Not going for one pure colour scheme I see, you thinking of having any other colours aswel? Or just stickin to the blue and red? It is refreshing to see normal wire fan grills in a way, they are not used any more on hardly any modded cases. Nice to see I supose. All looks great, hopefully see some more progress soon. -cLoWn
Thanks y'all. As for the wire fan grills, I like the look okay...but I still have a tendency to do mods for functionality over looks a lot. And really, plain wire grills are just simple and functional. I don't think there are any grills that provide the air flow quite like the wire grills do. Well, maybe the mesh grills, but I don't care for their look as much. The other reason for keeping the plain grills is that they are plain. With the detail I've already cut into the case, I haven't found any fan grills that really match. I saw some that had a very similar tribal pattern, but I think it would be too much. The wire grills are simple and understated. And they are cheap (pronounced free with most fans). For the colors, ever since I first got my Lian Li and saw that it had a blue power led and a red hdd led, I've wanted a red and blue theme. I also love the way it looks when a red cathode and a blue cathode meet in a case window. That effect just looks awesome. Add to that, that my MS optical wheel mouse has a red led and a red plastic bit on the bottom preventing me from changing that to blue. So red and blue has definitely been my goal. More updates will be coming. I'm deinitely fire back up!
Thanks JohnathanJones and djengiz. OMG OMG another person in Jacksonville. I am alone no longer! hehehe
I've been to Jax when my brother was a squid.... . We also have one of the company's call centers over there.
I live in Mandarin. KrazyIvan, we have quite a few call centers over here. Seems like that's what we have the most of here, well except maybe for squids. I think AOL has one, I think AT&T has one, the company I work for has at least one which is probably one of the largest here, although we have a larger one in Tampa. And I think Homeside Lending might have one too. Call centers are big here, that's why I get scared when they start talking about laying off programmers! Goldberg, thanks bud. I knew that I didn't want a "standard" window, but I couldn't figure out what I wanted. I was at the point of buying a pre-windowed side panel until I could decide when my buddy showed me this design. I was a little intimidated by it at first, but once I started reading some of the dremel guides out there, I figured I could give it a try.
Alright, it's the weekend again. Time for some modding! I'm working on my UFO mod right now. The effect is basically to give the box a nice neon-like ground effect. Just a little added bling. heh Well...to the pics then! Please forgive the quality of these pics. I made the mistake of taking them on the macro mode while on a towel. So the camera got confused. At any rate, here is a shot of a normal 5mm blue led and my modified 5mm blue led: I have to sand down the led so that it would fit in the plexi. I actually did this to 8 leds total. I figure since I only had 47 left after my keyboard mod, they might as well get used. Sanding them also helps to disperse the light better. These leds only have a 15 degree viewing angle normally, I think. Here is the sanded led with the resistor and wires soldered on: Like I said, I did this to 8 of them total. The wires are from an old floppy cable. I needed to keep the wires as small as possible so that they could fit in the grooves I had to cut in the plexi. Speaking of the grooves, here are the leds and wires temporarily in place in the grooves: And here is a closer shot (sorry....really bad shot): There is another piece that goes on top of this one. As it turns out, I just used an extra piece that I had tinted. The tint actually helps to reflect the light a little bit and makes it even brighter. So just how bright are these sanded leds? Too bright for my camera, as you can see in this shot of the led by itself: So, I have them temporarily mounted, lets see how they look from the bottom: From the side: And from the top looking down: As you can see, it puts out quite a glow. Naturally, the effect is much more even in real life, the camera focusses right in on the bright leds. So, now I am making sure the plexi is sanded evenly and then I will glue the pieces of plexi together and solder the switch and power. I think I'm just going to mount it to the bottom with double sided tape.
Thanks ModCanada. Just a little text update since I'm at work. I made some more progress, but I need to take some more pictures this evening (hopefully) and get them posted. What I've done since the last update: 1. The top panel now has the tinted acrylic glued in place. 2. The red cathode has been mounted in top. 3. The UFO mod panel has the two pieces of acrylic glued together. I just need to solder some wires and attach it under the case. 4. I put in my new Lite On CD-RW/DVD Combo drive. I still have to stealth it. Why did I get a new optical drive? See here. Stupid psu mod came back to bite me. Oh well, I need a DVD-Rom drive anyway. So now I'm starting to wind down on this project. There are a few things I want to do, but some of them will have to wait. Things that I will get done soon are: 1. Adding a fake floor to the case to hide some wiring. 2. Stealth the optical drive. 3. Finish up the UFO mod obviously. Now, I asked this in the modding forum also, but does anyone know what the best cleaning product would be to use on this case? I want clean up some fingerprints and stuff on the chasis and make it shine. Also to clean the acrylic....it's not scratched so I don't think I need Novus. Any ideas?
I was a little skeptical at first of how the windows where gonna look but you suprised the hell out of me by making them look awesome. You my friend...have mad dremel skillz.
Thanks a lot Fr0z3n! Well...it took me a little longer than I anticipated to get an update. Been busy with the family going to the fair and halloween carnivals and stuff. But, I am still working dilligently. I'll post some of the latest pics. I plan to take some more tonite when it gets good and dark so I can really capture the light effects...hopefully I will actually take the pictures this time. So...the UFO mod is done...kind of. I'm not completely satisfied with it, so I may re-work it in the future. But for now, it will serve it's purpose. Here is a shot of the plexi assembly taped to the bottom of the case: Ugly huh? Doesn't matter...since you can't see it. I'll get a shot tonite of the glow in the dark. Next up, the switches for both the cathodes and the UFO: Just mounted them in the pci blank so that they wouldn't be visible on the front. In the future, I plan to make use of an old cd-rom drive to do something a little different with the switches. I couldn't remember if I already posted a shot of the 2 rear exhaust fans, so I took a picture while I was there: Figured it wouldn't hurt anything. I also completed stealthing the new Lite On combo drive. I was playing around with the camera some so I thought I would take some pics of the overall case. Beauty shot 1: And some pictures of the lights inside. Here is with the overhead light on: With the light off: And my personal favorite, with the lights off and the night setting on the camera: Ignore the gap up by the front. This pic was taken while I was testing where I wanted to mount the red cathode. Hopefully more tonite...getting close now. The end is in sight.
Thanks for the nice comments y'all. Well, as I said earlier, I wanted to get some good shots of the lights in the dark. So here they are. UFO in the dark: UFO with night time camera effect: Blurry UFO from the front: All of the lights on in the dark: All of the lights on with the night time effect: As soon as I can, I'm gonna try to play with the camera some more to get some nice poses and really show the lighting better if I can. The camera really picks out the leds in the ground effects. Anyway, there is where it stands as of tonite.
