Project [CIP]-XIXIV-[X4] FINISHED! 23th of october

It took me quite a while, but finally I've finished translating my project's worklog from dutch to english.

First I had to translate the complete HTML document after which I had to convert it from HTML to suitable UBB code.

But, finally there it is, my (overhere) 23 posts/600 pictures long worklog of my latest finished project.
(for those with less time, pictures of the final result are on page 3 ;))

I've been a frequent reader at TBCS for quite sometime now, but never took the effort of regestering. Mostly because I'm a verry busy bugger and if I have to keep track of all forums out there I wouldn't have time to sleep ;)

Today I did register because I couldn't resist posting the project log of my latest finished project XIXIV which you find below.

On short notice I will start a new project (Preperations are being done atm) and I might just post the progress of it overhere as well.

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XIXIV english (translation done)

Credits

Before I start with the entire story, I want to give credits to all the people at and of the dutch casemodding community Gathering of tweakers.

GOT is the site where it all started for me and where the original version of this work log can be found. The entire content of this story is copied and pasted from my original work log after which I've translated it to english.

Thanks for getting me addicted people at GOT and all the interest in my mod in progress!

What's the plan


All right, the starting picture looks fun, but what the H#ll is this guy up to

After I about finished my previous case silvertec en watching at it for quite some time, I thought it was about time for something new.

At this moment I've got 2 systems running over here, but the 3d one is on it's way.
For that system eventually a new case has to be built as well.

So I started looking for a solution that would take up less space than de chieftec and my other thermaltake case with 3 identical cases.

Because of my work as an audio visual technician I soon got to 19" enclosures, but those where way too expensive and off course I wanted to do some modding.
That's why I eventually chose to mod 4 Aopen HQ95a desktop housings into 19" cases.

I started brainstorming and photoshopping a bit and came to this design.

The front will be made out of 4mm transparent acrylic panel, with behind it mirror foil on which in it's case matte foil with text or a logo (still need to design the final) cut out of it.

I want to place 1 120mm fan in the front panel and 1 in the upper side of the case.

For the 5,25" Bays i'm going to modify a couple of lian li bezels so they will form a whole with the rest of the design. Around them there will be an edge of green UV reactive acrylic panel

Round switches etc. have been ordered, so I hope to get started soon!


the very first start

After a few weeks of waiting today I finally got my cases :D

At first I will mount my current two systems into 2 of the cases without any modifications

I have sold my old 2 cases, that's the reason why I have to work like this.

I'll start modding the other 2 cases as soon as possible, starting with the fronts and some minor adjustments that need to be done to the cases.

The cases like they arrived at my work today.

First of all I emptied my Xaser case

The first disassembled HQ95a

And my server placed into it.

So far not much modding yet, but mounting my old systems into the cases before actually starting already proved to be a good step.
Already I encountered a few problems with the cases and this way I can easily think of a solution without having to find out in a later stage.

The first problem is the mounting of the hdd.
As you can see on the last picture the hdd at this moment is mounted in a separate steel part above the processor.

Above the processor eventually there will be a 120mm placed, so the hdd can't stay mounted like this.

The existing 3,4" drive rack of the HQ95 however is build for vertical mounting of the drives and I don't want that because my drives have always been mounted horizontally and vertical is known to wear the drives faster.

I will have to turn the internal 3,5" drive rack 45 degrees and give it another place so there will be enough room for the 120mm fan in the front

Second of all the bottom 5,25" bay doesn't allow the mounting of a drive because it would hit the motherboard, so in contrast to my first design I will have to use the upper 2 bays.

That results in this adjusted drawing.

Most likely I will also place the switches somewhere else.

I'll keep you informed!


started modding the chassis

Today I've started modding the 2 cases that where still standing at my work, in one of them I replaced the hdd rack including dremeling away some useless metal, in the other one I only replaced it, the dremeling still has to be done.

First of all i de-mounted the hdd racks

Than I cut away the old sled-system in which the racks where originally placed to make some room for the new way of mounting..

The racks will be mounted with m3 bolts, therefore I had to drill some holes and make thread into them

Out of the front of the case I have cut away a piece so the finished hole is just as big as the HDD rack, allowing me to mount the drives a bit more to the front so I will have some more internal room.

My custom made fronts eventually will be mounted a few cm in front of the original case (for which I already thought of something) so this doesn't cause any problems.

The rack back in it's place just like i wanted.

