Case Mod - In Progress Shinai - Antec P380 casemod [continued tweaking]

RED?My curiosity is incredibly titillated...

 

And we're back again with another update. This time with the first window I've cut in a case.

So last time I marked it out. This time I attacked it with the jigsaw.



After going at it with some files and a little grinding wheel...



Next time, square edges. I never feel like I get the rounded corners right.

Time for the window part of cutting in a window...but...



There's not a lot of space left over after my center panel and the spacers on the mount. I could've gone with some thinner acrylic and forced a window in there, but I felt this was a time for finesse.

Finesse and a nice big chunk of 1/4" acrylic that I got for my last build but didn't use. I over-sized the acrylic by about a half inch on each side and lined it up to drill some mounting holes.



I guess I'm on a spacer kick right now because, well, I put some spacers on it. It breaks up the panel and gets rid of some of the flatness that plagues the boring sides of cases.




Dust will probably be a little worse, but I'm cool with that trade.

Continuing right along and jumping back to the inside of the case, I made some tubes.




I cut a piece of 3/4" aluminum tube in half and brazed some 1 1/4" pieces in between the halves. After cleaning them up a bit and sending them through the bandsaw, I got these nice little bite size pieces.



What are they for? Tune in next time!

 

Well, I lied about explaining about the aluminum tubes, but the weather is holding out just enough that I can do some paint work. So priorities.

Pulled the Vardars apart. Super easy, just keep track of that clip. I lost one for a bit on my white table.



Also while prepping, I brazed a tab onto the PSU shroud so that i can lock it down. Don't want that thing flying all over the place during transport.



All the plastic and aluminum parts primed up with etching primer on the more solid plastics and aluminum, and flexible primer on the more bendy parts.



Since I'm getting more comfortable spraying end enjoying it, and want a super slick paint job, I decided to take the case down to bare metal and start from scratch on the paint. To do this I got a blasting unit that uses baking soda.



My first go at it wasn't very impressive! Man the paint on that case is tough. I wound up using a chemical stripper to get the majority removed and cleaned it up with the soda blaster. The radiators were a different story. I used some cardboard to protect the fins and then went to town. And the final product, in their naked glory.



After everything got it's final cleaning, it was time for some more primer. Self-etching for the radiators, and a spray epoxy for the case panels. My rigged up paint stand with the stripped case panels.



With the primer laid down and evening coming on, I moved the panel into the house to have a chance to finish drying before it cooled off.



At a quick glance, the primer went down great! With a little bit of spot sanding tomorrow night, hopefully I can take advantage of the 80 degree weather we're supposed to have on Thursday and get some color put down. Till then.

 

Quick progress report. Paint is almost done except for the piece that got a run.




Very happy with the color!

 

Well, paint is done...maybe, sort of. Got everything sprayed and resprayed. I had to re-shoot a few panels due to a run on one and some missed spots on a few others. Oh, and also this mess...



Those little shiny spots...



Raindrops. It was sunny, and then right before my last coat, one cloud decides to drop a few dozen rain drops. Grrrrrrrrrr. Re-sand and spray, and now everything is ready to go.





Since it's a single stage urethane, a clearcoat really isn't necessary and would just add time so all that's left is to sand some nibs down and polish a few spots.

 

Looks sweet. Love the paint.
paint: It's the wrong time of year to paint. I put down a coat on something last week and a big leaf went SPLAT right in the middle. Lots of ninja rain too thanks to El Niño. I guess most of the year has been the wrong time to paint... 'cept July.
Fans: I hope those weren't the dynamic fluid bearing type.
Homemade tube: Love that look. Tried to find extrusions like that once to build with.
Raised side panel: It's like I have a twin brother. Totally approve.

 

Thanks! Yeah, and I wanted to re-paint a couple of panels again because it'd be easier than fixing the blemishes, so I rigged up a paint booth tonight. Bit of plastic, a little squirrel cage fan, a furnace filter, and lots of duct tape in a spare room of my basement. Worked like a charm. Looks like I'll be able to paint this winter.

Fans are double bearing??? I mean, I saw the two sealed bearings, but beyond that EK doesn't say much. I'm guessing the paint will kill fans with the fluid bearings?

I wish I could have found some of that tubing, it was a b*tch to make.

Twins? Scary! Though I do wish I had some of your resourcefulness sometimes!

 

let there be RED!

 

Much red! Very rojo!

 

Updates, updates, more updates!

You see matching peripherals every now and then in builds, so I figured I'd take it a notch up with Shinai. I went with the matching mailbox!



Not sure what to do the numbers in though, probably brushed aluminum. That's the bad thing about mixing paint and forgetting to halve all your ratios. You get about 3 hours to figure out what else you want that color, lol.

But for realsies, let's start off with lacquering the bamboo panels.




I like it when things turn out exactly how I want. Three coats of lacquer and the bamboo darkened and yellowed just a hair just like I hoped. It's still got the grain to it too. So nice! I'm going to put a fourth coat on this weekend, but I thought I'd take a break from the fumes for a day or two. Lacquer is awesome if you want to get rid of that stuffy nose, but still don't want to smell anything but lacquer for a couple of hours.

And now some assembly. I still haven't finished the mb tray, but I need to get some of this condensed to a smaller footprint so I've got some room to work.

The EK Vardars. It sucks that you really won't be able to see them, but I'll know they look nice.



Putting the front panel together before assembling the case.



I went ahead and put a little brushed finish on some of the perforated aluminum pieces and got them mounted.




I decided that the reversible i/o panel needed something on the blank side, so I used some brushed chrome vinyl to cover it. Had to scuff it up a bit with some sandpaper to knock the shine down to something more similar to the aluminum.



And I couldn't resist sitting the bamboo covered panel top on to get a glimpse the final look.





