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Project : FX-57 MaxPC RotM, Sept.2006!!!!!

Discussion in 'Project Logs' started by Tech-Daddy, 10 May 2006.

  1. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    anitHero - Pics are up and working. I'm sorry if you are having problems viewing them. Server may have been down for maintainence last night.

    Please let me know if youare still having problems looking at them.

    Because I host them on my free space with my provider, the comcast.net in the address *may* be causing a filtering error. I know that some other Internet providers do not like comcast addresses, and black list the domain due to a sizable population of computer users that seem to enjoy getting infected with crap and then pushing out bulk email to everyone else...

    *ANYWAY*... :)

    Please let me know if the pics do not show for you again.
     
  2. Shadowed_fury

    Shadowed_fury Minimodder

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    Pics working fine for me.
    Hell of a nice job your doing mate! :)
     
  3. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Oct27th - speaker grills found... and FREE!!!

    Swung by Earmark car audio (USA, Texas "local", might not be in the UK! ;) ) car this afternoon, and picked up 2 free 6x9 speaker grills.... *perfect* for what I need them to do!!! :rock:

    They had boxes of these things just sitting there!

    I asked them "Hey, when you guys upgrade speakers, what do you do with the old protective grilles from the replaced speakers?" guy takes me to the back and pulls out a box and starts handing me grills!!!!

    Heheheh... so keep that one in you back pocket the next time you need a small bit of mesh!
    ;)
     
  4. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Oct.29th - video card fan customizations....

    Working on the video cards, since I got the fans back (Thanks PoMan!)
    Did a little custom work to the cards. They have a little fan shroud that is anodized to nearly the same color as the heatsinks:
    [​IMG]

    That just would not do in my case... ;)
    So I hit them with a good layer of camoflauge black (think super matte black)
    [​IMG]

    Then I used a sanding block *very lightly* on the raised lettering of the shroud to strip the color off and leave the letters their brushed aluminium color.
    [​IMG]

    I then vinyl dyed the power cables for each of the fans with black, and then mounted the fans and routed the cables:
    [​IMG]

    And then installed the shroud....
    [​IMG]
    WOO HOO!! I like that look! but I dont want to get too happy, because as I was trying to do the same actions to the fan on the other card... my power/signal/ground lines started popping off
    [​IMG]

    *&@(#&(%$@!!!!!

    By the time I got it back to my bench, the power *and* the ground had said "Hasta la vista..." to their respective solder points on the back of the fan...

    So I broke the last remaining one, and will now be working on resoldering the lines back onto the existing solder points. (fingers crossed).

    However, both of the cards will look like the above unit. I left the bottoms of the fan shrouds the gold color to aid in reflection of the light, but the top is the nice, even matte black.
     
  5. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Oct.31st - lighting under the motherboard... did not work out in the end. :(

    Woo Hoo! Fixed the fan for the video card! Got it tested and mounted... yes!

    Started working on the case framework tonight, specifically the under motherboard lighting and the bottom lighting. I'm going to attach 2 12" red metor lights under the case to light up the space between the case and the desktop. Cool thing about this is that the lights are programable, and will run through 7 different patterns. After experimenting tonight, I'll be running either a strobed chase or a gentle throbbing....
    [​IMG]


    The under motherboard lighting wil be handled by these cool little jobbies from Sunbeam. They are a set of rubber enclosed LED's on a flexible ribbon track (rubber completely surrounds all of this), with centers on the LED's that are 15mm apart. So, the picture below is the lighting in place with a box that is approximately the same dimensions as an ATX board. I put it over the lights in the approximate position that they will be in, to gauge if they would put out the light, they did!
    [​IMG]

    Here are the lights all on their lonesome, aimed down onto the mobo tray:
    [​IMG]

    Me marking the approximate path of the line of lights, I cut out a 15 mm piece of posterboard, and used it to mark each of these, center to center. I'm not concerned about the straightness of the lines on this, I just wanted to get the concept rolling. I'll clean up the straightness of the path tomorrow.
    [​IMG]

    And after I popped the 7 rivets on the motherboard tray to allow me to use the drill press properly, the front and the back nearly fell over on this thing! Heheheh... I'd say the mobo tray is an active and significant portion of the frame rigidity!!!
    ;)

    [​IMG]

    Too late for me to dremmel or drill tonight, so I'll hit it tomorrow! More then!
     
  6. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Oct.31st - lighting under the motherboard... did not work out in the end. Part 2:(

    Quickie update.

    Drilled the holes... and I am an IMPATIENT guy!
    What happened to me?!?!? Oh... it must be the looming DEADLINE that made me throw out the "calculate every cut 6 times"... ;)

    So, the holes are not straight by any stretch, but then they do not have to be. They will be covered by the motherboard, and the light will be cast out the edges. Here are 2 pics of the work, has not been filed out, or finished, but you get the idea!

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  7. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.1st - hid sight is 20/20...

    thinking about why I had such a hard time keeping the line straigt, if any of you have need to to something like this in the future, get a block of wood that will let you take the tray off of the drilling surface "high ehough" to get the rolled edges off of the surface.