Like I said, I have done this to one case so far, in this one I will mount my workstation one of these days.
This way I can kind of keep modding all cases without having none for my systems. All I have to do is quickly replace the systems in another case when needed.

The disadvantage of having to do everything 4 times is that it takes a little longer to get to the next step in the project.
The big advantage is that my cases will eventually be a unity and you get quite handy after doing it a couple of times.

goodbye silvertec

Today it really was time to say goodbye to my silvertec

so I've place my workstation in one of the Aopen cases

. Like I told before I have sold the complete case including lights, LCD, baybus etc. so fortunately I didn't have to take everything out of it :d

There it is, after a long period of loyal service, de-mounted and parts spread throughout the room

At first I intended to let the HDD's stick out of the front a bit to create some more room inside.

But it turned out to be a better idea to just turn the drives around so the cabling will eventually run behind the fronts.

All it took was drilling 4 holes into the hdd rack and in no time they where mounted the other way around.

It takes a little getting used to the lack of space after being used to a chieftec bigtower, but fdd and zip drive will be left away anyway so in total it's a few less parts..

Now both my systems are mounted in an Aopen case, one a bit modded, one still original.

The other two cases need a bit more dremeling to be abel to mount the HDD racks the same way as in my current workstation case.

I'm expecting my 120mm fans and aryl panel somewhere this week which means I can finally start brainstorming about the fronts and start mounting the fans in the two empty cases.


1st load of equipment from a joined product buy

After a bit of waiting finally I got some stuff I ordered in a "joined product buy" today (no i'm not impatient

):

8x ac-ryan 120mm fan uv-green
3x ac-ryan acrylic panel 5mm clear
2x ac-ryan aryl panel 3mm green

Now I can finally start working on my fronts

The machine cutting of the holes for the fans and 5,25" bays I will do together with my boss's uncle (hail uncle Herman!!) to get this done as smooth as possible, but he's only in on Thursday so I'll have to wait a little.

But if I finish working a bit early tomorrow I will start working on the two empty cases again.

Finishing the work on the 3,5" racks and mounting the 120mm fans in the fronts are 2 things I want to have done asap so I can start measuring the front and start machine cutting on short notice.
So that's my first priority for now.


here we go again

Yesterday, after I finished working, I've worked on my project a bit at the company.

First of all I wanted to have a look at what I actually bought.

I started with finishing of the 2 hdd racks in the 2 empty cases, but because you've already seen how I did this I'm not going to tell the whole story again

That's a thing that comes with having to do everything 4 times

Let's see how the 120mm fans have to be placed.

There!

so let's grab the dremel!

Eventually cutting out the holes turned out to go faster than I thought

so I just had some time left to mount one of the fans before leaving the building (because of the alarm I have to be out before 20.00).

One step closer to the end result

New front design

Not really an update but I just had to show it.

I finally managed to get the layout of the front so that i'm pleased with it and everything will fit.

I've chosen to place a 20x2 character LCD in each case for display of e.g. fans speeds and temperatures.

[/b]


yet another new front design

Because the size 20x2 character LCD I needed was hard to get I decided to use a bit narrower 20x4 LCD (even better more characters :d) I found them for a reasonable price, but I did have to change the drawing again

I'm starting to find my way in 3Ds max a bit so I decided to make a rough 3D model to get an impression of what the end result will look ( I didn't feel like modeling all screws etc as well

)

yay, more "presents!"

Slowly (always too slow

) the stuff for my project is being delivered piece by piece :d

Today I got 4 sweex SB hubs (one per system) and I've printed a 1:1 scaled design for the holes in the fronts.

(I'm really glad they decided to buy an A1 printer at work

)

yay, even more "presents!"

Today the 4 20x4 LCD's I ordered arrived.:d

Just to keep you informed:

Thursday my fronts will be picked up by my boss's uncle who's going to machine cut them (nope I'm not going to do the holes in the transparent layer my self because I want them to be as accurate as possible, handwork wont accomplish that result.)

I'm calling some people for neatly priced 2mm steel for the "ears" of the cases and I hope to have this as well one of these days.

Tomorrow I'm going to buy all the stuff needed to solder my LCD's.


first LCD working

Tonight I managed to free up some time to start soldering one of the LCD's and test it.
At least the first one went ok

(not that I expected different btw)

As you can see in the pictures I managed to fit the two potentiometers for contrast and backlight into the housing of the 25 pole D-sub connector, I found this practical so I didn't have any loose potentiometers hanging round.

