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

Pliers always work well for pulling busted rivets out of their holes.

 

Reassembly V.02

I had a couple needle nosed pliers I tried... that was the squeezing mentioned. I also used them to try and pinch the outside part into a smaller piece, so I could find and poke the center (nonono EEL) but that didn't work well enough. I just didn't have enough room to get a good grip on the inside. I was able to grab onto the rivet from the inside angle (not the inside of the rivet) with some of those locking metal forceps normally used in the operating rooms but not pull it out. I also tried a little puncher and some hard pressure. Once I'd squeezed the outside and poked the center down enough I could rotate the rivet, but not pull it out.

On to the official update:
Reassembly v.01
Today I reassembled the case, partially. I also partially disassembled the case as well today, but if you’ve been staying current on this log you know what happened there. Let’s not dwell on that, shall we?

Onto the reassembly:
First, I pulled out the feet, conveniently labeled and stored with the screws, and I put them back on the bottom, so I could work without worrying about scratching the bottom of the case. There’s little notches in the case bottom they hook into, and a couple screws from the front.

I had to take off the protective tape to get the feet in.




(that’s the front foot, the tape pieces on the inside of the feet are where I’m thinking of mounting the lighting switches (of and on))
Here’s the back foot, with a nice long shot. I was trying a few different whitebalance settings with my camera, and couldn’t really get a good shade. Bad lighting in the dining room.

closeup

These back feet were loosely screwed in which let me know that I needed another layer to screw into for real.
There’s also 3 rivet positons that could be riveted in when I’m sure I’m not gonna remove it.
Here’s a closeup of the mounting of the feet.

I need a better macro enabled camera, but that’s as sharp as I can get for now.


Here’s what the bottom layer of plex of the drive cage cover/psu venting shroud looks like. The various markups are probably hard to read, but there are a couple versions. The orange lines are from the first version, while the black lines (thin sharpie) are new cut areas. Originally it was to be just one piece, with the bottom part sticking out an inch or so from the HD tray, with a hole cut to allow the HD to be removed via its quick release rails. Plan B is to cut the bottom piece off, and mount it flush to the HD Cage. The HD will be in the tray second from the bottom, so the fan can hit it and the heated air can go up the vent. I’m thinking about directing the airflow/breaking up the straight back flow from the fan, with an angled piece, or a curved one. I’ll try to make both.There’s a visible black window there for the HD, you can see how thin I’d have to cut this edge. There’re a couple screw holes that I was thinking I would mount the top cover to. The two layers would be glued together face to face. (I love the look of layered plexi.) Optical drive cover and floppy drive indented area would be covered by the two layers, with the white underlayer cut back to the bottom of the optical drive bay and the top most piece of uv green plexi would be curved 90 degrees a little further down to curve and meet the top of the HD drive bay cover. (make since?) Too busy to play with sketchup.

Anyhow, away from plexiplanning and back to reassembly. (Be sure we’ll revisit this, and feel free to add your comments and suggestions.)

Once I had the feet in, I was ready to put the tray in. As you read above, that didn’t go well. So I drilled out the 4 rivets holding the drive cage from the bottom, and mounted the mobo tray and backplate to the bottom. (mobo tray and backplate were already joined, as you know.)


At this point, my camera ran out of juice, so I quickly assembled the rest of the case.
First I put the mobo tray in. It was a bit of a tricky slide, but I got it in. It fit pretty well, but since I was gonna be flipping it over to rivet the drive cage and stick the feet on, I riveted in through the small angled piece holding the back plate to the bottom. (2 rivets). I think that’s all I did for that tray, before I mounted the drive tray. A nice hook and slide down and it was properly where it needed to be. I flipped it over to place the rivets to align the tray. While I was doing that I noticed that the rivets wouldn’t be able to go in with the feet in, so I reversed the assembly steps to rivet the cage first, and then the feet over them. Done, I flipped it over, and riveted the mobo tray to the drive cage in a couple places so it was in pretty solid.

