Case Mod - In Progress Project : Azure - A Rack Server Mod -Complete

Thanks Teknokid.
The silver tubing is a chrome wire loom I brought it from my local hardware store. You should be able to find it in any electronics or hardware store. I did a quick search and this store has it online llinky

 

Well I completed the PSU and Drive hold for the server and now I can see light at the end of the tunnel. All that is remaining is to wire up the LED's at the base and put all the hardware in

The monitor frame also has received its quota of flat black paint. Hopefully I will be able to clearcoat it tomorrow.

And now the pics

The hold without the hardware



The base with and without lights





Everything goes in. .



Steps and the base



Side view showing the 40mm exhaust fan. There is an intake on the other side. Hopefully these will be enough to keep the rheobus cool




Chrome wire looms carrying the PSU cables to the server



A closer picture



Lights off



With the DVD tray open.




Thanks for looking
-wasted.

 

WOW, that looks fantastic. Really nice work.

 

WOW! I missed the part where it went from rack to art. Damn new Vista machine. I'll re-read whole thing again. Verra nice.
John

 

Thanks.

Thanks John. Glad you like it

 

i am under impression very nice and cool

 

this is looking damn good, no idea where the original server rack has dissapeared to, but the thing it has become is awesome! Its really coming together nicely, gonna keep a close eye on this

 

Thanks nolimited

Thanks GavX. The only thing remaining are 3 sides and the base. In fact when I bought it it had 4 sides and a base

Time for an update :

Burnt the fan controller and screwed the paint job.

Well this is what happened today.

I got the LED's wired up to the base and tried starting them up. And this is where things started to go wrong. I hooked them up to one of the outputs of the fan controller by mistake and pffftttttttt the fan controller died.:swearing:

I now need to buy a new fan controller... dang ..

I put this behind and moved on to clearcoating the monitor frame. I sprayed the front panel first and then disaster struck. The clearcoat reacted with the paint and the whole front frame is now a mess. :sad-smile

I tried sanding it but for some reason the whole paint would turn into this sticky gooey paste. So sanding this was impossible, I then sprayed it with some paint stripper and took more or less of the paint out. but the whole thing is still far from ready to be painted.

The front and the rest of the parts.



Now I am in two minds :
Either start from scratch and sand + prime + paint the front panel OR mod the monitor and fabricate the front panel out of acrylic.

Both approaches are going to take a lot of effort and time, the acrylic may take a little more time because I will have to plan it out in detail. I still dont know what I will end up doing... I guess I will wait a little while and then decide


-wasted

 

Well I finally wired up the LED's to the base and started assembling all the hardware.
I did half of it and then stopped. I was too tired and didnt feel like going any further.
A couple of pics







Then the first hurdle...
The IDE for the DVD drive was too short.



I was able to pull out the circuitry off an old Harddrive enclosure. So I have effectively converted the DVD drive from IDE to USB. The USB wire is pretty long and it will be hooked onto an existing USB port.



Some more pics








I also finally gave into temptation and decided to do a monitor mod.
The front bezel is going to be replaced with acrylic.

I did a couple of measurements to check how it all adds up.
The front bezel is about 1/2" thick so half inch thick acrylic piece is just going to be exactly in the same plane as the screen. So i need to add an other acrylic piece to cover the edges (Silver portions) of the screen. The portion along the red line is the silver portion I am referring to



The buttons will be either replaced with vandal resistant switches or I will add 1/2" acrylic discs instead of buttons. The discs will be in contact with the push buttons.



So here is the plan :
I cant cut 1/2" acrylic with a jigsaw so I am going to use 2 * 1/4" sheets to achieve the 1/2" thickness.
The idea is to sandwich a sheet of blue acrylic in between 2 sheets of either clear or solar gray acrylic.

The first two layers will give me the 1/2" thickness and the 3rd sheet will top it off and hide the silver portion of the screen. I may light up the blue acrylic with some white LED's.

The plan is extremely ambitious but I believe planning and patience can pull it off

Comments / Suggestions welcome
- wasted

 

Sweeeeet
Looks like a monster!!

 

Thanks Teknokid

 

The monitor mod will start soon, This week has been crazy busy. I finally got a chance to drive down to Lowes to pick up some stuff. The intention was to buy a Hitachi scroll saw and the bosch router.

But money was short and the space in my apartment is tight . So i convinced myself to just get a simple cheap router for now. I will upgrade to a better one later.

Here is a picture of the stuff I got.



1. Gloves and Wiping cloth.
2. 1/4" , 3/8" and 1/2" roundover bits.
3. Skil router. This was relatively cheap at $90
4. 4" Buffing wheel and arbor.
5. 6-32 tap drill
6. Some M4 screws.
7. Dremel EZ lock arbor and cut-of wheels.

I am in the process of ordering the rest of the acrylic for the monitor mod. I am going to be using some fluorescent blue acrylic. Lets see how it goes *crosses fingers.*

If everything gets here on time I should be able to make some decent progress this weekend

-wasted

 

This is a really impressive mod.

Looks like a proper art piece

 

Thanks Farmboy

 

OH YEAH this is a True power. Awesome hardware and tools you have. cool Cool cool and awesome. Well done so far.

 

Thanks for the kind words ComputerKing. I am glad you like it

 

Really nice work, looking great.

 

Thanks bro. .

The acrylic for the monitor should be here tomorrow. If everything goes according to plan I will be able to wrap up Azure by this weekend

-wasted

 

I finally got all the images up. Please let me know if you find any more broken links

 

They all look good to me.