Case Mod - In Progress CM Cosmos II - The Eagle Has Landed (I like that saying).

The COSMOS II from:
this case is now available, in many places, like... my house, for example.


After some email correspondence with a rep from CM, they decided that one of my ideas had merit enough to continue forward.

I researched the case as much as I could, it is made from mostly aluminum but the only one I had seen was black, and the one at MaximumPC Magazine, for their Dream Machine, was custom painted hot-rod yellow.

But what to do with this amazing piece of work?

As you may know by looking at my other mods, I'm heavily influenced by architecture.
My Inspiration this time was the Chrysler Building in New York, covered in iconic symbols, the "gargoyle" eagles in particular.



My idea was fairly simple in scope to start with. It honestly was only half-formed.



Doing an Art Deco Themed Eagle wings along the sides of the case was really all I had to go on.
I did have one trick I wanted to flip though, under each wing shelf I wanted to run a series of lights that would shine downward on to the next wing piece. If that drawing makes sense.

Well, in reality, the case was considerably larger that what I had originally thought. And the doors are a fair amount thicker as well. Which will come in very handy. I want to come up with a nifty plan to use one light inside of the case to light up the wings on the outside.

 

Arrival on Dec. the 28th.

Shipped up from So. Cal. in this. Boy was it heavy. The UPS delivery guy was really nice about it when he brought it in though.



After cutting away all the tape and plastic wrapping. I realized it was packed very well.



I had been sent an engineering sample, that happened to be sliver, hooray!



It's beautiful, and silver, and BIG. Boy it's BIG!!!!

And pretty heavy as well.

It's got a nice set of controls on a pad up top, and a complete interface bay for all your plug in needs.
I'll be getting rid of that. Probably just relocating it though, not omitting it completely.




The sliding door is a nice touch too. Two neodymium magnets hold the door in place and it's set up on a friction gear so it doesn't bang down when you break the magnet contact.





The doors on this are super slick and open very easily, they pop right off to get them out of the way for interior access.



The door skins themselves are firmly attached with double-sided adhesive tape. Not too bad to take apart though.




A great little piece of proprietary controls is located under the head of this unit. Hooked to a mini ribbon cable is the touch pad.



While removing the touch pad, it was pretty well secured with double-stick adhesive tape. And my "gentle" prodding and prying became more than it could handle and I broke it. OOPS! Okay that needs replaced. or modded, or something.



The handles, and runners (legs, feet, whatever you call them), are solid metal, very good construction, and well attached to the cage. They are so nice, I might even keep them.



And the cage in it's most skeletal form. I'm almost sure I'm going to leave it completely alone.




Thanks for looking!


Dan

 

Going off your Aztech mod, I'm subbed already.

 

Ahh the silver version..looking great
Good luck modding this beauty

 

My favorite case atm, you're such a lucky guy to own it and mod it! The theme is also great, so let's mod this sweet case! Subbed of coure!

 

Thanks guys. I hope not only do this case justice, but to try and make something as good as AzTtec.

 

A little more clarification on the doors and my lights in them.

The picture below illustrates my intentions pretty well. I want to have light coming in, from the interior of the case, shining right into a place where the whole fiber optic cable is secured. From there the cables will be split apart and routed to their specific locations. All of this cable will be hidden within the door. There will be no wires or lights actually in the doors, so they will still be easily removable.



Each wing section, as I mentioned earlier is going to step outward from the bottom wing section to the top. Under each “shelf” is going to be a series of tiny lights, using the fiber optic cables, to create a very subtle but dramatic effect. Especially, I assume, in lower light environments.

A little close up, the aluminum is going to be either tooled with "rivets" in it or I'll find some way to do it with little silver dots of glue or something.



A few more ideas flowed out regarding the overall design of the case. I may do even more drawings, it can’t hurt to get as much out as possible. I am really liking the wing design on the bottom drawing, it’s much more sleek and stylish. The other ones I’ve illustrated previously seemed too angular. I am still going more for a bird style in the case. I know the drawings look a bit more like the newer Cylon from Battlestar Galactica (which would’ve also been kinda neat to make), but that won’t be my intent.



I think a bit more like this face. hopefully it will all translate into formed metal.



Looking at a few more in process pics, while I wait for the aluminum sheet and fiber optic cables to arrive. I glued a bit of styrofoam on. It's pretty solid stuff and should make a great backing for the aluminum.





And then I get in there and get messy, and scratchy, man that stuff is pretty coarse when removed from the blocks and it piles up like unmelting snow.







I might put the control panel back in here somewhere. It seems a likely place, but I'm not worried about it's placement...yet.

Thanks for looking!

 

Dang bro, didn't know you were on another mod. Didn't see it in our forums. (hint hint)

 

Haha, okay I do get the hint. It's so difficult to cull it down though.

As of right now; I post here, and M-I, and CM forums.

Then - Cooler Master has also asked me to do a Blog of this build as well. I have been told I'm the first Modder to ever get the honor of being on their corporate blog site. So that's kinda cool.


---

On with the update, I've got something REALLY amazing looking happening with the case. I just have to get it sorted out first and then I'll start posting it. I have been able to tool the aluminum sheet to look like it has rivets, and it's looking pretty spectacular.
So stay subbed to this, I won't let you down!

Thanks for looking.


Dan

 

This is looking fantastic will keep an eye on this

 

Well the aluminum has arrived and I have gotten to work!



I've gotten a kind of neat looking plan that involves making smaller square(ish) sections with rivets around each border.