Now was the moment of truth. I had brought the bent plex shroud base up to be added, and slid the cutout under the lip of the HD drive cage. I had to bend the case a bit to place the bent plexi in under the metal PSU support brackets. It fit almost perfect. I tore off the underside protective paper. I also stuck the drive cage underplate down, and fitted the top on without any fasteners.
What do you think? I’m pretty pleased!





Even more so when I tossed in some UV action, and turned out the lights.

One of the CCFL tubes is crapping out. I’m gonna have to try the desleeving method of reducing EMI from bothering my CCFLs.
Can’t stop me though!

You can see the dim one is the vertical one above.

Showing the cutouts on the front of the shroud.

Switched the good tube to the vertical

The back.


And back with the lights on:

Tried my homemade test uv fan in it.



Rear


All was not perfect, alas, woe unto me…


There’s a crack from where I was too rough with the jigsaw cutting out notches for the screw mounting. When I took off the paper, I saw it. Maybe I’ll try to glue it, remake it, or maybe I’ll leave it for now.

 

Woot, she is taking shape, much faster than mine lol.

The green looks great under UV.

 

Well, I'm obsessed!
I think I said in the first post that I was supposed to be studying... I've been kinda letting that slide, and devoting a lot of spare time to this.
Still got a lot more to do, but the basic stuff is out, now I can tweak it a lot more.

 

Plexi Gluing trials part 1 - some little stuff

Today I thought a little more about the interior accents, specifically shaping the plexi and led lighting, and running all the wires and switches in that floppy drive "circuit bay. I'm gonna mount a basic terminal strip with most of the wiring for the led & Fan power and switches.
I put the PSU back in, and snuck the p4 cable in it's little cutout. I don't have a space out for the ATX and PCI connectors just yet.
I definitely need to go plexi layers on this mod, but I'm not settled yet on a plan for the top. I want to back it with some second layer, more opaque. The curve alone might be trouble.

But today, I practiced with gluing and prepared for shaping and led experimentation.

First I cut up a few small pieces of scrap roughly the same size from my little sample variety from tap plastics.




Then I decided what look I wanted to try to achieve. I want to make uv spotlights on certain areas of the case for highlighting key components. So alternating layers glued together in different symmetrical patterns, to increase the thickness I could drill into.. I have clear, uv green, white, and some darkly tinted clear. The clear is there like a lens to help spread the light... There will be holes drilled (edgewise) to mount the leds in it, and guide the spotlight. I hope it looks good when I pull it off.. It should also cause the surrounding UV pieces to glow nicely. Anyone have a good way from me to hold these while I drill. (You saw my cutting holder for the jigsaw. I don't have a vise, drill press, though I'm toying with the idea of getting an old one with rubber straps that you move over to adjust speed... It's cheap, and should be solid and straight.) Links to jig Ideas greatly appreciated.

For gluing I tried 2 different methods. The 1st was capillary action along all the edges. These I have a feeling I'll probably crack. I used the little applicator needle and ran glue down all the lines where the faces met.
The others were glued face to face, and attempts were made to push the air out by holding the pieces and a V and pushing the edges back. There was a little wiggling of face alignment as I set them back into the clamps, so I might get some smearing, but I'm not too worried bout it at this point.. I'm not gonna mess with them any more for the next 24 hours. But here's some lighting shots using my messed up CCFLs (i thought the problem was over, but today both of them were pretty dim to start.)





I tested the UV
Check out the goodness of these few pieces and pics (Ok, they don't look THAT good... they're rough cut, no sanding, etc.)






I think it looks great, and will look better with the leds. I can't wait to drill into them and shape them. I worry about the glue not making it to the center areas,and possibly breaking down the line. I also did all 5 layers (in some cases) at the same time. I'll have a lot of work more to do... including figuring out how I'm gonna shape these things. Don't beat me up about how unaligned the pieces are... I'll be rounding the corners and trying to get a nice polished, dimpled effect.

