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

These are just bad imitations of the MDPC ones had to try though I think the mobo wire side needs a little copper , well not bad on looks but bad on function, so was it you who gave birth to that idea Alex? , I didn't think on properly with them, if I go to open them up a bit to fit wires in them it spoils the form of them so not exactly practical , best thing to do would be simply form a bar that screws in on both ends or just say f it & use the MDPC clips which is looking very likely but then again I haven't checked if they do turn to a bad form when opening & closing the clips, it's just that's kinda what I'm expecting to happen.

I've been a late starter for when I get busy modding the past days & today is no exception , think it's with my dad & bro hogging the garage for the best part of the day, got all my designs printed & stuck to the acrylic, now I just have to drill starting holes & get the fan holder bits cut out, smoothed off & stuck together, however I'll want to make really really accurate solid jigs this time so they are all perfectly aligned so no need for more wet sanding after sticking them together, I'll also need to line the jigs with something so they don't stick to the jigs like they did last time .

 

Brilliant project. Simply awesome.

 

Thanks Gary .

Going back in time to re-do the fan holders .

Just finished cutting the acrylic for re-making the fan holders so thats near 60 sticks & 15 fan hole pieces waiting to be sanded, the scroll saw really likes cutting acrylic, the disc sander & drum sander will make pretty quick work of finishing the edges the orange is called lava orange & looks like a neon light, these will be in the middle of the stick pieces with a white LED behind them so should create a great effect amongst the black & white colours in the bottom section, the stick sections don't catch any light from the apollish fans so allows for something nice, I will run a test before I stick them though to make sure it is good .








I started very late so only got this far so I'll do the sanding later & see if I have material for making a really accurate jig for sticking parts together, has to be a perfect jig & something placing inside the jig to prevent the bits from sticking to the jig so I don't have to do further sanding after sticking.

 

You are killing me with how long this is going on!

It keeps getting better and better but I just want it to be done so I can vote for it in some contest somewhere!

It's a winner for sure.

 

Your lighting idea sounds really cool, so do the fan holders. Well, I'm off tomorrow but you bet I'll be checking every day.

 

ahh this will look nicer i bet.

 

Sorry mate I just got the 1st pass of sanding done on all those bits though, I think I might need some spray adhesive so I can use the higher grits on the disc sander, the drum sander is awesome though & can easily change type of paper on it, I just cut close to the line & used the drum sander to get it precisely to the line with 240 grit & I'll do the same going up to 2000 grit but all the extra grits will only need a quick run through it .
I'll be going to a DIY store tomorrow to pick up some jig material & then I can get them all put together, another reason why the sticking didn't go as good as it should have is I stuck them while it was sub zero temps .

Cheers KidMod & have a good holiday .

I hope so I'll only use tiny blobs of the acrylic adhesive this time instead of caking it on & I'll clamp the stick pieces together to see if it looks good with the orange stick in there before sticking them together.

 

I must have missed the reason somehow - when did you mention that you were going to remake the fan holders and why do you want to? I think the old copper ones look pretty cool, being so small and all...

 

Just me nit picking my own project really , firstly the fans in the old ones were really tight, too tight in fact as I cut myself from forcing a fan out , secondly when I stuck them together I decided to wet sand the edges & that let gunk get into the seams so they ended up quite seamless but when viewed from angles it looked quite a mess, I'll take shots of old vs new so you can see why exactly I've been back tracking bits that could be done better really, I'd like to redo the pci/io piece but that would call for the mobo panel & back panel to be re-made so I'll let that pass & the only issue with that is the expansion cards are 1.5mm further out so not up close to the expansion screw in piece but it all works well.

So the new ones will be able to let fans slide in much nicer & instead of 5 layers of acrylic for the middle joint bits it will be 9 now with same light tint dark tint pattern but with 3mm layers & with one 3mm neon type orange acrylic layer in the middle, the fan hole pieces I did from 5mm layers so they fit just the same, it'll add a dot of colour into the black & white area & will function as the hdd activity, the stick joint bits don't catch any light from the apollish fans so allows me to place LED's in the stick bits, the front & rear will have an always on LED but the middle one will be for hdd activity, with the orange being a thin piece it should create a cool glow effect .

