Case Mod - In Progress Project: Sipderman Junior

First of all, I would like to share a few lines about who I am and why I am doing this.

In January 2006 I was diagnosed with sever Rheumatoid Arthritis, although we had known for 6 months that I had it it takes a while to get specialist hospital appointments in the UK.

At the time I ran my own shop selling new computers, upgrades, repairs, consumables etc.

We wound the shop down later on in 2006, and in September 2006 I started lurking on mod sites and forums including this one wishing I was well enough to do something like this, but knowing as I could not walk, nor hold a normal knife and fork it would never happen.

Now, after a change of specialist and much more aggresive treatment I am leading a somewhat normal life, and decided there is nothing more I would like to do than my own case mod.


So, after speaking to my youngest kid (9) he showed me a spiderman case mod he had seen on the interweb. So, the desire and drive to do something, and finally some inspiration, nothing as compicated as the mod he showed me, but something with a webbed side window and some red fans with spider web guards maybe.

As this is my first ever attempt, despite being quite technical but having the manual dexterity of a brick don't expect wonders, but come share with me this journey down a road I never thought I would travel, and see if I can make a 9 year old kid happy with his new case.


I have two identical cases left over from the shops own PCs one of which my lad is already using with an ECS duron onboard job running at about 2Ghz with 512MB DDR. He uses the PC for surfing, playing games such as the Lego series, and the odd bit of homework on MS Publisher. I did not get any real before shots, but will fill these in later with his current PC. I will fit him new innards when the work is completed, but it will be tightly budgeted due to his needs.

In the meantime the other case got dismantled, and after taking the sides front and top off I got some shots of the rivet locations for reassembly:








Reading all the modding forums for so long of course I had read a great deal about Bondo but had no idea what it was, so I went to a local modeling shop and bought some milliput. It is two part filler type stuff used in modeling. Big mistake. The milliput is the green looking stuff on the next picture, with P38 car body filler used on the rest of it as I learnt fro my first mistake. It took ages to mix, left my hands useless for the rest of the day and took ages to set. The filler I used to replace was a dream, exactly like I imagine bondo to be.



The excess filler on here is because it started raining so I grabbed the panels and put them inside without thinking. When I went back to them the not quite set filler had leaked through the grill onto the panel below, I am sure this will sand off easily enough though.



And finally the front of the case. This had some sort of perspex sheet on top of the silver plastic but looks cheap and nasty. When I took the acrylic out to get the photo of them side by side I started thinking about leaving it off, flattening the profile of the remaining panel and maybe using some sort of sheet aluminium to cover it, still thinking about that though.





As you can see form the close up it looks doable just by using the dremel to clean up the front



My dremel is out on loan at the moment to someone using it for tile cutting, but should be back here in a day or two, and if the weather improves I should be able to continue the side panels.

Next update I will upload the picture being used for the side panel window too.

 

dont rush mate,

when filling large holes like those grill holes, use P40 its got fibre glass in it and creates a great bridge over a hole. other than that you could place a piece of sheet metal behind it and use the P38. but epoxy the sheet in first.

good luck!

 

In my experience a simpel peace of tape on de back side of the panel wil help while filling. (keeping the filler in the gaps, instead of pushing it threw)
After drying this is still simple to remove.

 

@ Burnout21, it is tempting to rush through, but I want the result to look quality, so I am trying to be patient. I canonly spend so much per week so the P40 would have to wait til next week now. The actual holes in the grill have simply been cut and then pushes through into a backward V on the underside, would you just strip this with the dremel before mounting new sheet metal?

@ Duthgrass, how tidy does it look inside after this? Ultimately it will be hidden by the motherboard tray but I wanted to paint the inside of the side too :-S