I have browsed this site for a while now and decided to post a worklog here finally. When I started this project my camera was not at the house so we jump right into the mod/tear down pictures. This is not a major mod, but instead mostly a clean-up to make the case look newer. I got this computer from an uncle of mine that is in real estate and bought a house and this came with it. He could think of no use for an old out of date computer, so he gave it to me. It had a beige aluminum case and well... I will let the pictures tell you the stats: yes. That says in bold letters, "This computer is NEVER OBSOLETE" right next to the writing that listed its stats.... which are just mind blowing: 400 Mhz Intel Celeron processor 32 mb of RAM (I checked, they upgraded to 128 mb wooot! ) 4.3 gb Hard Drive 32x CD-Rom 56k Modem!! GASP and of course, 4 mb On board AGP graphics Well... ok, so the stats are pretty crappy, but I figure if I drop in a larger hard drive and put a TV-Tuner card in it, it will be able to record television at least, it doesnt need to be able to play the video, just record it. Keeping on the idea of having it as a computer I want to have in the living room, I am going to give it a flat black paint job, and probably do some work to lower fan noise. Not a hard mod, just simple stuff to get started. So, I have sanded down the outer casing to bare metal (mostly) I have access to powder coating tools and am debating whether or not I want to spend the time getting the paint out of every nook and cranny and then powder coat it, or just paint the sucker: And torn apart the front panel/bezel, I am planning on finding some flat black vinyl dye to use on most of these parts: here is a picture of everything in one place, kinda cluttered: Sorry for the horrible grammer/spelling mistakes, not my forte
It looks like this project should be interesting, considering powder coating isn't something everyone does , just please put better specs in the comp, those make me cry ; ;
they made me laugh, but I am on an extreme budget at the moment, and really for its purpose, I dont think it needs much better stats, and if it doesnt work out for a media recorder, I have another project in mind for it, but... that will wait until later.
Well, I have decided to powder coat it and have ordered the powder, so that meant I needed to get it down to bare metal everywhere. The powder will not stick to the old paint, and if it does, the paint will probably bubble up when you stick it in the oven. So... that meant an additional 2-3 hours with a dremel and sanding disks going around the entire case finding all the little nooks and crannies that the paint could get into and sanding it off. What i thought would take the longest, actually was the easiest, sanding around the "e" from the eMachine logo. Here is the result from the detail sanding around the entire case: I realize the flash kinda washed parts of the picture out, but when I took the picture with no flash, it didnt look nearly as impressive... So what did take the longest was the little lip that slides under the front bezel, it was a pain, the paint was harder here, and in order to get the best angle I had to stand up, I am at least gratefull to those flex shafts they make for the dremel, without that, my arm would be killing me. Here is a picture of the lip that goes under the bezel: I think this is the end of the case work for the evening, and due to work, it probably will not be until next week-end before i have more pictures, but I will continue to answer any questions.
Quick question: will u bondo up those holes at the bottom and the "e" so its a smooth surface? and any window?
WEll, I am not sure how bondo and powder coating will go together, but I did think about it for the e since it looks kinda stupid. I will have to ask around but I think that the powder will not stick to the bondo, and then I have to find out if the bondo can go through the oven, anyone know? As for a window when I first saw the e I was going to just cut a window out and then have the problem solved, but the e is on the back side of the case, so that is a no go, but since I might want to add a vent fan at a later date, and i have been itching to cut another one, a window could still be in the forcast, but I still have some time to decide. The holes will provide some ventilation so I have no plans to bondo them or otherwise fill them. I have to work odd hours during the week so most of the case work will be done on weekends.
no you cannt powder coat bondo you can only powder coat metal so the entire case would have to be completely sanded down to bare metal so im my view not really worth it
well then, kill the e? maybe make a window on one side, and cut it out on the other side and replace it w/ opaque plexi and etch it. no e's on either side, cheap plexi mods in both places, and they can be done w/ the powder coating
I used to have one of those cases from my emonster 500a that my dad bought back in 1999. Still have it, its right next to me, and I still use it everyday. Of course, its lost all touch with its emachines roots. New case, clean OS, etc. I did mod it up about 2 years ago though, put a window in and painted the case grey (no prep work on it though, just paint lol) and some handles and blowholes. I would go with Muon and just cut out both sides, put clear plexi in the components side and opaque plexi on the other side. You could etch it, or it would look quite good just plain, sort of a clean "minimalist" to it. Very nice work so far, must have taken forever to get the strange paint emachines uses off.
A frosted plexi look wouldnt be to bad, and it sounds like a plan. The E will get cut out (didnt need much prodding, I love cutting stuff with my dremel ). As for the paint the large areas came off fairly easily, but it sent up lots of paint dust, and since I am rather fond of my lungs I put on a air filter mask. I started off the sanding with a palm sander that did a really clean job and removed the paint from the large areas easily. Then after all the large areas were done I switched to a triangle detail sander and got as close as I could to all of the grooves. These two steps took probably about an hour or two. This is where I would have probably left it if I was going to prime->paint it, but since I decided to go with the powder coating, I needed to get it down to bare metal all over it. So I got to whip out my dremel with its sanding disks and go to town... for over two hours... and about 7 sanding disks (harbor freight cheapness)... It went fast for me though once I got brought in a high stool, my mp3 player with some disturbed, and just got to work. But the dust it kicked up was really strange stuff, it didnt smell acrid at all, but kinda sweet...