And that's where I left off. It seems like red overload right now, but once I get the rest of the panels finished, they should tone it down quite nicely!

 

Tackled the motherboard panel today. Started off by routing some holes for cables and then epoxying my homemade oval tube in place to lock it in and take up any gaps.




Apparently I was reading the tape wrong when I cut the tube, but that's easy enough to fix with a file and a sander.

Final product




I thought it looked pretty cool like this, but it doesn't fit the build at all. Next step, bamboo and gluing the veneer up. I'm using a heat activated glue on all of this. Basically, you slather glue on the sides you want bonded, let it dry, then iron the pieces together. I had bought contact cement to do this piece because of the acrylic and heat, but decided that it wouldn't be a problem considering the thickness of the panel. The bonuses with the heat activated glue are that you can work with the panel much sooner and you don't have to clamp or vacuum bag anything, making the bends on the case panels and the PSU cover much easier.



Routing my pass-throughs and edges. This about 30 min after hitting it with the iron. They say a few hours for full strength, but it was pretty stuck on by this point.




And the cool outline left on the foam after I got done.



After that side was done, it was on to the back. I had to make sure to make a template for a few of the mounting holes since only a few go all the way through. Most are only open to one side leading to a much cleaner look. I had to piece together this side out of three pieces of veneer. They aren't perfect joints, but with a little engineering, I managed to get one under my cable route and the other is very close to the front edge, so it shouldn't stand out much.



After hitting it with the exact-o knife and a file.




I'm gonna take some sandpaper and clean up the aluminum to give it a brushed look once I've got the lacquering done. Speaking of lacquering.



Putting the final coats on the outer panels and the first coats on the mb panel and the PSU cover.

 

Ow. That router tore hell out of your wood.
The look with the metal seated in the plastic is delicious. Pity you couldn't keep it. I imagine seating the metal after putting in the wood would have been tough.
Fans: No clue what kind of bearings they have. Just remembered someone that did that to fluid bearings complaining that they failed really quick.

 

Yeah, that bamboo is stringy is the only thing I can think. Brand new router bit, though.

The aluminum through the acrylic is definitely something to revisit. I like how you can see the hint of it going through the panel. And the epoxy is close, but there's a hint of color change, so you'd have to melt some acrylic down for it. When it comes to seating them in the wood? I'm not that good. I did think about trim plates though. But I can always come back to that if it looks wonky later.

 

While I'm still lacquering my panels and waiting for them to cure so I can rub the finish out, I decided to get a few other odds and ends going.

First off, mounting the SSD window. I scuffed up the risers to match the brushed aluminum finish throughout the rest of the case.



I threaded these up so that one screw from the back holds them to the panel and another screw holds down the acrylic.




The side panel came out a bit darker than the rest of the case because of the extra coats of paint I had to put on to fix the rain drops and evening out the metallic on it. Oh well, not bad for an amateur.

After that, I started figuring out the fan controller and lights set-up. This bay area is pretty handy for the controllers.



After a bunch of soldering...



Let there be light!



Still need to get some liquid insulator to make sure nothing shorts out when I stick it all in the case, but I'm pleased for now.

 

That's all starting to look pretty tidy!

 

Thanks!

 

I did manage to snap a couple of shots while I was working on putting the LED's in.



I wouldn't say it's hot, but it does look like a heat lamp! tongue.png

 

A quick update and teaser. I spent the last week driving to Portland for PDXLAN so I'm a bit behind and out of sorts. Right now I'm finishing sanding down the lacquer and once that's done, I'll decide whether or not to spray it with a top coat. Right now, it has a nice matte finish, but, depending on the sanding marks, I might take a light satin coat over it to smooth it all out.

Beyond that, I've been experimenting on a trick I want to try. Or rather playing with a whole bunch of stuff in the hopes that something cool will come of it.

A hint...it involves a lot of rubber...

 

Things seem to be dragging along, but most of that has been due to prototyping a window panel for this case. It's hard to do too much when you're workspace is crowded with stuff that's curing. Fortunately, there is progress! This isn't the final product, I rushed the mold and the material isn't what I'm wanting, but it gives you a good idea of what's to come.





Yep, that's red metal flake in the panel.



The clarity is good and the flake doesn't really stand out unless it's sparkling. The distortions are from the mold. I think with a better mold, I could match a piece of acrylic.

But pictures don't really show this off.



The problem with the material I used this time is that it takes so long to set up that the flake settles, this video is after it was just poured and gives you a better idea of what the flake can look like if it's suspended better. Turn your audio down cause I had the radio blasting when I took the video. Also it looks better not embeded.

 

Another mini-update. Finally got the mb tray sanded and ready to go. But after brushing on the lacquer, I had some runs I had to take care of on the edges and through my aluminum passthroughs. Plus with all the brushed aluminum going on, the passthroughs had to match, right?

Used a little plumber's trick to clean them up. Normally when you solder copper, you use a fitting brush to clean the fittings before hand. But when you're doing a ton of fittings, you cut the handle off the brush and chuck it up in a drill. Saves time and your wrist. Knowing that there was a lot of lacquer to remove and not wanting to spend all night doing it, I went this route.



That was a 3/8" fitting brush. Pretty sure it's dead now.

But the results were good.




The brush did jump out of the last hole(naturally) and scarred the lacquer a bit when the shaft of the brush bent on me. You can see it barely, a light curve to the left of the top passthrough in the picture above. But the nice thing about lacquer, a little touch up with a brush and you'll never be able to see it.

After all the sanding, it was time for one last coat of lacquer, but this time I thinned it 1:1 with thinner and sprayed it.



Why didn't I do this sooner? Sooooo much easier and faster! Now to dry a bit and get started on assembly and everyone's favorite, cables!