be able to do the cutout in the top and have it look good. the top fan vent may be too wide for me to fit a good cutout of sting around, but i haven't played with any really scale images yet so I dunno.

 

quick update:

the stuff from sciplus.com was supposed to arrive friday but i came home to a UPS tag on the door. i called them and they said to sign the back with a note to have the delivery person take it to the appartment office. ok, so i'll have the dremmel and optics monday. I should be able to assemble something quickly for a proof of concept for the projector after work monday.

on another note, i lapped the stock heatsink on my geforce4mx and lapped the processor (big dent in the middle, no wonder i'm getting funky graphics stuff) and added a fan from an old socket7 cooler to the stock heatsink. hopefully things will be better on that front. eventually i'll throw a block in there for watercooling but it doesn't get THAT hot (but my next gpu probably will by the time i get around to upgrading it).

oh, and i still haven't figured out my problem in sketchup, but you can see the pics of my (unmodded, yet) case in this thread

 

Looking forward to seeing some progress, hurry up, LOL. That looks like a nice case.