Scratch Build – In Progress Project Stealthlow - Completed - preview of project next

Good idea, the vandal switches are made from a nice material and will sure sit flush and match well.

 

Good idea with the vandal switch as activity light..... lol octocoupler.. what was i thinking.. this is a way better idea. stupid me. lol

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamwhitlock/301764024/

Hopefully this makes the ideas flowing

Saw article about this somewhere but can't find it with google atm

 

I've done that with all my past scratch cases .

No you was correct but I'm too newb to do that stuff & know what I'm doing at the moment .

But I came across a motherboard LED splitter cable which allows to use ready made motherboard LED cables so will make it doable for the the most visible one anyway so the feature is back on & ordered the relevant bits .

I did this about a year before I started scratch building so that would have been about 2007, I wanted to engrave my Lian-Li case & do a custom window & did a bunch of other mods to the case but the engraving I did with a craft knife by scratching the hell out of it & then went over it in black permanent marker & then sanded over it so it left a highlight on the silver panel, it's Vash the stampede from Trigun, I loved it at the time & I'd probably enjoy it again, funny anime .




Wow that window mod had super sharp pointy bits .

 

Sorry to threadjack, but +rep, Stem83 - your optocoupler idea just solved for me something I've been banging my head against a wall on for quite a while (I'm a little durr with electronics myself.)

Back OT, it's good you live all the way across the the Atlantic, Waynio - given the chance, I'd sex that case up like Tom Sizemore on Heidi Fleiss (and that would be a shame - it'd probably come out dented and sticky.)

This build is f'ing amazing - I wish I had 1/10th your skill and patience!

 

Really nice engraving there mate. My attempt looked nothing like that lol.

 

I was saying the same thing to modders when I just started so trust me I think if I can get to this standard then anyone with the will & dedication to do so could took me since 2008 to get up to this standard (although that wasn't spending much time modding, probably like a few condensed weeks out of each year) & the more I've been doing the more I realised patience is a big key in not rushing it.
Cheers mate .

Cheers Jase, I forgot to mention doing that piece killed the craft knife set so yeah, now I've read Magnus Perssons beginers guide to engraving I need a new dremel to persue it .

The sheet of copper I ordered to do KidMods fan rims it's flipping mirror polished copper on both sides & cost £7 with postage was shocked when I pulled the protective backing off a little, so seems a shame to use it for that, so instead if I can get away without brushing the pieces he could be getting mirror polished ones lucky git but the 200mm x 200mm sheet is enough to make a small bunch of copper cable P clips also so we both get a good deal there .

 

The engraving's glasses kind of look like medic's
That's an unusual method but it seems to have worked very well.

 

John Lennon style glasses .
It's funny that because most of my early modding antics doesn't impress me much but still glad I got into it but that scratch piece does still impress me, if only I'd have known about the carbon paper thing back then it would have been much easier to do I wasn't a bit-techer back when that article came up.

 

As you know I'm in progress of my first scratch build and with very little experience, I prefer using things like those cube screws to make fabrication easier, if I ever reached your level Wayne, I'd turn senile a minute later.

 

Nah I shouldn't be going senile for another 50/60 years if I'm lucky enough & even then if I'm not on the ball I think I'd rather exit with an ok mind & you shouldn't be for even longer, good skill doesn't happen overnight unless there is a way to make a deal with some kind of higher being that can just zap you with crazy skills or some way to programme a mind to receive instant skills matrix style , but I happen to like the long learning process, it's a big part of the fun tackling something you know little about & overcoming it gives a nice feeling of accomplishing something you never knew you could do .

 

Point well taken. It's my admiration of the quality and beauty of your projects (stealthlow more than any other as I wasn't here when you did air cube, I just saw it in reader's drives) that astounds me every time I look at a piece of copper.

 

Cheers mate.

Just got a couple of ATX plugs & some other bits & the 75mm diameter drum sander came so I can move forward again & make an extender & a really short 1 just so it doesn't interfere with the air flow from the front fans & I'll be able to have the wires go in the shape of the curve with the extra slack .

