CONCEPT! / light testing!! From the start the original idea was to have lightening bolts, 2 on the sides and 2 smaller ones on the top of the case and one on the inside on the motherboard cover. after making the original "plex flames" idea , i knew it was possible! but...... while making the "Bolt" i came up with a much much better idea! stay with me! a few weeks back i made what will be the "STORM'D" logo and bolt for the "off side" of the case. The letters are plain bold..i didn't want anything too fancy to take away from the "bolt" wich will be the main side feature. The letters were simply printed out then traced onto clear 3.5mm plex. The "bolt" was drawn "freehand" on some scrap plex. Over to the bandsaw to cut it all out The "bolt" was a slow process! i'm not looking forward to doing 5 of these!!!! But with a some patience and steady hand! it come out uncraked! With the tape pealed off and a qick "frosting" almost look good! ( a good idea for anyone else! would be to do the frosting before you cut the pattern!) Spread out with the Logo and the bolt this is how it will look on the side of the case..... NB!! This is not the main side, this is the "off side" mother board side of the case. And you have to imagine that this will be over tinted plex! so the contrast will be alot more effective then over the brown paper.
Next was a few very feeble and sorry looking attempts @ trying to light the bolt up with LED's! this was never going to work ....... the light will just not flow evenly along the bolt. after a day on the "think"! ....i came up wth this solution! using some old scrap EL wire from my old "light tubes" days from HP2 i thought about "channeling" the EL wire along the back of the smoked plex panel under the The Bolt. USING YELLOW SO NOT TO WAIST my BLUE stock of EL. a scrap peice of smoked 3.5mm plex The Bolt is placed on top and with a scratchmarker traced so to give me a chanel to grove The using a simple round engraving top on the trusty dremal i groved the chanel for the EL stip to sit in. Next was to press and just for now! tape in the EL wire stip down...the end result will be "Glued" as a more permanent solution. Flip the mod panel over lay the bolt ontop! some light action!
like i said! this is all trial and error stuff atm! and after playing arouns some more! i decided to ditch the external PLEX Bolt altogther!!!! and go with just the EL stip under the Tinted plex!!! This give a much sharper clean lightening effect, and in "BLUE" i think will look stunning. Not content with just a single bolt effect im practicing "splicing" and re-joining the EL wire! This will take some more practice as i need to shorten the contact area to get rid of the "dead spot" in the effect! but im sure with some more practice and using the BLUE EL i should pretty much get it looking ok! The funny part is! EL is noise sensitive!!! so you can imagine Zak and myself sitting round and making "thunder" and "Crack" noises to watch our lightening bolt flash
update!!! ok! after much deliberation on my part! i decided to still run the EL wire...but not to join as seen before. this time i will simply run 3 bolts! that originate from the single source. and will use some freshly brought Blue EL this time. Using the same technique shown above a groove or channel is engraved in the smoked overlay outer panel. the channel is blown clean and the first of the bolts is layed in the channel and is temporarily taped in before more permanat glueing is applied. All three bolts are layed in connected to a common power and a thin beed of glue is applied and allow to dry. The original plex panelis then drilled to allow the EL wire loom to feed thru and layed over the smked plex and bolted down. A sandwich effect where the EL sits between the 2 panels. A qick "lights out" test shows how well the wirie contrasts behind the tinted smked outer panel. Last but no least is to (for now) temp glue down the "STORM'D" letters and fire it up again the beuty is that the EL wire is sound controlled!!! and flashes like real lightening. Here is a small 800k avi file showing how the lightening flashes. Ejoy http://www.goatlan.com/noozl/MVI_9009.AVI
thanx guys this is turning out to be a lot of fun...it's kinda all the left over ideas from HP3 and PeRs-pLeXeD being rolled into STORM'D to help case cooling ive decided to add a mesh grill right above the HDD, this will allow the HDD to run cool and keep internal temps down. hole is also cut in the orig plex panel and is routed to allow the edge of the mesh to "sit down" and allow the top shadow plex panel to remain flush. The mesh will "blend in " better once the brown paper comes off.
