Aperture Science

Got some more painting done today.

First off were the top and bottom bars, first with primer and then 2-3 coats of black, the molotow paint drys out very quickly so you don't have to wait 24 hours to do the next coat which saves me a lot of time :)

Then I painted the Power/Reset buttons and started priming both of the sidepanels. Everything came out really well, I think this is the first mod for me where almost everything goes just as planned :D
Note that I used white Primer so the sidepanels look as if they've already been painted. That's not the final white though, it's going to get even brighter!


One of the bars with primer:

And after the first coat of black. Yes, I'm drying this the same way I dry my clothes :D

The buttons:

After drying I put them in the top part that I have already painted. Here you can also see that the paintjob is very smooth and even, thanks to the great paint.

And now the sidepanels, before priming:

And after. Just as planned, the surface of the sidepanels is now completely smooth, so my sanding did the trick.

And another last shot of the top an bottom bars. Next up is clear coat, then they're finished. I think I'm going to put something over the bottom ones to protect them (I was thinking small black rubber bands) so they don't get scratched underneath. Nobody would see it but I hate the thought of ruining a perfectly fine paintjob that way ;)

Tomororw, I'm going to get the final white on the sidepanels. I'm hoping I'll get the painting done over the weekend, then maybe I can already start putting everything together next week and have this mod finished in 1-2 weeks :)

This is coming along very nicely, very nice work.

I spent the whole day painting today and have made a lot of progress.

I've got a bunch of pics so no reason to bore you with unnecessary text ;)

First I had to bring out the dremel one last time to make a big cutout in the front door. Since I'm not using the white plexi anymore it had to be done so that there's a space where I can fit in the lightning stuff for the logo. I'm going to cover it up from behind later, I'm not sure how yet, maybe I'll just use another piece of the same Metal I made the frontplate out of.
Making those cuts was a tedious task, the Aluminum of the front door is twice as thick as the sidepanels so it took ages to get through. I actually had to pause several times to let the dremel cool off, it got so hot that I couldn't hold it any longer.

Filing, Sanding, you know the drill

Just to make it clear, this is what the hole is for:

Then I finally started painting. The mesh for the window in black:

And basically everything else! All the major parts are painted now, the only remaining step is clear coat for everything and then I'm done with the painting. Well, almost. The Portalgun still has to find its way on the right sidepanel, hopefully I'll get that done tomorrow. These are the white parts I did today, note that they're going to get a bit more glossy tomorrow with the clear coat, other than that, this is pretty much it.

After the paint for the door was dry I put the frontplate on it to see what the final thing will look like. As expected, the combination of those colors is beautiful.

Last step today, preparing the fans for painting.

More tomorrow :)

I've got good news and bad news today. Good news is, the painting is finished and everything except the right sidepanel looks pretty awesome. The Bad one is, the right sidepanel didn't quite turn out the way I had hoped. I'll explain with pictures:

First I'll finally explain how I was planning on getting the portalgun on the sidepanel. As for a bunch of other stuff, I used stencils again. I made two of them, one for the grey areas and one for the black areas of the portalgun. The third color is the white of the background.
This is stencil for the black parts:

And this is the one for the grey ones, already on the sidepanel:

That's what it looked like after spraying:

Next one:

And now comes the problem. As it turns out (I was afraid this would happen) it's impossible to use spraypaint and stencils without the outcome looking like something that has been done with .. well, spraypaint and stencils. It's just impossible to get the stencil to lay on the sidepanel 100% flat, there's always little gaps here and there where some paint particles can get under, and then you get that typical spraypaint look. While this may look good on a brick wall in the ghetto, it looks like crap on a case that's supposed to be smooth and elegant. I thought I could somehow pull it off anyway but as you can see, I too am not perfect ;)
Now it may not look as bad as it sounds on the pictures, but it's enough for me to want to do it all over again, and I think I will. Because on top of the not-so-great portalgun, the overall paintjob on the right sidepanel is far from perfect too. You can't see it on the pictures. but I just didn't have enough paint to get an even paintjob on that giant thing. The amount of paint it takes to coat such a big piece of material evenly with a spraycan is ridiculous.

What am I gonna do now? I think I'll order some more paint to do the whole thing again and then think of a different method to get the portalgun on there. Stencils obviously won't work the way I want them to, so right now, I'm thinking Vinyls or some other form of sticker I can maybe print (or get it printed) and later put it on the finished paintjob. If you have any ideas or suggestions, let me know :)


After the disappointment, I decided to put everything else together roughly, I haven't done this since taking it apart right at the beginning and boy, did that lift my mood. It looks awesome. I can't wait to get the rest finished and see this thing all lit up and with hardware inside :)

The Fans are ready too:

That's it for today. I'll put the last stuff together during the weekend (like the logo) and then I'll put the hardware in next week. The sidepanel can wait for now, it's not like it's a critical part or anything :)

You could try laying down masking tape, then tracing the stencil onto the masking tape. You could then use and exacto knife or something similar to cut out the masking tape. its a little labor intensive but that should eliminate the problem of the stencil not laying flat and the little bit of over spray you had in a few areas. hope that helps. And by the way i love your mod, excellent work!

I think that's exactly what I'm going to do! A few other people suggested the same thing, and I see no reason why it wouldn't work. Sure it's a bit of work, but seeing the amount of work I have already put into this, it's well wort it :)
It annoys me that I now have to spend another 20 bucks on paint to do this all over again but well ... **** happens.
At least I've learned a few things this way. That's what I like about modding, every mistake you make makes you a better modder in the future :D

that looks so wickedly insane cool 8)

If anyones wondering why there are no updates, I kinda sorta ruined the paintjob on the frontplate and have to do it all over again Sad
I can't really continue until that's done and for that I need new paint which is going to take a few days to arrive so yeah, I'm kind of stuck right now.
While the paint looked great, it seems to be very fragile. I used some electrical tape to hold something in place behind the front door and when I took it off (it's not even that sticky) the paint came right off along with it .. you can imagine my cursing. I had already put the frontplate on the door with some really, really nasty double sided tape (thinking I would never take it off again in my LIFE) so I spent half my day today trying to get it off again without destroying everything in the process. Next time, I think I'll get my stuff powder coated. I'm all for do-it-yourself and the paint can look good too with cans, the only big problem is, it's just nowhere as durable and tough as a "real" paintjob. I feel like I have to handle this case like it's made out of porcelain because I don't want to ruin 4 days of painting :/

varnish?

I'm not a big fan of varnish, because in my experience, now matter how smooth your paintjob turned out, varnish is always going to ruin it. Good paint somehow "evens itself out" if you didn't spray 100% evenly (which is impossible with a can). With varnish on the other hand, you immediatly see the spots where there's either too much or too little varnish applied and it just looks kind of patchy in the end.
Maybe I just suck at it, every time I use varnish I regret it afterwards. Sure it's more durable if you use it, but what's the point if your paint looks like **** anyway after you've used it? I even ordered a crapload of varnish for this mod and ended up only using half a can because I realized the same thing is happening and then decided not to use any.