I just finished designing, printing, sticking, cutting & forming the copper P clips & KidMods fan rims, the big clips are P clips, the smaller ones it wasn't possible to do them nicely because of the thickness of the copper so they are a slightly different version of the P clips, was the only way to make them in a nice way & the copper sheet I ordered I got lucky with the off cut as it was mirror polished on both sides so was pleasantly surprised , cost me £7 with delivery, I said I'd make enough for 3 of the fan pieces for KidMod & he wants them brush finished so I might use the ones I made from this mirror copper & send him the ones I already made depends if I like the look of the polished ones when installed .


Also I've got around to thinking about lighting & decided I could make the bottom section fan holders better since my marking method has drastically improved compared to when I started this project I print the designs now & stick them on the material so it's far quicker & more accurate to my design than marking manually & I have the scroll saw now & just ordered a drum sander that is usable on the drill press & can use any sand paper on it so could take it to 2000 grit without a ton of effort , there was a couple of things I didn't like with the fan holders, after I stuck them together I continued wet sanding them to get a perfectly seamless finish on them but it went wrong & some gunk worked it's way into the seams so when viewed from an angle it didn't look so good especially with light in there & didn't like the fact I had to drill mill some of the holders down a bit & even then the fans were too tight (so tight I cut myself when pushing a fan back out of the holder).

So I'll re-make them but for the depth of the fans I'll use 9 x 3mm sticks of acrylic instead of 5 x 5mm with a luminous orange stick in the middle, the apollish fans don't add any light to the stick areas so it opens a way to light them differently & I'll be making them function as the hdd activity LED so should be a sweet little feature & got all the bits I ordered except for the drum sander .

Making them again should take no longer than 2 good sessions or even 1.

And the other lighting thing I've thought about is RGB LED strips, 1 600mm strip for each curve bar & possibly 1 300mm for underneath the case, it will have a remote control for selecting whatever colour I want & could turn it off when I want so can't wait to get that to put in but can't afford it just yet , anyway only a few steps away from complete .

 

Nice clips!

 

The lighting sounds awesome! And thanks very much for doing this, I'm still for a brush finish. I'm typing this from my grandpa's house, I'll tell you before the update that we have found a way to get everything sturdy and have switeched from blue to a copper look, this was a quick change of plan due to digging out some really nice stuff. The fan frames will match more now! Also, may I ask what board you will be using for this?

 

Cheers Nutman but to be honest I've got a little doubt that they will be any good, when I open them to stuff cables in they might not fall back in form nicely to do what they are meant to so might have to do a revision of them or even just use the black MDPC clips .

What board? I don't understand, do you mean courier? .
Special delivery is the safest & quickest but damnit it costs £7 so maybe 1st class recorded but even that's £4.48 which seems strangely high for such a small package but whatever it costs when I go to the post office I'll refund the difference, if it was me ordering I'd just go for the special delivery considering the small price difference & better service & it being a rare not mass produced item.

 

Me and my terrible typing- motherboard.

 

Ahh hardware
MSI P67-GD65
2500K @4.5ghz prolimatech megahalems in shiny black
8GB 2x4GB Kingston hyper x 1600mhz 9,9,9,something
Auzentech prelude x-fi sound card which I'd like to upgrade to a pci-express one but not a creative or asus one , another good Auzentech one.
GTX 580 .
60GB OCZ summit ssd which I want to upgrade to a corsair force 3 120GB
6 HDD ranging from 1TB to 2TB each.
Samsung blu-ray drive

So theres only the storage & lighting to buy to complete this but the storage can wait & won't effect the look at all as I'll be making a cover for the ssd, I like the look of the samsung alu & orange look, the ones with the ARM chip on them so I'll make a cover that has that theme but do it much better maybe even a ying yang type thing of alu & copper , the psu will get the same treatment & they should be a quick mod to do if I keep it simple anyway .

 

Nice clips bro, I remember sharing the idea back in the spiral cable management days and now it came to life!

 

Nice lot of hardware there. I'll make sure too see the end of this while I'm on holiday. I promise you, I'll jump ship if I don't. Then I look forward to my fan frames, you've done a very nice job! PM incoming by the way.