Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Der_Meister - custom alu case *Epilogue Nov 8th, 2007*

Freakin Beautiful.

 

I hate rammstein but loove this case! ***

 

Rammstein are brutal as ****, love the case. proper industrial like

 

thanks, we're not going to question anyone's taste in music here, right?

I've been doing some stuff on the side panel, preparing everything for the leds.

The next days I'm going to do some things that have nothing to do with the wiring, I'll post some pics later on.

 

and

People may love or hate Rammstein but everybody loves your case jokkos, very:

 

exactly, if you dont like rammstein im not going to say your crazy. some people say that to me because i do like them, or yngwie malmsteen, some people dont like led zepelin, but i like everything so....

anyways the case is great i wish i could do stuff like that, maybe one day.

 

The end is getting nearer – prepping side panel for leds and sound dampening stuff

Well, well finally I could change the header for my updates…the end is indeed getting nearer! But let’s not get carried away and focus…lol.

This is a short update with some pics about two things I’m working on.

The first one is prepping the side panel for the leds. I’m putting 20 UV leds in there, there will be 4 series of 3 leds and 4 series of 2 leds. To connect everything, I’ll use terminal blocks just as I did for the other UV leds.

Here’s a pic of the terminal blocks after dremeling off some bits and edges that sticked out. They need to be as small as possible and fit flawlessy after this dremel treatment. The page they’re on is the schematic for the wiring of the 20 leds…


I know the underside of some of the blocks look ‘wavy’ after the dremel action, but I’ll put them on their side so the underside doesn’t matter, the edge that was on it is gone and that’s what important.

Here are the eight blocks testfitted with some tape around the edges of the plexi. 7 of them are single blocks, one is a double. This is where the connection with the case will be made. The 4 blocks in the middle (between the ends of blue plexi) will have the +12V wire, the other 4 are for the ground wiring.


For the connection to the case, I chopped up a 3-pin extension cable, removed the third wire and connected one end in the case and the other on the side panel. There’s enough room to get the panel off, put my big hands in and unplug the connector…The wiring will of course but invisible since it’s tucked away together with all the other wiring of the front panel of the case.


That’s the last pic of this work. I did cut all the ends of wire for the ‘main line’ and test-mounted it all. It’s all pretty tight and therefore doesn’t stick for a long time…hence no pics. In short, I’m ready to start on the 8 led arrays I need to solder.


The other thing I’ve got some pics of, is something I really hate. Sound dampening matting. I hate to work with them for some reason. The one I’m using for this project is new to me, I never used it before and I have to say my reaction to it is quite positive. It cuts pretty easily, is a bit more flexible than usual…I kinda like it. That’s why I wanted to show you two pics of it. I’ve got no pics of the work in progress since it’s dull. You’ll see the result later on when everything is put together.

By the way, most of the matting will go in the hard disc area. I will also put a piece underneath the housing of the pump and maybe a few small ends close to the pump to cut some of the vibration noises. That’s about it.

Here’s the box of the stuff I’m using. It weighs a lot!


There are only 4 pieces inside, but they are pretty thick. And oh so blue…There is actually a very thick fifth piece, that is imo too thick to use (in this case).


Well, that’s it for today. I did tell you it was going to be short right? I will be able to do a lot (I hope) of work later this week…problably the leds since the little buggers will have to get done sooner or later anyway. See you soon!

 

nice ideas,,

But wich hardware did you use?

 

jokkos, your useing the same sound dampening foam as me, it actually very good but it's made my case weigh a ton.

Jimbo

 

Jeeze man, great craftsmanship! :thumbsup

 

great work man hope you get it done soon glad you decided on leds instead of cclf's.
great work.

 

OMG!
Your work is going to be my favourite mod!!!
Go on,keep on modding,I can't wait to see the panel with all the led!
Good work,really good craftmanship :-]
See you!

 

that vid card stealth wiring thing is really something

 

thanks all,

I've been doing some stuff but don't have a lot of time to photoshop the pics and write the update. So I guess it will probably have to wait until monday or so. Sorry, real life gets in the way again...

