Reminiscences

[doesi87]

Hello everybody, my previous mod, the game boy HDD, will be finished soon. Also I got a new case and will get some watercooling gear this week. Put it all together and you have a nice environment for a new mod. I started planing about 2 weeks ago and come up with some ideas. But one problem remains: I don't know how to name this. But let me give you an idea of what I'm talking about:

I finished school this spring and wanted something to remind me of this great time. So I decided to give it a shot and try to make something of my new case.

So this is the case I'm talking about.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1748Medium.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1750Medium.jpg

These pics aren't very good, so here are some sketchups:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/frontMedium.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/seiteMedium.jpg

So lets come to what I've done so far:

There is this huge 250mm fan on the side of the case.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1751Medium.jpg

I thought to make a window on the side of it and give it a nice engraving. This is a part of our Abimoto:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/figurcopy.gif

I thought of making it look like this:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/mitfigursilberMedium.jpg

It will be illuminated with blue leds and have a black background so you can't see through it. You can see the fan if you look closely.

The case will also get these silver stripes on the front but there is no real progress so far, just planning.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/frontcadMedium.jpg

[doesi87]

Engraving the main figure for the window in the side panel took quit a while. In fact it was work for a whole day but it was fun to make it. First of all I printed the picture in the right size on a piece of paper. After that I used a sheet of carbon paper and traced all lines to copy the image to the plexi.

Here are all parts that I needed to do this:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1757Medium.jpg
It's the plexi, some sheets of thin paper to protect the parts I wasn't working on, carbon paper and the image itself.

I put everything together and traced all lines with a pen. My hand were hurting after this but it was worth the effort:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1761Medium.jpg

Then I traced the lines on the plexi again. Using a cd-marker this time.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1763Medium.jpg

Then the engraving began. It took a while but the result was worth the effort.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1764Medium.jpg

Still have to clean up the plexi a bit but I think the result is quit nice.

Also did some minor engraving for the front part where the aplus logo was. But you will see more about this later.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1755Medium.jpg

[Luke122]

For the etching on the plexi, I would have just printed the image mirrored (backwards), taped it to the opposite side of the plex, and etched. :) Much easier than transferring the design, then tracing with marker, and then etching.

Just my 2cents..

I like the idea of just the etching being visible, with all the rest of the side being black. :) This should be a good looking project.

[doesi87]

For the etching on the plexi, I would have just printed the image mirrored (backwards), taped it to the opposite side of the plex, and etched. :) Much easier than transferring the design, then tracing with marker, and then etching.

Tried this but it's much harder to trace the line with the dremel. Because the plexi is 5 mm thick the angel matters much and as I couldn't do this in one rush my perspective would have chanced. That looks not very nice.


I like the idea of just the etching being visible, with all the rest of the side being black. Will try this first, then think about the lighting again. On the sketches it looks better with the blue lighting, but will finally decide it, when I see it in real.


This should be a good looking project.

Thanks:)


Might go with this as a title: reminiscences.
I think it fits the German word I had for it best.

[Bucko]

I've changed the title of the thread for you.

[doesi87]

Thanks for the change Bucko.

Uff, some bad problems occurred with this one. I got my first w/c setup and wanted to test it. Everything is fine but the 250mm fan. It is simply to deep so it hits the graphic-cards waterblock. I could use a 120mm fan instead but I don't really want to. Will think about this today. sorry no pics yet, will show the problem later.

So let's come to the working things :)

Got the front painted. Not the best paintjob at one side, but you have to look close to see it. The black looks weird on the photo but it is normal black when you look at it. And the mistake is not that obvious without a flash :)
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1775.jpg

Don't be irritated by the glowing A in the middle. This will be changed later.

Here's a better description of the problem:

This is the side of the case with the fan and the components.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1776.jpg

Here you can see the problem itself. These little tubing connectors are blocking the fan.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1777.jpg

Just to have a little air stream in the case. Should I go with a 120/92 mm fan it will defenitly have a nice plexi mounting plate.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1778-1.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1779-1.jpg

I think of mounting the fan on the outside still using it's black blend. I could make something with putty to cover the space between panel and cover and give it a nice shape. But I'm not sure about it. Have to plan a bit in sketchup and see if it works and looks good. If you know a better/other way to mount the fan, please feel free to explain it :)

Here are some shots of the opend front and the other side:

http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1780.jpg

http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1781.jpg

[LiTHiUM0XiD3]

me personaly... i wouldnt have gotten rid of the big fan.... but tis up to u lolz i think if u made it kinda domed with the small one it would look good lolz or use some etched plexi

[Bucko]

What about if you mouned the big fan on the outside and made up some trim or used bondo to go around the outside of the fan and still use the big grill on it?

