Case Mod - In Progress Project: Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2

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I have already began this worklog on another forum and would like to share it here too. So the easiest way for me to do that is to copy my post and post them here. I look forward to your comments.

This will be my first real themed mod and I am basing it around Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2. The case that will be modded is the Thermaltake Armor+ and will get a custom airbrushed digital camo paint job. I have several companies sponsoring this build which are listed below. This mod would not be possible with out their support.

Sponsors.

• Thermaltake
  [*]NZXT
  [*]Ultra Products
  [*]Plextor

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Things the case will have.

• Sentry 2 Touch Screen Fan Controller donated by NZXT
• 5" LCD in front of case
• Water Cooling using Thermaltake donated parts
• RGB LEDs with Arduino controll
• Airbrushed Digital Camo paint Job
• Airbrushed Digital Camo Avatar Gaming Mouse Donated by NZXT
• Airbrushed Digital Camo X4 850w PSU Ultra Products
• Airbrushed Digital Camo Gaming keyboard

Things I am working on incorporating in the build.

• Laser Etched COD MW2 logo in plexi Side lit with green LEDs
• Custom BMG .50cal case feet
• Custom 20mm round handles
• Digital Camo Xbox 360 controller
• Custom Radiator Shroud made from .308 or 30-06 inert ammo

Pics of the case. (Flickr set here)

 

I would like to take a moment and list the items provided by my sponsors.

Thermaltake has sponsored me with a full compliment of water cooling parts from their Watercooling upgrade line. This will include 2 reservoirs, a pump, CPU water block, Chipset waterblock, 2 HDD waterblocks, 3/8 tubing with quick connects, 1000ml of green UV reactive coolant, a flow meter with digital temperature screen, a dual 120mm radiator, 2 120mm silent fans, 3 120mm Green LED fans, cable sleeving kit, Armor+ case and a few more goodies.

NZXT has sponsored me with an Avatar Gaming mouse and a Sentry 2 touch screen fan controller.

Ultra Products has sponsored me with an 850w X4 PSU

Plextor has sponsored me with a PX-b320sa Blu-ray super multi writer and a PX880SA DVD combo drive.

I took a little time in photoshop tonight to see what the digital camo paint job may look like on the Armor+. What do you think? The actual paint job will be brighter and more defined but you get the idea.

 

Im liking the camo paintjob, I will keep an eye on this.

 

Cool, congrats on the sponsors and good luck!

Do you have any logs/pictures of past mod builds?

 

My only other case mod involved a simple window etching.. I can link to that build if its allowed here. I am a very artistic person and have been around the modding community for several years now.


I just finished making a banner for the worklog.

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Just a small update tonight.

I have been weighing my options on how I can airbrush this paint job for a few weeks now. I could do like this guy did or I can use stencils. I finally decided on the latter about a week ago. So I sat down and took a good long look at the ARPAT pattern. It seems to be 3 layers with the lightest on the bottom and the darkest on top. The pattern itself is just blobs with pixilated edges. The edges seem to be what I will call full pixels and half pixels.

I sat down and did a few sketches on graphing paper to get a feel for creating the designs and then took it to photoshop and using my wacom tablet and a ¼” grid in photoshop I drew some patterns. What I plan to do is to trace these onto clear acetate overhead projector sheets and then cut them out using an Exato knife. Then I will paint the whole case a light gray followed by a lighter gray spraying from the patterns, then I will spray a second layer of darker patterns followed by a third layer of even darker patterns. Then I will coat the whole thing in a few layers of mat finish clear coat. Ok let’s move on to the pics.

ARPAT (ARmy PATtern)




The first sketch I did. Notice the coffee stain.


The second sketch I did. The graphing grid is ¼”.


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This is the first digital sketch I did. Each pixel is ¼".


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Part 2


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For the first half I used a ¼" grid created from guides.


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For the second half I used the normal photoshop grid set to 1". To draw the lines I used the pen tool to mark my pattern then right clicked and clicked "stroke pattern. I had the brush set to 1px with 100% hardness.​

I will make the pattern files available in a 2 printable tiff files. They are sized to 8.5”x11” @300dpi.

 

Very cool!

 

thanks!

 

Very nice Photoshop work. I bought a premade stencile for my camo work. never thought of doing it myself.

I also like using an Arduino for RGB control.

Looking forward to seeing more.

 

Thanks GiT. I looked at the premade stencils and for the $20 they wanted for one I figured I could make a box full.

I talked to TT today and they will be shipping the case and the rest of the gear this week. So I expect to start sometime next week. There was also a mixup with my gear from NZXT and it was sent to the wrong address. Replacement gear will be set out tomorrow or the next day.

I hope to make it to an Army/Navy surplus store one day this week and pick up a few things for some top secret mods to the case. Luke knows what these mods are so I am sure he will vouch for me when I say its going to be freaking awesome.

I ordered my paint yesterday and it should arrive by Friday. I still need to pick up a self healing cutting mat and blue painters tape. I also need to go out to my shop at my grandmothers and nab the water filter off of the air compressor there.

 

Can't wait...

Have you gotten your Arduino circuit and code done yet?