 

The end is getting nearer – all kinds of loose ends

Well here is another update. I’ve been doing a lot of different stuff, I’ve got a few pics of some of it.

I finished cutting and prepping the pieces of sound dampening material. As always, I started with the idea of making only a few and eventually I made quite a lot of pieces. This should ensure a lot of extra silencing in the hard disc area. I also made a piece that will go underneath the pump (the one in the top left corner of the pic). Maybe I’ll need some more in the pump area, although I doubt they would be very effective since I can’t cover a lot of that area up.



I also sleeved the bulgins. This was a pretty symbolic task since it was the last thing in my planning concerning the wiring. Okay, in the meantime I changed my mind on the side panel so now there’s still the led work left, but it finally feels like the wiring is about finished.


And another one.



Another thing I did was make the smoked plexi piece that will go in the fake bottom. It adds 3mms of extra space for the RCA cables that go to the vid card, in the same way as the piece I made for the RCA cables to to optical bay does. Anyway, I just wanted to show you a pic, the sides are pretty damn narrow (3mm and 5mm), was quite hard to cut.


The last bit of actual ‘modding’ I did was work on the sticker for the logo panel. I said earlier that I had it printed out on vinyl…looks good. It changed the way I need to apply it, since the vinyl isn’t transparant I can’t stick it to the backside of the smoked plexi piece that comes in front of the logo panel, but I need to stick it to the mesh and blue plexi pieces. Here is the sticker, the white parts need to be cut out. You see my weapon of choice next to the sticker.


Cutting this was one of the hardest things I did till now on this mod. Reason: there is really too little spacing between the letters of the ‘Der_Meister’ part…but nevertheless it turned out pretty nice. Here you see that part done and sticked on the uv blue plexi part.


The rest of the sticker was easy…here’s the final result:


After it was cut, it was time to try it out. So I sticked a few of the UV led arrays behind it and lit it up. And well, even the non-transparant vinyl was not enough to completely hide the direct shine of the leds…d’oh!
But then I got a break. The original sticker I printed myself is still on the smoked plexi piece. When I put that in front of the new sticker (and they match prefectly!), the leds are no longer visible. Plus the double sticker hides all the small imperfections of my cutting. So that will be the way to go. I do need to print out a new one to stick on the smoked plexi, the one that’s currently on it got scratched and damaged a bit. As long as I can stick it on exactly the same place, it’ll be okay and I’ll finally get the result I want.

That’s it for the modding part. But that’s not all I’ve been doing. While working on the logo panel sticker, I realised that the other stickers and labels for the case are all ‘in-progress’, but that’s about all you can say about them. So I spent some hours turning them into a more finished state in photoshop. I’ll post the final designs soon so you can get a glimpse of my ideas, and maybe give some better ones!

 

great work man .
by the way do you have any pic of the wiring of the bulgins? mine don't work properly i have 2 one for the power with power led and 1 for reset with hdd activity .
keep up the good work man.

 

Every thing looks great. Great dethails

 

if I think of it, I'll make a pic of one asap. If you don't see one soon, send me a pm or so...

but there's nothing much to it...two pins are for the switch, + and - are not an issue there, the two other pins (marked with a + and - sign next to them on the plastic part of the bulgin) are for the led...pretty straightforward?!

 

Really good,if in the beginning was a good project now it turns in a COOL project!Keep on,I can't wait to see the end! :-]

 

hey, as promised here are two pics that will make it clear...I hope

First take a look at this pic:


The two white wires are on the inner side, they are for the switch and it doesn't matter which one you connect to which contact...

The red and black are the + and - for the LED, they are on the contacts on the outer edge of the switch.

If you look closely, you'll see + and - signs on the plastic of your switch. Like this:

They show you where to connect the + and - wire of the LED.

I can't show you more, but it should be clear enough now...but if you think of it, it all makes perfect sense: the part of the switch you press is in the middle and around it is the led ring...and the contacts for the switch are towards the middle and the contacts for the led are 'around' them...