    Because I had these in contact with the drilling platform, whenever I would press with the bit, the surface would flex since there was space under the steel.

    Learn from my mis-step (as I Have), and keep blocks of wood that are the size of your drilling platform handy. I'm going to cut some down tonight to fit my rig. That will keep this from happening again. :duh:

    ;)
     
  8. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.2nd - timline relief and celebration!!!

    Hehehe, just found out tonight that the CM contest deadline has been bumped back to Dec. 11th! That gives me 1.5 weeks longer to pull off my mod!

    So, to celebrate I committed to an optional mod that I was thinking about doing, but did not think I'd have enough time to pull off!

    If I was not a modder, and did not have a window going on the rig, then the sliders on the drive bays would absolutely rock! But, I'm a window nut, and I just cant stand the sight of those things... soooo... OFF WITH IT'S HEAD!!!

    [​IMG]

    I'm going to custom craft drive bays for the CD ROM(s) and any front facing devices. Materials that I am considering are either mesh, acrylic, or (what I'm considering) sandwiching some UV reactive orange acrylic inside of brushed aluminimum. I'm leaning very heavily to the last one, as I can cut the drive screw holes and paint the aluminium gloss black (like the frame will end up. I'm thinking that the edges will erupt with glowing orange if I embed a UV LED or 2 into the acrylic. The drive bays will not be the full height of the case, but instead built to only house the device that needs the support. Essentially, I build a 5.25 bay from the top that is riveted to the front and the top of the frame and it will support the optical drive, and the 3.5 inch bays will be built in a similar fashion, with embeded lighting.

    So, I have now committed to this.
    It will either be lit, sandwiched, meshed or a combo of these techniques.

    And tomorrow, I go over to Harbor Freight and buy my bending brake to make this all happen!
    ;)
     
  9. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.3rd - SLI conversion, how to do it *safely* :)

    Ok, just dropped the nice, white LED into the power "VU" meter attachment, we'll see where I put that little meter! ;)

    Light is bright enough to light up the meter, but not soo bright that it blanches it.

    Now, I've got a plan on the power cabling. I'm going to have to build each leg of the power supply lines to allow for length and appearance.

    This PS is *not* the SLI version of this line. It does have one PCI-e extension, however I need 2 (obviously). Now... here is the interesting rub...

    This PS has 3 rails. 12v1,12v2, and 12v3....

    The primary 4 pin molexes are on 12v1
    The mobtherboard is on 12v1
    The 12v 8pin P2 connector is on 12v2 *unused*
    The 12v 4 pin P3 connector is on 12v2
    The 6 pin P4 workstation connector, it's 12v (2 of them) is on 12v3. *unused*
    The 6 pin P5 PCI-e connector is on 12v1

    so here was what I was thinking....
    create the other PCI-e connector that I need out of the unused 12v and ground lines from the connectors left over!!lines from the P4 and the P2 connectors. This would put the PCI-e connectors on seperate rails to draw from.

    (IIRC, I ended up using the 8pin P2 connector for this. On it's own rail, and it was nothing more than 12v lines and ground lines. Was a *perfect* translation for the connector on this unit!) :thumb:
     
  10. Klekkus

    Klekkus What's a Dremel?

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    Nice, i like that scoop on the top.

    Ohh, FX57 :love: I hope you win some prices ;)
     
  11. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    I hope so too!
    The CoolerMaster competition already happened, and alas, I did not win. Top final 5 of the competition though was filled with some serious talent!

    coolmiester's AWESOME Sound+Vision

    _ferry_'s unique and exceptional The praetorian mod

    mr_kholl's astounding Bluetrack #2

    SuAsDu's TribalEclipse

    and my BOSS:FX-57 (that you are reading on right now).

    mr_kholl ended up taking the competition with his awe inspiring execution on Bluetrack #2, but every one of us "brought the A game" to the final round. Was really inspiring to see how everyone responded and stepped it up a couple of notches for their final submissions.

    I know coolmiester and _ferry_ frequent here @ bit-tech, I believe this is where I saw their work first, prior to the contest! So, there was some good representation happening from here!
    ;)
    :clap: :clap: :clap:
     
  12. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.5th - Morning of the brake...

    Took a few hours this morning and built a bending station for the bending brake I picked up from Harbor Freight this last week.

    I figured after I thought about how it was going to work, that I might need the ability to have the work possibly suspended under the bending brake from either side, depending on the way the bend needed to be oriented.

    Attaching it to my bench would have limited me on how the material was to be handled. This way, I have all that free space under the brake to allof for hte material to be under the bending surface, if it is needed.

    :)

    Started out with 3 wall studs, 8ft in length.
    [​IMG]

    Cut it down to the sizes I needed for the frame:
    [​IMG]

    Framed it and gave it feet, then added in two supports to the feet.
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Attached the brake to the top, and used 2 1/2 inch 1/4" bolts and a corresponding washer and nut on the bottom... TADAA!!!!
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Oh, and here is my mascot...
    [​IMG]
    If *ever* you have wondered "Why?" it takes me a bit longer to do most of my mods... now you are looking at her!!! ;)
     
  13. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.9th - I love it when you mull over a problem, and hit a good solution!!!