Just finished sanding from 80 grit to 240 to 600 to 1200 to 2000 so they are all nice & smooth now, I used the drum sander to do the insides of the fan holes & placed painters masking tape on the disc sander & used prit stick to stick a sheet of the higher grit papers on the disc sander, worked nicely, so they are ready for sticking the bits together now but first I need to make a bunch of perfect jigs so I can do it right & not require any sanding afterwards .

 

Sanded to 2000 grit & to get them perfect I'll have my first go at flame polishing.


Loosely stacked.

 

I want some of those too now! They're fantastic.

 

I would like to see you pull this off... they look so good.

 

Loving this so far. Lots of shiny

 

It's possible to do these with a jigsaw, files & wet sanding but require more work on smoothing them off.

That orange really glows it'll require some very careful sticking to keep them in top form cheers Stem .

Cheers mate .

That's the improvement from printing the designs having a good scroll saw & sticking higher grit paper to the disc sander & getting a drum sander so no need to use hole saws or circle cutters ever again I think thanks to the scroll saw & other finishing bits.

I'm wondering if I placed the acrylic bits together 1 by 1 & did the flame polishing if it would stick them together without using any adhesive that would give a seamless finish & keep it super clean, if no one knows I'll just try it out with some scrap .

 

Cant imagine the next improvement!

 

Me neither, and I keep my promises Wayne. It gives me great pleasure to admire such a fantastic project from the middle of the ocean with such bad internet connection. It took 40 seconds to load this page
Anyway, I look forward to more updates.

 

You are a hopeless perfectionist Wayne. Stop making the rest of us look bad!

 

Cheers Alex I doubt I'll be flame polishing though now, shame because I have all edges really smooth so perfectly prepped for some nice flame polishing but I found propane gas isn't so good for it from some scrap I tried it out on & many say map gas as it does it a lot faster with it being a hotter gas, so might buy a soft polishing mop specificly for polishing the edges of acrylic, I noticed how pros flame polish & they use a nice precision torch which easily gets excellent results, the big fat flame on my torch is heavy overkill so warps the acrylic very easily I found this out on some scrap BTW .

Bit-teching from the middle of the ocean .

Yeah I started getting this PITA condition when I was making final changes on air cube , anyway I fully understand what needs doing to make these fan holders perfect now, do all finishing to the acrylic before sticking & make perfect jigs which I did this morning so with me not going the flame polishing route I'll get busy wet sanding with 2000 grit right now, then clean them all off & get them stuck together, already dry sanded to 2000 grit but theres quite a few bad marks on them but perfectly smooth to the touch so should wet sand to a nice finish easily I hope .

 

Got the jigs ready but it's gonna take me quite a bunch of hours to wet sand all the edges though, got 6/15 fan hole pieces done & 0/54 stick pieces done so far & took 2 hours just to do those .

Could be wrong but I'm thinking if I just used the coarse satininsing mop on them to create a perfect frost finish on them, could be the better way to go as they are for a lighting effect afterall, polished or frosted hmmmm, makes more sense to frost them as I think it would take a solid 24 hour day to wet sand them whereas frosting would be less than an hour also thinking about it if I got it to a crystal finish the acrylic adhesive would be very visible, cool I made my mind up on that frosty finish here I come.

 

I tried out a polishing mop on the bench grinder so see how it turns the acrylic pieces I wet sanded with 2000 grit which took 2 hours for 6 pieces, they turned out awesome within a couple of light passes but the other pieces turned out quite crap really & wow I can't be arsed wet sanding the other 9 fan hole pieces & then the 54 stick pieces so yeah I'll just frost them all, far easier option & still a good option really, but wow the polished ones really did turn out excellent but it's just too much work, it would either be 24 hours or even 48 hours to do it would be possible for me to do it but I'd need quite a few beers to make it less monotonous I rarely drink but I've found a couple of beers lets me just get stuck in without thinking much about how many more to do .