One down, three to go :x


lcd's finished and fronts back from machine cutting

Today I finished soldering the other 3 LCD's as well

Next to that I also got my fronts back. The rounded corners of the square holes I will square myself and they will need a lot of sanding as well

I hoped that they would call me today to tell me my steel was ready to picked up, but unfortunately this wasn't the case, I'll call the dude tomorrow to tell him to hurry

theme design for siemens sl65

I found out that for my mobile phone (siemens SL65) there was a possibility to design my own theme so I couldn't resist making one in style of my casemod in progress

For those who are waiting for updates, I haven't worked as much on my mod the past few weeks, but I haven't stopped completely either, the transparent parts of the fronts are as good as finished.

Next week I'll have a holiday and I will start making the UV green parts of the fronts and the side panels from 2mm steel plates.

[/b]


a days labour

Today I've been working on my project the whole day :d
Once again I have been modding at work (with permission of course

because my boss isn't the worsted

)

First of all I started to sort all the material I thought I needed today.

Because I didn't get to it the last time I still had to cut out the hole for the 120mm fan in the second case.

It took me a while how to get started with cutting the uv green acrylic panel, but after a bit of measuring and messing around I managed to "build" a setup for machine cutting the needed 4 pieces of acrylic panel

after copying the holes from the transparent parts onto the green parts I started hacksawing the holes for the 120mm fans.
These had to be identical to the holes in the transparent part so they where the easiest to start with (gave me some time to get comfortable with the hacksaw

)

Because after 4 120mm holes of hacksawing I got bored I decided to drill the holes for the switches in between:x

Than I started sawing the holes for the 5,25" bays. As told I will leave 5mm of green visible around the bezels and switches. That's why these holes are 5mm smaller than the ones in the transparent part.

Because I don't have the bezels yet I decided to make the holes a little bit smaller just to make sure (easier to make them bigger than smaller). .

The holes for the LCD's I will do in a later stage, because they are smaller I thin I will saw them by hand.

So I started to work on the side panels/ears of the cases.
I started to measure and draw the size of the ears on the steel plate minus the thickness of the plate (because when folding the thickness will be counted to the eventual size) after which I folded them on the fold bench.

For those who payed attention, yes I did bent them a little bit further than 90 degrees, because at home (where I don't have a fold bench) it will be easier to fold them back a bit instead of further

There's the result of a day of labour (9.30 till 16.00) at work.

Fortunately I got quite a lot further and because the overall look is slowly starting to show below you'll find a few pictures of the parts stacked together so globally you can see what the idea is.

Between the two layers there will be a layer of none transparent foil so you will only see the green at the edges and the bezels and switches

That's it for today

little update of the fronts

Today, in between my day job and part time education, I saw a chance to get some things I needed en mod a bit.

At the local hardware store I've bought some Stainless steel handles and (hex key) bolts for the fronts.

The way I'm going to mount the fronts is developed completely in my head, but it's difficult to explain so please keep track of the updates to find out

Like some of you already knew I've been busy cutting the holes for the LCD's in my fronts.

Because the LCD's have to be mounted as close to the transparent layer of the fronts as possible I had to cut the holes the size of the LCD's housing instead of just the screen.
The housing eventually wont be visible because of the foil that will be placed in between the green and transparent part.

the third picture shows that while cutting the first front it tore a bit

, but fortunately that won't be visible at all in the end

There you go, 4 times done

After that I started drilling the holes for the 120mm fans.
I measured out 1 front and used this to copy the holes onto the other three, started drilling with 3mm and ended with 4 and ..... wow it fits exactly

There we go

some more work done again

And, just to show you where I'm modding most of the time, here's 2 pictures of my hobby room

little update

It's been a while and many of you must have thought I gave up, but don't worry, that won't happen!!

To be able to go further I really need the lian li bezels I ordered, but unfortunately it takes ages for them to be delivered

so really continuing modding is a bit harsh atm

I did receive some other materials and I've got some other new, but more about that in a bit

The first picture shows the materials I already received, with the most important missing :s

The second picture shows how the pile of parts is slowly growing

On the third pictures I've roughly place some parts on/into the fronts to get a bit of an idea of what it will look like.
I've placed the original front measurements drawing in between like eventually the foil will be (except for the 5mm around the bezels, over there the green will be seen as well.)

