Scratch Build – In Progress T.R.O.N [V4]

Big'ish update

Right, here goes a mammoth update...

First off I drilled and tapped the Graphics card screw points (forgot to take a photo of this process, but pretty much self explanatory, though I needed to use a drill bit extension as the drill would have clashed with the frame). Unfortunately I did over shoot a little with the drilling and scraped some of the paint work Will have to touch that up later, but be as well waiting till the rest of the case is done as I have a feeling this won’t be the last time I do that!


Next off I tried to buff out the scratches on the CPU vent grill frame. I tried everything from furniture polish to car wax to tooth paste (don’t ask, lol) and eventually ordered some Novus plastic scratch remover. Even after polishing with this stuff for an hour, the scratches were still pretty visible, though some buffed out. So I decided to sand it down with wet&dry to get a brushed look which actually worked out not too bad in the end. This was then glued on the case vent hole and left to dry over night. The next day I noticed glue finger prints all over the shop so had to lightly sand it down again to get rid of them.



The glue'y mess on the mesh etc is still to be cleaned up, but pretty much done beyond that.



I then began work on the main vent screen. First off I marked out a recess on the mould previously used for the main acrylic body essentially scaling it in by a cm...

Tested the fit of it in the case...


Cut out the vent screen from 3mm Black gloss Translucent acrylic...

and started the bend process as done before, though this time due to the shape and lack of clamps (my dad had borrowed) I fashioned a string... clamp and wedged tight with wooden blocks...

and voila, one screen...


Originally I was going to bend the side tabs up to glue on the inside face/curve of the case. Having experienced firsthand the issues this process would cause I opted for a different approach of buying some acrylic bar, cutting it up into small cubes to use as feet/spacers which would be glued to the case and some tabs on the screen. This is still on order and can’t really begin any work on the fan mounts till this is in place.


Next I fabricated the side panel for behind the MB tray. I wrapped the 5mm acrylic in masking tape, placed it against the side of the case, traced the edge and then cut off the excess...



This piece was to be routered with a 45deg bevel as had been done for the case so the side panel could recess into the case and create a seamless edge on the corner. In order to achieve this I had to mark out and cut the same shape of the side panel onto the MDF make-shift work bench for a template. The Router bit has a guide wheel on it which will follow the contour of the MDF template and the acrylic clamped on top.


Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of the finished piece before installing it.

I then sanded the edges down to exactly match the angle of the case, this was a painstakingly long process , but I got there in the end and the two piece fit snugly.

Then came the difficult part, gluing the lot together. I used Araldite for the bonding of acrylic to aluminium and super glue for acrylic to acrylic. The super glue was a little too quick drying and meant my first adjustment to fit in place was my last... thankfully the edges were near enough bang on so proceeded to clamp it up...


By the next day, once all was removed, the acrylic had shifted slightly and the edges weren’t quite 100% lined up, not far off, but not perfect which annoyed me slightly... my wife had to turn up the TV to drown out my expletives and stomping about... , aggression out of the system, I was able to take some photos


I need to clean up some of the glue that spilled over, easy enough using nail polish remover



I then fitted the MB, GFX card, PSU, the vent screen and one of the 140mm fans, to give me an idea of how the whole thing would fit together.






Well that's it for this update, will be back at the end of the weekend with another, smaller and more managable update.

 

Wicked, coming along really well. Congrats on the MOTM nomination

 

Wow thats starting to look really good mate

 

Cheers, always appreciated when the work is recognised/appreciated by the community, especially the talented veterans who do super ace mods themselves , makes it all the more worthwhile, besides the joy of building it in the first place and of course getting some use out of it at the end of the day!


Unfortunately won’t be doing much today on the case, my wife has some friends round and have been give strict instructions to go down to the pub for a few hours, won’t argue there

Hopefully will be back on it tomorrow, though will mostly be polishing and painting as I'm waiting for the acrylic bar to turn up before I can progress the screen and fan mounts.

So, time for a pint or two

 

Yeah, nice progress and looking good. Looks like it will be finished soon ...and enjoy your pint... or two

 

Congrats whith the nominee, and keep on modding bro!

 

Fantastic work so far mate, congratz on your MOTM nomination.

 

Great work. Congrats on the MOTM nomination.

 

Thanks Gtek, was quite surprised to see my case being nominated especially as this is my first (proper) attempt at a scratch build and with there being so many excellent cases out there that are yet to featured on MOTM and deservedly so in my opinion. Have to admit that I've always admired your work and Beta is no exception! I'm just pleased the work has been recognised, but the main pay off is achieving a functional scratch build for the first time, hopefully this experience will lead to other more innovative and challenging designs for me in the future!

Thanks k.3nny, congrats to you too! Loving your colour scheme. Keep up the excellent work!

Cheers, glad you like the work. Hoping to have the case finished in the next week or two, so keep tuned for some more updates soon.



Didn’t get much done today, just some sanding of the cut edges, and getting rid of the glue runs. Just bought a kitchen blow torch in a bid to neaten/ polish the edges to get that glass shine I'm looking for. Looks like I'll have a few days of inactivity till the last parts and tools turn up to get it all finished up. Think I’ll spend that time to look at the cable routing issues that lie ahead of me as well as the design for the hard drive mount. Was hoping to get a Crucial C300 256 drive but my budget has run dry so will have to make do with my Samsung 1T for the time being.

