Case Mod - In Progress NZXT Lexa -Experimental Modyssey - June 5 - new CCFL, lighting question

Yeah you're right about that. I haven't cut those yet, but was measuring yesterday with a drive in, and it is very tight. I have the edges at about 3/16 of an inch to get clearance. the 2nd layer will need to be bevelled more as well.

 

Plexi continued

Man, I suck at painting… getting too much orange peeling, and when I sand it its chipping to bare metal in parts… ...but that’s more for later. Back to the plexi.

So after that disaster with the first bend, I did a little more research, and figured that part of my problem was not letting it heat up enough, and forcing the bend too early.
I cut a new piece of UV green plexi I’d picked up for this purpose. I ran it through the table saw to get a nice straight line. There were a few small chips, but not enough to discourage me.
I made the cutouts for cable routing before I made the bend, this time using a jigsaw to just cut out from the side, and used the dremel sanding drum attachment to shape a space for the P4 power cable to reach the mobo. (sorry no pic before the bend).

I used the same jig as before, clamped down the plexi sheet with the paper around the bend area plus an extra inch or so removed. I heated it for a while, this time with a spring clamp attached to the end sticking off the jig, to give it a little more weight to allow gravity to help. I heated a little bit on the underside of the bend/jig, but mostly on the top. When the end with the clamp started to sag a bit, I kept heating, going back and forth, and helping a little with some hand pressure. It was starting to bend too far out, so I grabbed a wide flat board, and used to apply pressure to the top of the bend, so it stayed near the bend. I also tried to make sure it was bending square and not at an angle, by using a board aligned vertically, with a square.



It turned out pretty well, I thought. Here’s what it looks like fitted in place. You can see where the 2 of the cutouts are.


Here’s a couple of it in place, showing the big picture.



Satisfied with the bend, I moved on to sanding the cut lines. I used a sanding block with 600 grit wet dry.
I like how it shows the light through the cut paper parts.



Later I used this polishing kit I’d ordered through sciplus.com


I set it up on this drill jig.


And used the light polishing wheel and compound provided. Here’s an action shot of it with a practice cutoff.

I was trying to get an image of all the white parts from the polishing wheel flying off, but couldn’t capture it.

I don’t think I was able to get a clear picture of the effect of the polishing, but here’s some pics:


It’s pretty smooth, one of these days I’ll borrow a torch, and try some flame polish. I like how that looks and seems to be easy, as long as you don’t melt/burn it too much.

One of the chips from the tablesaw cut is pretty big, I couldn’t do much with it, but I tried:


I’ll get some final polishing done once I have the case frame back together. Most of the edging will be behind the other plexi cover piece, so I’m not sure how visible it will be, and I think I probably don’t want it too polished if I’m going to be glueing.

 

More Case Work – PSU air channel & Mobotray

At the same time as all the plexi adventures, I was working on the case. I did some cutting on the drive bay to enable the air from the front intake fan to flow up and out the PSU and top fan.

I cut out the bottom part of the 3.5 floppy bay with the dremel and smoothed the edges with file and dremel (ok, generic rotary tool)

I also cut off the lip on the right side and cleaned up the sharp edges.



Then I worked on the mobotray. Originally I had thought about cutting lots of little holes for the various cables, but changed the plan. (I wanted to show off the UV Blue sleeving) I did however want to make a hole behind the cpu, just in case I later added W/C and needed easy access to the backplate.

I measured the dimensions of the back plate, and marked off the cut area.

Took my trusty generic rotary tool (GRT) and cut away.



(I like that shot with the riveter I borrowed from the Tool Library in the background!)

I took it upstairs after cleaning the dust off, and smoothing the edges to check the fit to the mobo. DOH! I had got the orientation wrong, and narrowly missed cutting off an important mobo standoff mounting hole. (You can see just how close in the first pic above.) After remarking for the cut, I cut away, and had a huge hole in the mobo tray. Plenty of room for future swapouts!


Cleaned it up with the file and GRT sanding drum, and I was ready for painting.

 

Painting Part 1 – Warning, not for those with sensitive eyes!

Ok, I’ve been moaning about the painting woes I’ve been having in little asides while I’ve been catching you up to date, now’s the time for you to see what’s really been going on. First, I’ll bet that many of you will have issues with the choice of colors. If you remember the UV fan I made in an earlier post, I decided to use that same color for the case interior. (yes, its fluorescent neon green!) I was hoping to get a nice overall glow inside the case from the CCFLs. Since I haven’t actually put the whole thing back together and lit it up, I’m not sure what the effect will be… hopefully not something horrid that makes me want to leave the CCFLs off or tear it apart, and redo the whole thing.
I didn’t paint the top, bottom or side panels' exterior, as I wanted to keep that glossy black and aluminum with blue leds look that comes stock. I’d originally purchased some Chrome spray paint, but on my test piece, it didn’t look all that good. I’d also toyed with the idea of using plain black or dark blue, but that seemed to be an obvious choice, too obvious for me. Since my only cheap and easily accessible UV plexi option was green, I figured I’d make it a theme.
Here’s the paint I purchased at various times for this project.