Lotso Pictures today. My grandpa used to live out in the country and when he died he left the property to my parents, that is where we have the powdercoating stove (cant use an oven that you use for cooking because of the fumes). Here is my case on an over rack with the powdercoating gun set up and hooked onto it. As you can see, the barn is not in the best of shape with some water leaking through and staining the wall, but hey, its a nice big work area so I am not complaining if it looks like crap. Close up of the powdercoating gun: Closeup of my case: The oven is just big enough for the case to fit in, and to make it fit we had to wire the sides of the case together to prevent it from spreading apart when it was hanging, so it looks like its badly bent in the pictures, but it really is not bad and when the wire was undone it sprang right back into shape. I have only powdercoated one thing before and it was a long time ago so I had my dad demontrate how to do it again: This is why you dont use an over you want to cook in: Here is the case after it when throught the oven and before it cooled off enough to pull out: You cant see it in that picture, but I goofed up and put it on to heavy which caused bumps on the top, and then I messed up the bottom and put it on to light so it didnt cover all the metal on the bottom. So I decided to sand it and put another coat on, I was unsure how it would turn out because we havent ever double coated anything, or attempted to sand/re-powder the object. Here is the sand job: It was getting late, so I decided to put off re-coating/re-baking it until the next day, so I did a side project which included one of those disposable digital CVS camcorders and adding a tripod mount. The next day I used it to make a video of re-powdering then baking the case, its kinda boring and I did it only for fun, but here is the link anyway (first movie I have made of a mod, sooo.. yeah) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rRUb_KBBGA After baking it again, I had to come back to my apartment right away so I dont have any pictures of the re-coated case right now, but I have to say it didnt come out as well as I had hoped because you can still see the sanded areas as a lighter area on the flat black, but its not *to* bad, so I think I can live with it, unless I find a way to fix it, we shall see. In other news I still need to pick up some vinyl dye, but that should be relatively easy to accomplish.
Its been a long time, I know, but I was busy with other matters and I was trying to find some vinyl dye of soem sort. I first made a trip out to a local car part store and bought some, "Vinyl seat and plastic Dye" on the back it said it was also good for dashboard covers so I thought it sounded like what I needed. To find out how I needed to prep my surfaces, I did some test sprays (unfortunatly I did not take pictures) They were failures, the dye did not soak in correctly in all places and left a very patchy covering. I did a few more tests, but they all came out about the same. So, I went to another auto part store and bought this stuff: Then I did some more tests: If you look closely at the picture, you will see there are three seperate sections on the plastic. The plastic peice I used was a part of an old case that had been painted silvery. On the far right in the image you can see my first test spray. I masked the left with er... masking tape, heh. To prepare the surface I just cleaned it with Denatured Alcohol and then I sprayed it. I could tell right away something was wrong, it had places on the plastic where it refused to stick, and it took a heavy coating to cover these. On the second trial I sanded the surface down to clean plastic and sprayed again after wiping it with the denatured alcohol. On this one it worked nearly perfectly. It went on smooth and dried fast. So I moved onto a small part of my "new" case. As you can see it worked pretty much perfectly. Next we move onto the cd-rom plastic, and after that the entire front panel.
Krylon fusion spray paint hey, nice build. I decded to follow your build because i want to build a PC myself. I was curious as to why would you prep your plastic surfaces when using Krylon fusion spray paint. I have used this brand of spray paint since it's introduction and I would swear by it. There were commercials aired in my neck of the woods about it and it stated you didn't have to prep the surfaces becauses it microscopically will bond to all kinds of plastic surfaces with no prepping. So I did just what the commercial said you don't have to do, all except for using ordinary soap and water to remove any degradients and an old toothbrush. All of my spyay painted plastics look almost manufactured. I have used this brand of paint exclusively in my job, I am a professional auto customizer. I 've sparyed fiber glass, ABS, PVC, etc... with really good results. My job calls for on off Items because some parts can't be found so we have to make them and one of my pride and joys is my plastic welding tool. after welding plastic I fill in where I need to with body filler thoroughly clean the partd with just soap and water and a toothbrush, spray paint the part and you could never tell it was made. I have to figure out how to post pics on this site so i can my first pc build with bit-tech and then I'll show my results
My test piece came from a different computer and I think that they painted the plastic a silvery color. So when I sprayed my test piece the fusion paint did not stick uniformly, it drew together like when you put water on a waterproof surface that has grease on some areas. That is why I sanded the next section of the test piece and when I sanded it, it turned out better, but it was dull in places. On the actual peice I wanted to have it perfect and since I have never worked with it before I decided to play it safe, also, the plastic had a rough texture to it and I wanted it to end up nice and smooth so I wet sanded it down to smooth plastic. To get the grease from my fingers and remaining dust from the sanding off I used the Denatured Alcohol before I sprayed. I had never heard of fusion before I saw it in the auto store, so I didnt, and to a large degree, still dont know what to expect, but the slot cover I painted turned out very well, and I would have sanded it anyway to get the roughness of the plastic out.
This is looking pretty sweet. I was contemplating doing powdercoating at home too and it doesn't seem too bad. Its also cool that you're using an old emachines since i have a fleet of those laying around but instead of modding mine, i did this to it.
Nice work so far. A side note: While you can not powerder coat bondo, you can powerder coat JB weld . So you can always get some of that and put it in the groves and sand the living hell out of it.
