OK, my first post here - and yes this is another ammo box mod. It's got a few differences from the ones done so far. The one main idea that got me started was to have linked bullets coming out of the case and over the side. I hadn't seen that done before, that was until I found bit-tech and this thread: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=82373&highlight=ammo I'm only able to work on it one or two days a week, but it's going together quickly. I admit that it's partially because I'm not bothering to "gussy up" the parts that no one will see. So if you're not sick of ammo boxes, and don't have a problem with sloppy hidden construction - read on! This is what started it all. I aquired some spent shells and links from a friend. Next I won an auction for 100 spent tracer rounds on ebay. I used "Brasso" to clean both parts, wiped them off with isopropyl alcohol, glued the shells and tracers together and then gave them two coats of automotive carnuba wax. I've got my fingers crossed that they won't tarnish too quickly. The picture on the left is the before, and the right is after. Here is a picture of a "Fat 50" or "S.A.W. Box" (Squad Automatic Weapon) ammo can. I bought two of these at a local surplus store. Here's what I'm using as an exhaust fan. It's an Intel Pentium IV heatsink fan. I got out the dremel and cut away just enough to allow it to fit in the space I had available. I also drilled four holes in it to be able to bolt it to the case. I cut out a mobo tray and back plate from a junked case. The mobo is an old spare that I don't mind frying if something goes wrong with the construction. If I remember right it's a Pentium II. I also shortened the mobo tray and cut part of the opening for the exhaust fan. To make the cases more "stealthy" I moved the power, reset and LED's to the back panel of the mobo tray. Here is a view of the bottom box with the lid in place. You can see that there is a raised bump on the bottom of the box, it's so you can stack boxes on top of each other. The handle of one box fits into the raised portion of the other. I used a hammer to flatten the bump as best I could, otherwise the fans wouldn't mount properly. You can also see that I have cut the back of the box to allow the mobo tray to slide in. Here's a shot of the upper box. This one has more cutting than the lower. I cut out the bottom of the case, area for the top of the mobo tray, exhaust fan and power supply. You can also see the hard drive. Here's a view of the HD from the top. If I'm lucky there will be enough space between the HD and case to prevent overheating. While I'm still test assembling, I'm using an old 7 gig drive - so if it melts it's no big deal. Now here's a pretty site! Twenty five .50 caliber shells, all linked together. My hands still ache from all the polishing and waxing. It's darn heavy too. I had thought about filling the shells with sand so they would weigh about the same as if they had gunpowder - but I decided not to bother. That's it for today!
Project: Stacked Ammo Boxes - Discussion Thread http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=101182 Comments, questions, critisizm? Go for it!
Well, here it is! It's up and running with a Pentium II, 128 megs of ram and a 7 gig hd. I think I'll leave it up and running for a while to see how it goes before getting a better system to drop into it. Eventually I would like to get something in the 2 Ghz range with 512 ram and a 300 gig hd, and use it as a file server. Onboard video and sound would be fine, and help with keeping the temps low. About my only concern is the heat. I'm currently using a couple spare 80mm fans for intake, and I'm not sure how good they are. About the only things left to do are to paint all the parts in the back to match the case, and install about five red LED's pointing up out of the bullet slot so it glows red when the lights are turned off. Not too bad when you consider that I have less than $50 into this case at this point! On with the rest of the log.... Here are the cases stacked on top of each other before mounting anything inside. Both boxes sitting on top of each other with the mobo, HD and fans mounted. I haven't screwed anything together at this point. View from the back before installing the power supply or fan. Here's the top lid with bullets exiting the slot in the top. Closeup of the bullets exiting the slot. I took the first bullet in the chain and drilled two 1/8 inch holes into it. I then drilled two matching holes in the folded back flap left from cutting the slot. Finally, I used a rivet gun to rivet the bullet to the flap. Final (close enough) pics:
Well, pretty much done. The only things left are to put a better PC in it, paint the back panel green to match the boxes and hot glue about 5 red LED's pointing up out of the bullet slot. I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon though - I'll be too busy around the house to get to it for a while. This whole thing has only cost me about $50 so far. I know the back and insides aren't much to look at, but no one should be looking at them anyway. Thanks for your time!
for the power button, you could do like i saw someone do for a CS case, place aswitch into the bullets shell casing, and use the tip to press the switch top down. it looks well good as for the case A+++ nice one
I bought a used PC, and installed it. The box is now running a 2.8Ghz Celeron D, 1 Gig of RAM and a 300 Gig HD. The video card is an ArcadeVGA, which outputs to a 19" arcade monitor mounted in an Atari Tempest arcade cabinet. The machine is up and running with XP Home (came with the used PC), and I'm using RealVNC to remotely connect to it from my primary PC for any necessary work. I have a MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) front end running in the foreground all the time, so when you want to play classic arcade games you just flip a switch to turn on the arcade machine monitor, lights and speakers - choose your game from the menu and play. When finished gaming you just quit to the menu and power off the arcade machine. The pc keeps running 24/7 as a file server with my music, video and misc. files. It seems to be running fine, with no overheating issues. It's only been up for a couple days at this point, but it looks like it's going to work just like I planned. Motherboard has been mounted to the primered tray. I'm going to leave the tray primered - consider this case a "Rat Rod". Here I have mounted 6 LED's that I had lying around. They are very bright, but only in one direction. I may try to find a way to spread the light out more, problably by sanding the LED's so they are more frosted looking. Here is the motherboard mounted in the lower box. The ribbon cable on the right side is for the CD drive, which will only be attached for the operating system install. Back view. This is the final paint job. It looks better than before with a metalic mobo tray, but I decided not to paint everything olive drab to match the case. Ammo box PC in it's new home. The video cabinet may get replaced with a newer and nicer one, and the cables out the back will get more tidy. Night shot, with lights-a-blazing. To the left you can see the Atari Tempest cabinet that the PC is hooked up to, and to the right is an action figure of Ash from the Evil Dead movies on guard duty.