The yellow marking paint was useless for me, and as I said before, the chrome didn’t look that great.
Test piece before:

(I wouldn’t recommend those sanding sponges for any piece that has holes, corners, or edges of any sort… too easy to get ripped up.
Test after:

Like my mini paint booth? I set up a piece of wire coat hanger poking through with a hook to hang it on, and a little handle outside the box so I could turn the piece around for even painting!

So here’s what I used for this project.

I ended up using 2 cans of the gray primer, and 2 cans of the green stuff. I bought 1 can of the clear coat, and that is almost done, but so am I, so it should last for the final piece. The clear coat really makes it look good. The gray primer I got from an autoparts store near me (where I got the chrome), and the green comes from Home Depot.

I started off by removing the little flipdown part that holds the expansion cards into their slots, and it’s hinge part, and then sanding (320grit) and washing off it and the mobotray and drive cage with some soapy water, and letting it dry in front of a heater. Then I hit it with a few light coats of the primer, per instructions.


(By the way, I’m a painting novice… no graffiti background, nor other experience with painting things to look nice. I read up on a lot of the tutorials out there, watched Bill’s (mnpctech’s) video on achieving a mirror finish, and read the backs of the cans and tried to follow instructions.)

Here’s my little paint booth:

It’s a box from the HAF932 my friend Shawn got, which I used to transport the Lexa back to my house. I cut out most of the front as a flap so I could drop it down when done painting to avoid getting bugs and other flying bits stuff in the drying paint.
A lot of this painting happened in the evening, as it was getting dark and cold (for California), which didn’t help too much with some of the painting, I believe. Here’s what it looked like in place.


After the 3rd coat of primer, I sanded it a little, and that’s where the problems started.
Can you see the specks of shiny silver where the paint has been scraped off in chips? This got me very frustrated.


I figured it might be due to my not-so-thorough rinsing off of the case parts after their soapy water bath. My theory is that there were parts where the soapy residue was still there, and the primer while looking like it was adhering to the tray, actually wasn’t, and so when sanding it lifted off easily. Also, I probably should have used a higher grit sand paper (instead of the 320.)
So I hit it with another coat of primer, let it dry, and tried again the next evening.
This was one of the more frustrating parts for me as well. Normally, I’m a pretty patient guy, but I hated having to wait so long for the paint to dry, then wet sanding, then waiting for it to dry, then going over it with the tack cloth to pick up stray particles, then trying another coat, and repeating. (I’d been warned by reading the logs of those who spent a good deal of effort on their painting, but experiencing it yourself is a whole other matter!)
Tackcloth (I had no idea what this stuff was before starting on the project. I’m still not sure if I should have washed the tackiness off before painting. It sure left some residue on my fingers)


With the first coat of green, after letting it dry and trying the sanding, I still had continuing problems



You should be able to see a couple of specks of shiny silver, as well and an unevenness on the depressed area (don’t know what to call it, but I was depressed!)
Plus, with the odd shapes like that depression in the mobotray, or the circles in the drivebay, I had a hard time using my sanding block to good effect. I made do, consoling myself with the idea that most of this would be hidden anyways once everything was all together.
By overpainting it a bit, and not being as diligent with the sanding, I basically covered up the little dings.


I was ready for the first coat of clear coat before I realized that I should also paint the inside of the bottom and top parts of the case. So I quickly grabbed those out of their safekeeping box, and taped up the holes and a portion of the bottoms to protect the glossy black.

This time, I rinsed them, sanded them gently with 320 grit, and wiped it down with mineral spirits. I let it dry, and wiped with the tack cloth before spraying the first coat of primer.


A few more coats of primer, some gentle sanding, some tack cloth, and I was ready for the first green coat. I used up the last of the green paint on this, just barely covering the two pieces, so ran out to get some more, and picked up the clearcoat as well.


(I like that above pic for some reason. I think it’s the color and perspective.)

Now I was painting all over the place, clear coat on the drivebay, mobotray, and expansion card thingie, and green on the top/bottom.
Expansion card holder bit and its hinge

Peek at the drive cage and mobotray

Tray and tops and bottoms drying

Drivebays and card holder getting clear coat

It’s really not all that yellow… but then again, I’m partially colorblind! (some of you may now be, after seeing this painting log.)