Can you use a heat gun to flame polish plexi? I know there's no flame , and the name of the technique IS "flame polished" ... but can it be done by just heat? I'll be trying even if no one answers, but go ahead and see if you can tell me what this Unidentifed Case Object is just from this pic.

 

Plexi layers look good. I am pretty sure you can't use a heat gun to flame polish, you will probably end up melting the plexi.

 

Thanks!
I agree with you about the crazing and further searching says it causes bubbling/warping.
Next, I need a vise.

 

Great work so far. We are gonna end up with the same color theme for our mods lol.

 

lol. Thanks for the response Acey!

 

Put up the pic of the UCO that I'd mentioned previously. Too tired last night and forgot!

 

Small update - Plexi smoothing

This Saturday morning I stopped off at the Tool Library, and checked out a few items I felt I would need.


Router table, a couple router bits, parallel clamp, belt sander.
Bought a new 120 grit belt set at ACE, and tried to think how I could even up the edges, square some edges up, and create nice profiles as well. The router had potential, but since the pieces I was working with were so small, I didn't want to chance mangling my fingers without figuring out a good jig to hold the piece.
I'm still working on a way to do that, if I figure something out, I'll show you what I did. Ideas welcome.

In the meantime, I figured I'd try the sanding belt. I really wanted it on its side so I could work the piece against it with my hands, but that didn't appear too safe. So I just put it in the parallel clamps, sticking up a little bit, and clamped the clamps as best as I could.


That didn't work out so well.


It worked, but it was hard to make a level edge. Plus there were quite a few times where the sanded plexi just melted into a glob on the cut.


I decided to try the GRT's sanding drum on a different piece

Not So Focused Before Pic

Oooohh, action shot!


after


This was better in terms of vision and control, but my shaky hands didn't help get a nice level edge, rather a bumpier kind of edge. However I used this method to bring all the roughly-shaped, glued-togther pieces into the same rough profile, even if there wasn't a 90 degree angle anywhere.

Here's one of the other pieces suffering the GRT treatment.



This morning I figured a way i could rig up the sanding belt to overhang the table safely, while being stable clamped (in multiple locations).

Like that shiny piece of plexi my hand? It's the white, green, clear, green white layercake (layered cheesecake?) with the light glowing behind it. This is before I really tried to even things up.

(BTW - I disclaim all responsibility for lost skin or worse, should you try this at home. I had 3 clamps locking it down, and one of them vibrated off during the test run/belt trimming.)

Here's a bad pic of what they looked like afterwards:

This really helped me get more of a semblance of straight edges, as well as bevel the edges I did want to be curved/diagonal.

This afternoon, I stopped by my local ACE hardware again, and picked up a little butane torch I'd seen for $10 the day before, and a couple sheets of 600 and 1500 grit wetdry paper.


Here's what the sanding setup looked like:

I put duct tape on the back of the paper (sharpied the grit on so I could tell em apart) got a plastic bin, some water, and went to work. (I was gonna wait a little for the torch.)

This was version 1. The bin I was using didn't have a solid base, so the piece was flexing as I was sanding.
I grabbed my good baking dish (pyrex, or something similar) and swapped it in.

To my surprise, the duct tape held the sand paper flat underwater pretty well. I had my doubts (sorry duct tape, I'll never doubt you again)

Playing with my camera's delay setting, I got some more action shots:





And here's what the edges looked like after that






Pretty good! There were some deeper scratches from my previous work with the belt sander/GRT, so I ended up going back to 300 on some parts to try and get those out.

I then switched out paper to 600, but before I started going nuts on it, I tried out the new torch.


I made a short pass on one of the pieces, before deciding it was too nice of a test piece to be sacrificed to the fire.

(other, less spectacular piece)




It actually didn't look too bad, though I did singe the paper protecting the sides, and some black smudges were made on the white plexi surround. I'll probably continue with the sanding.