 

I have not done the code yet. I do think I will be using an Arduino nano or one of the similar small Arduino clones. I am weighing my options on that with a friend who is an Arduino genius.

 

I painted my old bike frame in a digital camo style, I looked at proper stencils aswell and found them to be overly expensive for what they are. Then i came across a self adhesive drawer liner in a square pattern like below, all i did was cut the shapes i wanted with a scalpel. I think the whole role only cost 99p and theres enough of it to do at least 5 bikes!

 

I think the window kind of ruins it. This is a military-themed case after all. I realize that it's probably provided by the sponsor and thus you have no choice, but i thought i'd mention it anyways.

 

Can you be specific about the window? I am not a fan of cases with out a window as I like to show off my gear. In this case a window is needed to show off the water cooling and the interior mods, 2 of which will be essential to the theme.

I plan on taking a .50 cal ammo can and removing the stock 5.25" drive cage and replacing it with the ammo can. The bottom will be cut out of the ammo can and will become the end that the drives slide into. This will put the handle end facing the back of the case. This will provide me a very good place to hide wires and follow the theme. Exiting from the side of this new ammo can drive bay will be a 1.5-2 foot long belt of .50 bmg inert ammo.

 

I spent some time in sketchup tonight modeling the Armor+ from scratch. I am no where near finished but it is to scale and will provide me a virtual place to test out ideas before I commit to them.

So here is what I got finished tonight.












I hope to finish it tomorrow so stay tuned.

 

Did someone say pics?

This is the first batch of sponsored gear. The NZXT and Thermaltake gear came in last week.

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This is the damage done to the Thermaltake Armor+ box. You can see a crease running lengthwise near the top. This tells me that something heavy was set on top of it or it was dropped at some point. Incidentally the corner with the most damage is also the side that the broken door mount is on. UPS really dropped the ball this time.

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A big thanks to my sponsors Thermaltake, NZXT, and Plextor!!!!

So as of this posting I have in the following items:

1. Thermaltake
   • Armor+ super tower case Black
   • Coolant 1000 1000ml coolent kit
   • TMG2 Dual 120mm radiator with fans
   • Water level indicator rez kit
   • WB200 North Bridge Water block
   • Flow TX Plus
2. NZXT
   • Avatar 2600 DPI gaming mouse
   • Sentry 2 touch screen fan controller
   • 4 120mm fans. (2 solid black, 1 black with white blades, 1 clear with blue LED
3. Plextor
   • PX-880SA DVD/CD Super Multi Writer
   • PX-B320SA Blu-Ray reader / DVD and CD Super Multi Writer

I spent some time last night tearing down the LCD screen I will be using on the front of the case. I would like to thank Drum Thumper from TBCS for providing me with this screen via the TBCS TGIMBOEJ. The screen was intended to be attached to a PS2 making the gaming console portable. I apologize for the fuzzy pics. The module I use to handle images on my website is resizing my photos and the end result is a little fuzzy. I am working on fixing this problem.

The PS2 Screen


Tearing down the screen was quite simple. There were 6 screws I had to remove and then the back cover lifted off reveling the guts. Seen in this photo is the actual LCD module, sound controller board, two speakers, and another controller board that I am assuming was used to further process the sound output from the PSU.


Everything removed. I will only be using the LCD module. The rest will go in my electronics junk box for future hacking.


The actual screen measures 4 5/8" wide. With the metal case it measures very close to 5 1/2"


Diagonally the screen measures close to 5 3/4"


The back of the LCD screen module is where the connector is located. Drum Thumper provided me with the pin out schematic and I spent the night confirming that it works. It is easily interfaced with a D-Sub connection and a 12v supply from a 4pin molex. More on this later and I will post a schematic for all to see and reference. The screen is a Sharp LM6Q401 and the dimensions on it can be found here. ​

Finally I would like to show you some of the damage done to the Thermaltake Armor+ case during shipping. Thermaltake is sending me a replacement plastic piece.

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That's all for today. I hope to have another update this weekend. Tomorrow is my 26th birthday and I plan to have several adult beverages, do no power tool work for me.

 

Seriously how do couriers do that?

That box is propper mashed!

 

Big/light boxes get tossed. It's easier than walking it to the sorting destination. I've witnessed the clerk at the front desk fling a package into the sorting room rather than get up.

 

There was nothing light about this box. It must weight 50 lbs with the case in it. Either way the UPS guy was in the truck and gone before I could open the door much less check for damage. Thermaltake is graciously sending me a new plastic top for the case so I am not much worried about it.

I am the Editor in Chief over at TBCS and we have reviewed 30 cases or so since I took the position and this was the first damaged case I have seen. These manufacturers know they will get kicked around during transit and they package them in thick walled cardboard boxes with either Styrofoam or closed cell foam form fitted over the ends to protect them. The Styrofoam that was protecting this Armor sat flush with the top of the box and there was no room for the box to collapse from a small fall or light box being sat on top of it. This damage was done by something very heavy being sat on top or a decent fall of more than a foot or three. Then again it could have been in the hold of a Jet that hit rough turbulence and it got tossed around. We will never know the true cause of the damage but we can point a finger at who's responsible for it.