More to come on the painting, I've gone a little further than this in the painting, but think I'll go past the 25 pics limit if I put it all up now.

 

WOW, you have made fantastic progress in a really short amount of time.

I must say I'm not a big fan of the green colour (too in your face) but it is your choice and I bet it will look fantastic in the end.

You know, all of the major LEXA mods I have seen (yours, mine and the award winning no name one lol) all incorporate the green plexi. I dunno what it is, LEXA's and green plexi go perfectly with each other.

 

Lol! I think it may just be due to the availability of the green plexi. Like I mentioned, the only plastics place near me is TAP, and they only have the green. It's about $6 a square foot. But green, blue and black are my favorite colors, so I hope it'll turn out.
YEah, I kinda felt the same way about the neon green being too in your face, but I chose the bull, and I'm gonna ride it. It's growing on me, and with the glossy, it looks a bit better. Also, I didn't see many other mods (none that I can remember) with that color inside.

Yeah, I'm not sure how much of this is me spending all my free time on it, or the fact that I've been working almost a month on it, but only posting the logs up now. It's about to slow down, as I still have to figure out a few more bits, but I felt I needed the case back together to figure out the measurements and how to get it to fit.

One of the ideas I'm toying with is to not have the big expanse of uv green plexi facing you, but having it behind some opaque black so with some LED lighting embedded behind it, it'll just look like a bright line.
I'm almost done with the clearcoat on all the pieces, so I'm getting close to putting the case back together.
After that it's playing with the plexi and lighting, and cable routing.

 

nice mod there modminded!
I like your style and approach, it's very similar to my own

The only thing i'm missing is an actual design phase, but i'm guessing for an exploratory project like this you wont need it really

great move on switching to the full-size pictures in the page as opposed to clickable thumbnails. Makes the log a lot more readable

 

I do like the green but I'm going with the UV blue stuff for my custom case.

 

Dude, u arent going to need any light. The amount of uv paint wil light itself

 

thanks for the replies, guys, it's nice to see some more reponses!
@xtrafresh- the design phase is pretty much in the head, with a bit of pen & paper sketches. I played with sketchup, but it seemed like more trouble than it was worth at this point. I like your log's design pages, and esp post 18. i'll have to get back and read more later,its a great idea. thanks for the comment re pics. I agree!

@rob- where did u get it from? I like blue a lot. only problem with my uv blue sleeving is that it is less blue under the ccfl.

@blackwhizz- lol. I may have to issue shades to viewers. it is less eye-burning with the clearcoat on.

more updates and pics to come soon. its a crappy day for painting, so I don't think i'll do much this evening. maybe some sanding, catchup logs, and go back and resize the thumbnails.

gotta go and renew my tools afterwork as well.

Edit- may not have much time to do stuff tonight... I have to go an mod a pumpkin... that's right its jackolantern contest time at the office, and I promised to make some led lighting for the interior for our group's entry. Time to figure out how to set up some good flashing effects!

 

Totally off topic!

Ok, I mentioned that I'd be unable to do any modding, or further updating of this project tonight... you got me, I kinda lied. Actually since it's almost 2:00am here, I'm posting this Tomorrow, so I kinda told the truth... but then again, I liked what came out so much I might use it in a mod down the road (or probably this one!) So you tell me... whose lying now buddy?!! And what is the meaning of life, eh?

As I mentioned, I was busy with a pumpkin mod! That's right, office halloween jack o lantern competition between departments. IT department REPRESENT! (TBH, I'm not totally sure you non-American's celebrate Halloween, so you may be going "WTF is he talking about?" I know you folks in the UK celebrate All Hallows Eve, but am not sure about the rest of the world represented here at bit-tech. Most likely you've heard about it, but maybe you do things differently, and might not have the honorable pagan tradition of decapitating an innocent plump young pumpkin, scooping out it's guts, and scarring it's orange skin, and then torching the insides with flame...) I'm sure you've heard of the candy begging however! Being the budding modder that I am I volunteered to do the lighting, LED style for my team.

Unfortunately... I showed up to work today, and most entries were out in the lobby already. Apparently, the jacks weren't due on Friday, as I thought, but this morning. Whodda thunk it? Luckily I wasn't the only one fooled by the odd timing, and our department was not the only not hip to the scheme so the office got a day extension. But that meant I had no time to research, or go to the electronics store to get proper parts... so I did it ModMinded style... (kinda half assed!) I searched through my pile o crap and found a 555 chip, some old unknown leds, and the various resistors, caps, etc I'd scavenged from various circuit boards as I was practicing my soldering. (or desoldering.) Grabbed some wire, ye olde soldering iron, and stared intently at the pages of the internet searching for plans.