Right now, I'm working the 600 wet dry on a few the pieces, and have stopped to give them time to dry out so I can see where we are. The wet look is so much better than the dried look at this point.

 

No UCO identification guesses?

Hmm... either it's too hard, or you can't be bothered.
Want another pic?

 

I have never seen wet sanding done like that before.

 

Neither have I. I usually have a little bowl of water and a torn off piece of sand paper, your way looks much easier, I must try it.

 

Thanks, I think!
How have you seen it done? I haven't really seen it done before, except on someones wetsanding a side panel, and they had a running water setup in the front yard. We've got a water shortage here, so I'm trying to conserve, but tips are always appreciated!

 

Eye Candy

Here's some shots after the second go round with the 600grit wet sanding.
(As always, tips and comments requested!)


And with UV:

 

My main motivation was to try and get a straight sand to even up the faces. I know that hand sanding doesn't work for that, due to the varying pressure on the different parts of the paper. I've tried blocks of wood with the paper tacked into it and dipping the paper in the water and then onto the plexi, too. I like that this method gives a little wave action that rinses the particles off the paper as well. (Plus it gives trippy effects when action shots are taken! )
And it is pretty easy, and fairly clean. I was just doing this last round which you see in the above update while watching TV and avoided too many splashes by using less water. I can still see scratches, especially in the areas where the GRT sanding went deeper.
Sanding is a long process, and again I call out for a quick hit list of edge polishing techniques from the masters of the process. I'm watching logs, and reviewing, and gonna be some more, but if you want to help my poor brain (and hands) send me a few ideas or links. (Yes, i've seen the sticky guide!)

I'm gonna try the torch polishing on one of the faces to see what the effect is with the 600 grit.
I still have to drill holes where necessary. Probably should have done that before spending this much effort sanding, oh well, live and learn.

 

The blocks are looking very good. Are they going to hold any purpose besides looking awesome? lol

 

Thanks! Yeah, I have a couple uses in mind. I'd like to use them as UV led mounts, so that they spot light different uv components in the case (especially since one of the CCFL's has decided to retire, and not like jhanlon's retiring ) I'm thinking I'll stick at least one (with 2, possibly 3 LEDs) mounted to the back of the green plexi shroud with LEDs facing into the mobo compartment and wires routed directly to the circuitry in the floppy/HD bay, and another on the top part of the shroud, facing down. I wanted to see if I could make the clear sheet in the middle 'focus' the uv beam out, while lighting up the green surrounding pieces, as well as see what that looked like through the smoke (at least that's what I'm calling the heavy tinted piece)

If I get advanced enough with my electronics, I'll build a circuit that can be all on, all off, or sequentially flashing (either by an adjustable pot, like in the jackolantern electronics, or controlled by a sound sensor) Right now, I'm just gonna go for on/off.
Another idea is something related to wire/tube organizing, with cutouts to place cables in line.
The long one is version .01 of a terminal strip mounting base, which will also have an 'underglow." There will be a matching cable routing strip to feed the wires to their mount points. (as I dream it, any way!)

But basically, I'm just playing with materials. I haven't used plex since middleschool days (12-13) and a few projects in the college dorm. and definitely nothing of the caliber I'm seeing in mods here. So I gotta get my skills up! I really like the layered look of plexi, plus the rim of light you can get with lighting effects and a few different colors. I know you've seen the choozen's cosmo plexi work, and tribal overkills logs, and cheapskates... and a whole host of others I can't think of right now... I'm trying to get near that level!
Besides, I'm gonna have some extra of the UV green sheet I got for the shroud cover, and I've got a few odd pieces of other stuff like what you see here. I was also trying again to see if I could magically make that white stuff UV reactive! (didn't work...)

Congrats again on the MoTM nomination! I'm sorry I didn't vote for you, but it was a tough field (ended up going for oldnewby's since its a scratch build and the mad skillz.) I always appreciate the feedback you bring to my log!

 

Sounds cool, I am interested in seeing what you come up with.