    ;)

    Gave me time to mull over my drive bay creation problem, and came up with a solution. What I *dont* like about the Coolermaster drive bays are those dang tooless sliders. So, to keep my dimensions right and tight on the 5.25 and 3.5 areas, I'm sticking with the original framework of the drive bays (why reinvent the wheel, eh?) but stripping off the plastic tooless sliders and springs that annoy me to no end. By doing this, it will allow me to keep the original Coolermaster steel that already fits all of the rivet holes, the front bezel mount holes, etc. So, I strip those off, and pull off the supporting steel work that acted as the slider guides, and that will give me the 5.25 bay that I can *then* wrap my acrylic acround and then a bent and painted piece of alu over that to sandwich in all that color!

    Much easier!

    I had been beating my head against paper mock ups trying to get my drive spacing, hole allignment, depth and length, etc to all come out right.... then it hit me (kinds like one of those Outback steakhouse boomerangs, but I didn't leave to go eat after the inspiration!) and I went to town on my bays!

    Pics are boring... use your imagination! ;)
     
  14. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.14th - "Oh the plans of mice and men...."

    Hacked holes this weekend, side window, top blow hole. Forgot to upload the pics, will get to them tonight.


    Looking for a local powder coater for the frame (gloss black)... want to sneak this into another run so that there is little to no additional prep work for whomever it is that provides the service.

    Lots of wrap up filing to make the beastie as smooth as possible, with finished holes.

    The connectors that I spoke of earlier in another thread are going to look SO sweet with this!

    Going to build a black acrylic bracket to mount the recepticles in to, and then I'll cut the power transmission lines to size, and solder them onto the plugs. Then using the other side of the attachment, I'll put the power lines, PCI-e power, and SATA power through those adaptors!

    :D

    (que muzik)
    "Come togethaaa!! ... riiiight now.... "

    ------------------
    *note* - my power bracket did not make the final build... not yet at least! Going to require a bit of re-engineering to make it safe and not cause flames to magically appear! ;) )
     
  15. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.18th-My love for powdercoat is born!

    I'll get more pics up tonight, but here is a taster/teaser of the 1st piece I pulled from the box... (*hint* I found a powdercoater locally that would work with me without killing my $$$ and making my wallet cry...)

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]

    Mmmmmmm!
    ;)

    Also picked up my striping from the sign shop today, looks good!
     
  16. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.18th-My love for powdercoat is born!

    Yummy frame shots!
    ;)

    We're all family here, so I can talk like that... :D

    The 3.5 bay that resides directly below the 5.25 bay area. This frame actually has 2 sets of these, however I chose to pull the bottom most one in favor of airflow (it blocked the fan, and I was not going to have a drive down that far anyway...)
    [​IMG]

    This is an outter shot with the mobo tray in the forground. All of these pieces are clean. Any white "spots" you see are not dust flecks or the like... they are pin sized reflections coming off of the smooth and glossy surface.
    [​IMG]


    I'm going to get a better pic of this, but this was to show just how smooth it went into all of the little nooks. cranys and bends of the case... this is the power supply area, and, specifically, the rear exhaust point of hte case. Look in the corner that frames the exhaust fan. I *always* have had problems getting this section even... no worries on this one! ;)
    [​IMG]


    Check out the reflection off the base section of the case!!!
    [​IMG]


    The 5.25 bays:
    [​IMG]


    Another shot of the frame....
    [​IMG]


    You may notice some holes in the framework of the 3.5 and the 5.25 sections of the case. I cut out sections of steel that were standing too tall and would interfere with this next section of modding... you'll see shortly!


    This weekend is going to be a big time push for me so be looking for some pretty serious updates from my side tomorrow and Sunday!
     
  17. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Riveted it all back toghether! (except for the top pieces and the skins... MMmmmmmmm.....

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Tired folks... headed to bed.
     
  18. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.20th-fan grill standoffs

    I'm building my back grill for the rear exhaust on the case. But it will be a mirror of this one, from a construction standpoint.


    Cut the acrylic to size, tap the holes in the corners:
    [​IMG]

    Add on a vinyl covering that makes it look like carbon fiber:
    [​IMG]

    And then bolt it into the PSU cover with stanoffs under it to give enough space between the mag and the center of the fan:
    [​IMG]

    more later after I finish the rear exhaust!
     
  19. Guest-23315

    Guest-23315 Guest

  20. Tech-Daddy

    Tech-Daddy What's a Dremel?

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    Nov.21st-fan grill standoffs

    Case fan grill pics.
    I screwed up when I bought my nuts and bolts tonight... both of my packages of nuts were supposed to be lock nuts with nylon inserts... only one was...

    So, these pics are the grill, spacers, and fan (sans lock nuts) so that you can see what is in store!
    ;)

    More later!
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     

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