thanx frodo i was worried that it wouldn't "fit in"! so its good the hear from others, it works cheers mate! From front! to Rear! You all know of course STORM'D will be water cooled, for the job of cooling water i've selected the BIX single 120 rad, with enuf air flow this rad should comfortably handle the job of keeping hardware temps to a reasonable level. Again using the "PIGGY-BACK" style of mounting. first obsticle to get around was the fact that the SUNBEAM case only has a 80mm hole @ the rear!! There was no real way to simply cut the hole larger....there just isn't enuf room...and somthing ppl should take into a real consideration when choosing a SUNBEAM case!!!! I'd have to use an adaptor! An old 80-120mm clear plex adaptor i'd had laying around came to the rescue, The next obsticle to the PIGGYBACK mount, was side slide panel! On the SUNBEAM cases the side panel SLIDES out from the rear ! it dosn't open away like conventional cases. and becasue the RAD is a 80-120mm adaptation it hangs past the side of the case by just a few anoying millimeters. The solution is to make the RAD Modular! the RAD+FAN+ADAPTOR assembly has to some how be "MOVABLE" to allow the side on STORM"D to slide out. Heres what i came up with. The idea was to extend the original fan mounting holes one the back panel in a figure 8. the bit of plex left between the 2 holes is dremeled away. Next was to add a "LOCKING" system to the the ADAPTOR The orig holes are thread tapped , HEX head bolts are fed thru, locking nuts are added to the rear and a decent glop of glue will hold them in place. When mounted to the RAD and EverCool Allu 120 fan, the assembley looks like this. After initial testing to see how strong the assembly would be, i decided that adding holes to the ADAPTOR would not weaken it's over all strenght and allow the 120 fan to draw in some extra needed air and help get over the restriction of the 80mm hole. Last was to simply LOCK the unit into place!!! The larger holes allow the HEX head bolts to pass thru the panel... they then slide lock down and secure on the smaller holes. A simple "locking" device will be added to ensure the rad dosnt "unlock" itself the the tight fit! and the wieght once filled should ensure thisdosnt happen. All that will be needed as to leave a little extra slack in the Water hoses that lead out to the rad to ensure the modular design works.
Looking better each update but I do like that hand cut lightning bolt better than the el wire. Too bad you couldn't get the lighting to work. What if you inset it like the el wire and light it from the top. Just paint the edges of the bolt black so the light gets reflected inside the bolt or paint it silver to reflect. Maybe silver paint will reflect the light better. Try it out.
this is great stuff, nice work with the movable rad construction. Very clever indeed. I do agree with FanatiK though, the frosted lightning was cool as hell. The EL-wire is also nice, but it just doesn't seem natural enough.
Please, tell me how you can drill/saw/handle plexy so beautifully!!!!! Me too agrees about the frosted plexy lightning: maybe keep the EL on the back to illuminate, but place a plexy lightning on the outstide for the best effect...
TY guys its a tuff decision!! i'll still put the plex lightening somwhere!! On the home stretch!! Todays lil effort really moves this mod along Tis was off to the local fastners shop to pickup the last and final batch of HEX heads. I even managed to pich up replacemant HEX head bolts for HDD CDROM and case screws!!! altho i wont be using any on this mod i can sure find uses for these sexy lil things on other mods!!!!! Ive lost count how many hex heads are in this mod! and to be honest with the price of these things per item! i really don't wanna think about it but the mod wouldn't half as special with em so i'll shut up First thing this morning was to go back over and rework a few niggly things. Its was pointed out that the over hang on the internal STORM duct grills could be seen. A retrim fixed these The Split loom cover that i's used on the wire for the 4 STORM duct fans was a bit bulky looking,,, so all the wires were redone and covered using more flexible techflex. The pump also got the Techflex treatment Next was to bolt the REAR STOM duct panel back on. With all the extra wires comming out the side i decided to make a "patch" panel
this is more for asthectics more than any pratical reason! i just thought it would be a nice touch to add a plug in panel somewhere into this mod its a simple 12mm strip of clear plex, that will sit along side of the STORM Ducts and work as a wire tidy ive also added a Molex to supply power to the HDD as you will see further on. 2 x RCA power plugs will supply power to the Fans and to the pump. The other 2 holes will act as wire tidys for the split loom. . Time to get down to some spaghetti management With the Wire tidy secured in place and the fans and pump "hard soldered" to the RCA plugs its time to feed and cover the front panel wires. These were a bit of a pain in the proverbial to do... because of the "tight fit" but the end result was well worth the effort.
with that out of the way next was to bolt in the CDROM The CDrom sits above the pump. and slots into plase from the rear to help stelth it a little and not stand out so much internally its had a few coats of matt black with the cdrom in place the Matrix Orbital is bolted back in Next to go back in is the SATA HDD , with its custom brackets its till a simple 4 bolt installation.
A side shots shows that the HDD now sites sidways in the case. The same splat loom is used for the SATA cable and some simple cable clamps are used to run the cable in the right direction. Adding the power which wires down to the previously installed female molex Again a cable clamp is used to give direction. the whole area altho never actually seen! comes off as being more managable and tidier looking -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Again from the front -----to the ---> rear! Almost forgot to add holes for the RAD's hoses to pass thru! nothing super special here! holes are cut and flamed to keep the glassy factory look with the board in the case is actually starting to resemble a working PC