[FrooP]

make the lower front to a monster suckhole :)

[doesi87]

sorry no progress about the fan yet. I want to keep the big one but still have to figure out how to mount it.

But I have a little teaser shout of the engraving for the sidepanel. I think I have to redo it, because the plexi-panel is to small but if I have to do so, it will look the same or better because I have more practice :)

Here it is with just two leds. Played with the camera settings to get a nice shot.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1789.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1790.jpg
The second one is how it looks in reality. I like it very much :)

[doesi87]

Sorry no update for a long time, but as said in the gameboy topic, I'm busy at the moment. Found a solution for the fan problem, so I can keep the big 250mm fan. Will show it to you at next weekend, then should be time to make some progress.

[doesi87]

Hey guys, sorry for the long delay but I wanted to finish the gameboy first. But I made quit some progress over the time. So be prepared for a bunch of pics :)

First of all I took the outer cover for the fan and used some mesh to give the ring some depth. I started with way to much mesh but I wanted to have enough and cut it away later. Here's the last stage of assembly for the mesh:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1837.jpg
And the final ring:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1838.jpg
Used the hot-glue-gun for this. Needed three tries because it won't stick together. But know it's together pretty strong.

I test fitted the fan inside the ring and cut away the unnecessary mesh:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1842.jpg
Which results in this ring:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1841.jpg
Cutting the mesh away was quit time consuming, because I did it in three steps to be sure I don't cut away to much. But it was worth it, because the mesh sits just about 1/2 mm away from the side panel.

Then I made 4 washers to mount the ring to the side panel. The washers are 15mm*15mm*2,5mm pieces of plywood, which works very good.
Cutting the washers:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1845.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1846.jpg
And test mounting them:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1847.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1849.jpg

After that I worked on the fan itself. The fan had 2 connectors. One standard 12V molex connector and one 2-pin fan connector for the speed-control. That is good, because the led's won't dim if you lower the fan speed. But I want them to do so and I want just one connector. So I removed the 2-pin connector and soldered the 2 lines together. Now the fan will run on 100% of the Voltage I give it through the other connector.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1850.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1852.jpg

Then I soldered the 2-pin connector to the wires of the molex one, to use the fan with my fan-controller.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1851.jpg

Now the led's will dim if I lower the fan voltage and the fan can be handled just like a normal fan.

A final pic of everything test mounted:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1854.jpg

Tomorrow I will cut the side panel to fit the window with the engraving. Wish me luck :)

[doesi87]

Hey guys,

finished cutting and soldering for the side panel. Only minor things to do before the side panel is finished and I can go on with the front logo.

Here you see the side panel with the markings for the cut. The inner marking is where the plexi will be, the outer marking is the maximal range for the plexi before it will be a problem to mount the fan later.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1855.jpg

After finishing the cuts I gave it a quick test-fitting,
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1856.jpg
and then cleaned the edges and fitted the plexi carefully into the right place.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1857.jpg

Just one little cut to go, so the fan can be mounted correctly. (which I forgot to make earlier :) )
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1858.jpg

After that I protected the plexi again and marked the places for the leds and the wires.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1864.jpg

So after drilling the holes for the leds I had to solder the circuit with the leds.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1871.jpg
Soldering it with this construction was a real pain and I used it only for a few soldering points.