I got right to it after work, and just finished up now. Sure, I picked up some chinese food, and I stopped a couple times for a couple beers, some smokes and to check out the forums a bit, but most of my evening/night was spent doing this...

making a huge mess!! BTW, this is my kitchenette/dining room... since converted into an electronics workshop, and test area. You can tell I'm single, can't you. Actually, this is the only good thing about being single and having my own place, lots of area to spread out in, and no one to yell at me for the crap I leave around!

OK, too much information... back to geeking out.
Here's what I came up with... no time to put it on perfboard, just gonna throw it in a ziploc bag, wrap it up with duct tape (no idea why its sometimes sold as "duck tape" ... who tapes ducks?) and hope for the best!

That's an elenco breadboard I use for testing stuff, 2 red leds (eyes), 3 green ones (atmosphere), a cap, a potentiometer, some wires, and a 9 volt battery. No duct tape, but I'm gonna bring a roll to stick it in the pumpkin, which my coworkers were browbeaten to design and carve. There were some resistors, but they dimmed the lights too much, and it seemed to work fine without it... anyhow roasted pumpkin is a delicacy this time of year and I know where the fire escape is!

And just cause I'm that kinda guy, and because you're those kinda readers who are wondering what drugs I'm on and where you can get some (did I mention I had a long day, and it's almost 2am?!)... here's a short, crappy, sideways video! (click to view )



In case you're interested, I found this circuit at http://wild-bohemian.com/electronics/flasher.html

 

Painting Part 2

I didn't get any modding done today. I'm pretty beat by the last couple late nights, so I just updated more of the log here.

So last you heard, I was still painting the top and bottom neon green, after realizing that I should paint them to match the drivebay and mobotray, which were being clearcoated. I put the final coat of clearcoat on for a total of 2 clearcoats, 3-4 coats of green, and 3 coats of primer. I don’t think I sanded between clearcoats, I was afraid of more nicks. I was pretty frustrated with the various little nicks and smudges I’d been getting anyway and the amount of painting and sanding I’d done. I consoled myself for the lack of a perfect mirror finish with the reasoning that almost all of that paint would not be visible, as the mobo would cover a good portion, and the drive cage would be concealing a large area with a few nicks, and itself be concealed by the plexi covers/shroud I was planning on putting in. One visible section of bad painting remained front and center however, glaring out to my critical eye.

I don’t know if a lot of mobo trays have this uneven section. Don’t know what to call it really, a lip? I could use some tips on painting this section, or more specifically sanding it. I was using just a regular block for sanding originally, and then used this wedge shaped thing I found in my garage, originally for mounting on a pegboard and holding screwdrivers, etc. I think I should make a few small wedges to keep as sanding blocks, in addition to the bigger rectangular one I was using. Any other tricks of the trade you like?
And the expansion bay was rough to sand as well. See those grooves, rivet edges and corners?

(before wiping off with tack cloth.)

While I was looking at the finished mobo tray. I realized the overspray on the back looked bad. It was either sand it all, or paint it green! (well I coulda used the chrome, but I figured I might as well carry the theme to the outside! Plus, having no I/O shield, I was planning on making my own out of green plex.) In hindsight, I wish I had just made it a clearcoated brushed aluminum look to match the front fascia. It might have been better looking and more fun!

I had to remove a few stickers that were out the outside. I was able to peel a couple off, and used mineral spirits to wipe away the goo (as well as clean off the back) There was one big long one (case serial number, I think) that I had to use a generic exacto knife and wire brush GRT attachment for, as well as the spirits. I soon remembered to put on my safety googles, as little pieces of the wire brush came flying off. I ended up losing almost all the brush wires, and switched for a different one. Here’s the tools I used for this process.


I taped up the various holes on the back, so I wouldn’t get primer and all the rest of my newly clearcoated tray.


Flash and no flash of the prep from the back



Flash and no flash of the prep from the trayside

There were a few small sections of light overspray when I was done with the first primer coat. I wiped this up with the spirits. Then I wrapped the mobotray with a plastic garbage bag for the next coats.


I put a couple coats of primer on, sanded a bit then hit it with the green.



This is wet sanding after the first coat. That’s my sanding tool in the background.

There was quite a bit of orange peel in a couple sections of the back. This really is frustrating, as this will be the easiest viewable area of the paint job, and it looks like crap.
I may just take it down to bare metal and clear coat it, or otherwise start over, but I’m almost out of the paint, and don’t really want to buy any more neon green now! What would I do with an almost full can? I should have done a couple lighter coats I think, as I tried to get inside corners too hard, and put too much paint down to cause it to pile up


Sanding didn’t really help



Can you see the chips to bare metal on a few places there?