I shaped the beak area a bit more. It looked very weird being so broad. So it will taper quite a bit more.
I also drew lines where I think the wings will start off the front as well.



Then while waiting for the fiber optic cable to arrive. I decided to get working on the aluminum squares.
I cut about 200 of them. I may need as many as 500, but I'm starting with less and working my way towards that.
It's very time consuming work.



I created a modified metal punch by rounding the tip to prevent it from cutting through the material, and pounded a bunch of dents around the edges.



I didn't really like just doing that, I ended up taking a small pastry roller, really just a wooden rod, and I flattened out the dents again.
- It looks really great in person. -
The dents represent rivets, without having the actual rivets. And they stay easier to work with in the long run, as I can layer them over one another with very little effort.




This is a few of them, just laid flat for a quick picture, to view the overall effect.
I also had to file and sand the edges a bit to dull them for handling.



Then my good old trusty MS Optical v1.0 mouse decided to die on me. I think it's just dirt, but I swapped in a temp anyway (one that's really worse but works more consistently). I took it apart for the USB cable, so I could have a tool to hook up a single LED and start testing because the fiber optic cable arrived.



I just used the 5v lead in the USB to pug directly to a LED and light it up. Then I hooked it to the end of the fiber optic cable to play around. I really don't think it's going to be enough light using the micro strands that I purchased. They are .5 mm in width. And despite my best efforts it's just not enough light.



Thankfully, the company I bought them from also provided me with a sample pack of other width strands. They had a 2mm strand that is a lot harder to work with but ultimately should provide exactly the type of illumination effect I'm going for.

Below is the LED, it's very effective, but a tad on the bright side. And the worst part of it to me is that I'd have to wire up the doors. Something I didn't want to do. I wanted to light it without having to use power going to the doors.



Now this looks a bit better. I used a pretty short piece of the 2mm to show the lighting effect, that's why you can see it above. But I think 10 or so of these lights on every wing shelf will look pretty dramatic without overpowering it. Which is also what the LEDs would end up doing, I think.




Thanks for looking!

 

Cant wait to see 1 of the parts finished with aluminum plates i really love the style u giving to the case

 

Optic cable? Interesting.

 

I've gotten the fantastic human named Paul from to donate my much needed 2mm strand of fiber optics.
It's going to work out wonderfully for the project and I thank him immensely for his participation.
The store has pretty much what you need in the way of fiber optics (of course), and even things I had never seen before, like side firing fiber optic strands.
A great idea for a computer mod using that material has GOT to be in someone's near future, so I recommend you click the above link and go check that stuff out. There's even an embedded video of it's testing and usage.

Here's what he sent me.



And here is another cheap online purchase I made, I wanted the clustered LED panels from those flashlights and they put out a bunch of light.





I'll probably keep the housings around in case I need them for something, they are all aluminum and I hate to throw stuff away. (I might even use the switches out of the back of them in this very project)




I started making some of the aluminum covering the top piece. Arguably, the easiest part first. It still took several days to complete.



Some of it was pretty tough to clamp during gluing. I do love Gorilla Glue and I will continue to use it. But the "WHITE" version is not as effective, I've found. It works fine for porous materials, but the stuff I'm working with is anything but that.

The white Gorilla Glue has failed on me several times in the process so I've gone back to the brown version, and it's working as intended. It takes longer to set and cure, but it has not failed and forced me to re-glue on anything I've ever used it on.


For the final product, it's turning out pretty nice I think.



I tried just sanding and polishing it, I got it quite shiny and even used some metal polish compound. It looked pretty spectacular. But, then I got fingerprints all over it. It looked terrible and was never able to hold that shine for long, so I rethought my approach and have decided to make it a matte base, I have a little brass wire brush that attaches to my Dremel.



The textured look really grabs light from all kinds of directions and looks a lot better in my opinion, as well as being a much more resilient surface in general.









I got some car body filler and used it to patch the holes on the top of the case where the handles used to come out of.



And on the next installment I'll be building the wings. Maybe out of MORE FOAM (like the foam core poster board, below).



Thanks for looking!

 

So awesome! This is really coming together nicely!!

 

Oh am I excited about this & see the star troll has been busy again .
Absolutely 5 stars + rep

Anyone who likes modding should be giving this 5 stars without a doubt, maybe the star system needs replacing & a rating system that automatically goes from a cold blue star up to a glowing white hot twinkling star from the hits & replies the more you get the more it morphs from a cold star to a scorching twinkling star .

I know the star rating has 1 to 5 but when I don't consider a project worth giving 5 star I don't leave stars simple.

I really hope moderaters find the bleep or bleeps & bann them for carry on doing this on awesome projects, it really is irritating me anyone who has seen this dudes work will know he does incredibly amazing stuff, star rant done .

 

Looking forward to this yourney !
KUTGW!

 

So sub'd to this. Congrats on being the first modder to make it onto the CM blog, after your Aztec mod i have no doubt this will be one epic build

 

I like the concept, but do this for the faceplate.
If you do the surfaces in MDF and bog, it will be easier to clad in metal. The foam is to soft in my opinion.

-Also you have to play Hawkwind while you work!

 

Not having a mini anvil, it's going to be tough.

But I have discovered with a bit of scrap foam that I can use it as substrate and cover it in the Bondo mixture. That stuff can melt some types of foam, but it bonds really well to this one and doesn't melt it at all. So I'll have a hard surface to work over.

That area is going to get done near to last, as I will have had more experience working with the metal by then. Thanks for the suggestion, I'm going to bookmark that site and possibly use the tips in there.