[doesi87]

Which leads us to this little side trip:

I wanted to have a little working place to do my soldering, so I decided to make on. This took about 30 min and is really easy. First I used A9cad to make a draft of the design, printed it out and glued it to some 4 mm plywood with sprayglue.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1872.jpg

Give it a quick cut and some sanding and you have six nice pieces of plywood.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1873.jpg

Then comes just some gluing with the hot-glue gun.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1874.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1875.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1876.jpg

Give it some little clamps and you have a pretty nice soldering table for wires, leds, resistors and stuff like that.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1878.jpg

Oh and here is a pic of the result of my work running on a test 9 V battery.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1881.jpg

[elbarto241]

every time i look at that etching it gets better and better, love the new ring on the fan, and +rep for making your own washers :D

[Mysteriphys]

+rep on the fan, that looks really nice imo. the plexi looks good, if you find the led's aren't diffusing well enough to light it up (sich from the looks of your preview isn't a problem but just in case, you can frost the LED's I've seen it done a few tomes and I still need to do it on mine, keep it up looking great :-D

[doesi87]

Thanks guys, really glad you like it.


+rep on the fan, that looks really nice imo. the plexi looks good, if you find the led's aren't diffusing well enough to light it up (sich from the looks of your preview isn't a problem but just in case, you can frost the LED's I've seen it done a few tomes and I still need to do it on mine, keep it up looking great :-D

Still have to test it in the dark. If you're able to see where the leds are to much, then I will try frost them. Thanks for the hint. Hadn't thought of it yet.

[doesi87]

Hey guys,

I decided to give the engraving a black background because all you see through the plexi is the drive cage. Tried a black piece of thick paper first. Here is how it is mounted on the back of the side panel.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1890.jpg

And here are two pics of the thing running. First one is only the side panel standing on my desk, second is the whole case. I connected the leds to the case-fan connector on the mainbord. Gives it the 12V the whole circuit is designed for and has a very nice luminosity.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1894.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1896.jpg

I don't really like the little scratches on the plexi and the not really black look of the whole thing. Might go and paint the black side of the plexi with black spray paint and redo the engraving. But have to do some test on this with scrap plexi first.

[doesi87]

Sorry folks, no progress on the side panel. Still testing the painting idea. But I made something for the front instead. Remember the A+ logo in the lower front? Wanted to have little wings where this logo was and I made some really bad ones some time ago in one of the first posts. I re-did them and used the same engraving technique as in the gameboy mod, just with more training. So here do we stand at the moment:

http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1900.jpg
from left to right: original logo - first try - latest version.

There is still room for better work, which will be done soon. Still trying to figure out the best technique for this.

[doesi87]

Hey guys, finally some progress. Lets start with the good things. I did some work on the front panel and finished the engraving for it. First I removed the front panel and added "Lüsterklemmen" for the wires to be able to remove the front panel easily.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1910.jpg

After that I took the housing for the original Aplus logo and worked with it.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1911.jpg

Sadly I have just a photo of the housing itself and non of the work. But I removed the inner plastic till there was just a square left. Then I fitted the plexi with the engraving into the square and mounted the whole thing back to the front panel.

Here are a few pics of the finished panel. The pics are a bit to dark when it comes to the led. But you know my skills with the camera. Sorry for that.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1912.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1913.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1914.jpg


Lets come to the bad things. Worked on the side panel as well and have to say, that I don't know how to solve the problem. Bought some eddings to paint the plexi, which won't work very well. Then I tried some film to bring a print to a shirt. I painted the test-plexi black and ironed the film on it. I was very carefully to not damage the plexi which worked pretty good. But the temperature needed to bring the film onto the plexi properly was to high and the paint made some weird things. Here is a pic of the film in its best form before the paint was damaged:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1905.jpg
And here is what happened to the paint when I tried to get the film clear:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1907.jpg

Not really sure what to do about the side panel. I will leave it as it is right know and hope something comes to my mind later on.

[danthegeek]

It probably heated the metal under the paint an caused it to bubble up. All paint does this when it gets real hot.

Looks good though

-danthegeek

[doesi87]

Hey guys,
had a nice idea for the not used side connector thingy on the right side of the front panel. Thought it would be nice to have a 5/12 V source on the desk running from the power supply. So I removed the panel and test fitted some switches lying around.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1923.jpg
After some drilling, sanding and soldering we got to this stage.
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1926.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1927.jpg
Two cinch connectors for the 5 and 12 Volts, and a switch to select which one should have power.
Here is some test fitting:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1930.jpg
And here is the whole thing which wires to connect to a standard molex:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1932.jpg

Later I realised that it would be nice to have a overall on/off switch and added it. Have no pics of it though. So here are some final pics:
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1934.jpg
http://i195.photobucket.com/albums/z294/doesi87/PICT1935.jpg