Top and bottom came out ok.


Top and Bottom after 2nd clear coat.

I mounted the bottom to the drive tray (or vice versa, if you will) with rivets.




The rivets are quite obvious


I’m not sure if I should ignore them, or try to do something about them. There will be a bunch more rivets as well.

Oh yeah, this is a strip of uv green plexi painted on one side with a single coat of the neon paint. I wanted to see what effect it had on the UV plex. Kinda frosted. It’s kinda hard to tell color, since the blue painters tape I masked the edges and back with looks kinda dark. And I haven’t played with sticking LEDs behind or in it yet, but I did want to see what I could do with this. I've been thinking it might be cool to paint a dark black over it, and etch into it and light it. A bit ambitious for me, but I'll bet it looks cool, so I'll experiment with this stuff.
Sorry for the bad pics.

 

It's really...green lol. Looking good though.

 

Thanks!
I'm actually starting to like the interior green. Not real happy with the backplate, but that's more due to the crappy painting/chipping than the color.
Also not sure how all the rails (where the side panels fit in) will look, since I didn't paint them. They'll stick out, I'm sure. Weather is cold and crappy, with no forecast for improvement, so I may have no painting days coming up.

What do you think about just sanding the back panel (and side panel support rails) back to bare metal and clearcoat?

I really just want to get the tray/backplate mounted on the case bottom with the drive cage so I can think more about the plexi.

 

ok, so this is offtopic again...

The jackolantern made with the above flasher!


and the flashy video (showing the competition as well... there's a lot of good pumpkin modders at my office! One guy even used a dremel!)
need I say click to view?

 

YAY pumpkin modding lol.

 

Do we need a pumpkin modding thread in "Modding"? I think we all do it - air brushed or cut out.

 

damn my brain!

I forgot your tip!
I was just putting the case back together, as you might have seen from previous pics, and I totally ignored your advice NOT to rivet the drive bay back to the bottom, as it would interfere with the reassembly of the mobo tray. Sure enough I couldn't get it in, and scratched the paint. Luckily this is the hidden area!

As you can see, there is a little lip behind the drive tray. You can't see the back of the mobo tray from this pic, but there's a little flange along the bottom edge of the tray that slides in there. Doesn't fit with the drive tray riveted there! Now I'm in the garage about to fire up the drill.

Also, ESP award to the first person to correctly guess what this pic is of:


Need a different pic? How about now?


No, ok, this should let you know, despite the fuzziness:


@jhanlon - hey welcome to my thread! Thanks for the response, and I, too, think we should have a pumpkin modding thread, especially this time of year. I'm surprised it hasn't come up already. I'm sure a lot of folks here could do something crazy with a pumpkin. Maybe in the general thread? Maybe next year I'll do a real jackolantern PC mod to bring in. (budget limit was $5, I might be able to pull that off!) Gives me lots of time to start practicing my painting. Has this been done before? (either a PC as jack o lantern or computer in a pumpkin? You stick one of those jetways in there. Hey if you want to send me one like you did cheapskate, I'll stick it in a pumpkin! (at least for a week or two! Or a watercooled jetway jack o'lantern? Now I'm just getting silly, but ....


Hey, on an off topic aside, anyone else have trouble with the copy/paste from Photobucket? I'll click photobucket's image link, it gets highlighted, and a little balloon pops up saying copied, but it isn't really. I'll try to paste in this page, or a word doc, and nothing happens. I have to right click after the above happens and select copy before I can paste! This only happens on a couple computers I've tried. Others work fine. I'm using FF3 mostly. I'm missing some setting somehow.

 

HAHA yeah I warned you, you can actually get it in if you are really careful and slide it in really gently.

Hmm, fuzzy pic looks like a broken rivet or a busted drill bit.

 

And the winner is....

big surprise...

TB4O!

(Somehow I knew you'd get it!... though I did half expect to have Cheapskate come out from left field and call it... Let's hear it for ESP! )
Sorry, no prize to be awarded besides recognition.

Yep, its actually a combo of the 2. It is a not-completely drilled out rivet that was forgotten and left on the back side of the drive tray, and then painted slightly. (I didn't paint that side, but it got some overspray.) I tried poking, I tried prodding, I tried squeezing, I tried cajoling, and I tried cursing, but it wouldn't budge. Then I tried drilling!

Hey, both our lexa's are at the top of the charts (at least at this particular moment!) Go LEXA! (gotta check yours now to see what's new!)