Adventures in Newbie Modding

[sims5487]

Here is my adventure in Newbie Modding.

Some backstory: My online game alias for most games is TooTall - yes, from "We Were Soldiers". I'm 6'6", and someone at school called me that one time, one day. The name has stuck since. In racking my brain for my first mod (I've been around computers and, seeing Crimson's book, was inspired to nix the beige box... and yes, I bought the book) I wanted to say something about myself. At first, I was going to go with a SCUBA theme (paint it a glossy yellow and blue, maybe replace my chassis button with a regulator) but realized this was my first mod and perhaps I should take it slow. In shopping around on Newegg, I found this case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811162018 , thought cutting out a window with 'TooTall' on it would look nice, throw in a CCFL or two and Viola, first modding project under my belt.

Lesson 1: Modding even the simplest-looking project your first time is not quite as simple as it looks.

Here's the design I shot for:

http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/8418/tootall6hn.th.jpg (http://img135.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tootall6hn.jpg)

That, of course, is the sidepanel, with everything that is white to be cut out.

So, after a few trips to the hardware store, I get the jigsaw blades, some black paint, a little silicone caulk and some acrylic.

Long story short - If you were to ask me if jigsawing that was easy, the answer would be a clear and definite "no".

After cutting out pretty much everything but the letters, it was clear that the jigsaw needed to be put down - there was no way I was making detailed cuts like that with a jigsaw in a piece of steel, so it was back to the hardware shop for some hacksaw blades.

And of course a quick realization that the hacksaw was not going to fit in there either.

Out comes the RotoZip.

End part one.

I'll be back sometime with pics so you can see my hacked up piece of steel I call a computer case, as I begin to cut with the RotoZip (I don't own a Dremel... yet.) Any suggestions on a bit for this kind of cutting?

[sXenoG]

Well my dad has a rotozip and i dont care what the people do on those commercials its dang near impossible to get detail cuts with them things. Ive cut a window out i admit if i had finished it would have looked good after i filled it but my father discouraged me... He hates computers. Anyways the best seems to be a dremel with disks i dont kno what theyre truly called. Someone else will tell you and theyll also tell you that you'll need a bunch just like my dad told me
he broke about 3 doing a few inches of cutting and i was determined and patient enought hat i made that 1 disk last the entire cut so i was happy with that :)

[Aero]

Hey Sims, you might want to rersize your pic, I think the max size is supposed to be 700 pixels wide and smaller than 60 kb.

Never used a Rotozip, but good luck with it, hopefully it will work out ok.

[DeMaxx]

I grabbed two images from your newegg link and threw them into fireworks.. is this sort of what you have in mind?

http://img166.imageshack.us/img166/9346/tootall9bq.jpg

[sims5487]

First off, sorry for the huge pic. I, for some reason, didn't realize the pic would show up actual size... no reason for it not to. Anyway I changed it to the thumbnail.

DeMaxx, yes you have the right idea, that's what I'm going for, along with laying a 15" blue CCFL on the bottom of the case just behind the TooTall (and of course the acrylic behind the metal as the window). Well, I ended up getting the Dremel and some cutting discs which made some of the straight cuts, such as T's and L's much easier. They, of course, suck for cutting round cuts (unless someone else has a tip I'm not aware of) so after hours of extensive searching, I ended up picking up a bit that was right under my nose the whole time at Lowe's one of those diamond shaped cutting bits, which is working wonders on cutting out those rounded holes, cutting the steel much easier than I thought. And, by the way, for those of you who swear by spray adhesive, I find Elmer's glue to work just fine. Of course if you let it sit for a while it will dry out and peel, but for those newbies out there wondering how to get your pattern to stick and all youve got lying around is some Elmer's, by all means, use it. Using two hands with the Dremel will keep that round bit from getting away from you and tearing up a part of the metal you planned on keeping. Also, like everyone here will tell you, cutting steel is not easy.

But who said being a newbie was easy?

[weirdguy]

for round cuts, wait until the cutting disk gets smaller to do those.

if you go here:
http://dremel.com/HTML/owners_club/index_fr.html
and click on modding 101