 

Congrats on MOTM buddy

 

Thanks Skorchio!


Still in the process of sanding and buffing the edges of the acrylic. A long and painfully slow process as there's quite a bit of real estate to cover, about half way there now , have even roped my wife into giving me a hand getting this part of the build done. So another BIG thank you, this time to my better half! It doesn’t help that my finger hurts when I press on it (embarrassingly I hit it with a hammer, square on, full whack, during the aluminium bending stage of the first attempt, my reaction...

pretty sure I broke it )

I'm sanding the acrylic with 240grit wet&dry dry and then 600grit wet&dry wet. It's coming out quite smooth but will be using the kitchen blow torch thing to get the gloss/glass effect... I hope. There's a first for everything, pretty much everything to do with this case in my case! Hopefully the next batch of tools/materials will turn up just as finish the sanding.

 

Whoopp whoopp whoop!

 

Something along those lines, but the R rated adult version


Waiting for these new parts has really slowed the progress this week. Thankfully I eventually received the parts this morning.
The 20mm acrylic rod.

The blow torch (and clear double sided tape underneath).




I needed to get some more super glue and this time wanted one that could be applied by brush as the last bottle was just a nozzle and it's inaccuracy/lack of control in application resulted in runs of glue (which has taken forever to remove using nail polish remover and kitchen roll). Unfortunately there was an accident on Aberdeen’s busiest roundabout which resulted in an hour of queuing. Two hour trip for some glue...
It hasn’t helped that I couldn’t get my lazy rear out of bed this morning (12 noon...), so most of the working day has pretty much gone . I'm also heading into work tomorrow (working overtime) to clear my desk of the ever growing pile of drawings and docs needing my review, comments and signing So doubt I’ll get masses done this weekend as planned.

Today was spent re-painting the case (sanding down the scratched/marked areas, re-applying some primer, paint then lacquer, a timely process...)






I also attempted polishing the (acrylic) case edges with the blowtorch, first off testing it out on a scrap piece. I don’t what I was doing wrong (have read and watched several guides on the subject), but couldn’t get the process to work. I tried it with the acrylic wiped clean, then with it lightly sanded and the filings/dust left on. No improvement. It got to the point where I set fire eeek to the piece. Thankfully I was prepared and had a damp cloth on standby and was able to put it out very quickly. So... back to the by hand method with the polish kit. Eventual after a good bit of buffing I began to see some results , an hour later and it was shining, YAY!!! Clearly my previous attempt by hand was too rushed. I still had to return to certain patches that required more rubbing with the 600 grit wet paper, but manage to finish the day with a shining edges and a re-painted case...


Tomorrow I intend to get up early... to make use of the morning before heading into work. Will try to cut the rod (spacers) ready for sanding and cut the Light tape and associated wiring to size to be taped onto the case. I'll probably do the taping and gluing tomorrow evening and allow it to dry over night. Should have some shots on Monday of the screen in place, lit up with the Light Tape.

 

You put the fire out befor you took pics?


Pics or it didnt happen

 

Shaping up nicely!

lol

 

Awesome work there mate.

I'm subbing this one ^^

 

Congrats with the nominee, liking this alot

 

LOL, there was a split second when I thought - shall I grab the camera or ... nope the wife will kill me if I let this get out of control, as the fire began to spread. I will do my best to set fire to... edit by wife

Cheers! Will hopefully have some eye-candy for you tomorrow night with the LightTape in situ/action!

Thanks, will do my best to get some more work done today for another update, now that I've escaped from the office!

Cheers, appreciated!

 

This afternoon/evening was started off with the testing of the vent screen and the LightTape together in the case. I had to cut the LightTape to length as it was a little on the long side (will post some final shots of the LightTape in place tomorrow). I found that the black gloss translucent acrylic used for the screen didn't have the reflective properties I'd envisaged. Most of the light that ebbed out the vent slit came from the lit up internals of the case. So, I had three options, first to glue coloured card to the acrylic for the light to reflect against, second to spray paint it, and thirdly to sand it down (brushed effect) to make it opaque. The first two options would result in blocking the light from getting into the case which wasn’t what I was after, so sanding it was. After sanding a small patch and testing, it seemed to work, but the closer the screen was to the tape the less effective the glow was. So I shaved the screen end tabs down a little to make for a bigger gap, cut some spacers out to suit and rounded the screen spacer tabs to make neat.






I tested the sanded screen with the light tape and it worked perfectly this time, but you'll have to wait till tomorrow to be enlightened... in the words of Basil Brush - Boom Boom ... sorry for that .. to see the finished results.


I also took a shot of the finished re-paint.


And a quick shot of the polished edges (plus dust ).



Tomorrow I'm hoping to glue the tabs to the screen and to the case and light it up, which will be a major mile stone for the project. Just the fan bracketry, power cable cutting to length (pre braided as standard with Coolermaster Silent Pro’s which’ll save some time) last side panel and final assembly of PC components to go, all just in time for a LAN session round at one of my mates on Saturday. Going to be a few late ones me thinks and will likely have to leave the cabling part for another day as I haven’t bought the male/female replacement connector pins yet, will have to look into ordering some at lunch time tomorrow.

 

Niice, what components do u use for polishing?

I always sand it down with grid 400/600, than i take car scratch remover from commandant, im always ready in like 30 minutes a 50cm.