And now to something new,

Because of the weight of the side panels I wanted to lighten them a bit by cutting out a logo or something like that.
When the father of a girlfriend of min heard this (for which I'm designing and making invitations for their 25th marriage anniversary) he offered me to have them laser cut at his work, as sort of payment for my efforts.

And of course I didn't say no to that, looks a lot better and costs a lot less work than doing it with the dremel

here's the result :d

Unfortunately no big update because of the delay in the delivery of my bezels, but I wanted to show you that I didn't give up and am still working on the project.


first front is starting to look like it

I haven't been working on the fronts for ages because I'm still waiting for the *beep* lian li

But it turned out that a friend of mine who owns a lian li case had a few blank plates lying around which have the exact same size as the bezel .

Which means I could have cut my fronts the right size using the blank plates all that time

stupid that I didn't think of that before

But, enough about me being blonT again, pictures

First of all I've cut the hole for the bezels the exact right size.

After which I used sandpaper grain 180 (picture is called 60, my bad

) to "matte the green acrylic panel layer on both sides.

After which I couldn't resist placing most of the parts together to get an overview again

Behind the green acrylic panel I will place mirror foil to make the green seem extra bright and between the green and transparent layer I can place anything I'd like

There

finally, a short but useful update after waiting ages for my bezels

which still haven't arrived btw!

BEZELPARTY!!!

Finally, after waiting for about half a year, eventually my Lian-Li bezels arrived by mail, a good reason for an extra beer tonight and to start modding again

There they are, it took a while like said, but that didn't reduce the smile on my face when I opened the box

Just for fun I gathered some materials and parts for the picture

As you can see I am just as far with the other 3 fronts as the 1st in the previous update. (Am not going to bore you with the how to again

)

I started with cleaning the transparent acrylic panel of the fronts today, they had some residue on it from the tape I used to draw all the holes etc. on them.
This was a challenge to itself because the residue didn't easily come off and I didn't want to use any chemical products on the acrylic panel
Fortunately my mum had a trick from grandma's era "Eau de Cologne"(old peoples perfume) and this worked perfectly

(does smell a bit though

)

Alright, enough talk, PICS

If I've got nothing better to do I will drive to work again tomorrow and try to build up at least 1 case as far as possible.

No long story this time, pictures are way more interesting

Steel part of the fronts + Bezels

Woke up a bit late today so I didn't start on the assembly

Starting on the steel part of the front panels was another thing that still had to be done so I've made one of them today

It took me a few lines, but after a bit of measuring I think I drew the correct lines eventually

Dremel time

been a while since I touched my dremel, but fortunately I still knew how to

one tiny little mistake, but this wont be visible in the end.

As you can see the hole for the fan is a bit bigger than in the green acrylic panel layer, so you won't see any steel edges near the fan in the end.

After placing the fronts exactly onto each other I drilled the holes for the fan in the steel so I can start assembling the layers to make work a bit easier.

He waited so long for his bezels and the first thing he does is cut them to pieces

Because my cases aren't lian li cases it was pretty obvious that it wouldn't fit directly

in case of an original lian li the bezels are mounted to the case, but in my case they will have to be mounted to the front panels.
There for I've cut off a piece of the bezels and mounted it the other way around (hard to explain, so here we go again, pictures

)

Into the cut off pieces I drilled holes on the same place as where the bolds which keep the plastic in place in the bezels.
This way I could easily mount the pieces to the side of the bezels.

On these pictures you can see how the bezels will be mounted to the fronts eventually..

On the 3d picture you can see the screws are sunk into the green acrylic panel layer so you won't see them in the end.

And..... I"M A DAMN LUCKY *******

why?......After I drilled the holes to mount the bezels I realized that in the final design an edge of 5mm green acrylic panel will be visible in the fronts.
I didn't take this in notice while drilling the holes, but fortunately the holes are outside this 5mm
but just to make sure none will be I will be using bolts with a smaller head from now on

A few leftover pictures

Wish I wouldn't have done anything today

Not much to say, I'm going to have to remake one of the green front parts. Because I stepped on one lying around

Pictures:

* floriske.nl is going to break something useless to get rid of his aggression

Continued after a grumpy day

After putting aside the disappointment from yesterday I started with a second front panel today.

Because you've already seen the making of the steel parts I won't bother you with it again

Pictures again

This is today's victim (indeed this is the one with a tiny break in it but this won't be seen in the end) hopefully it won't end up under my big feet

To be sure I wouldn't drill within the 5mm which will eventually be visible I drew lines so I could see what I was doing

The holes for the bezels are drilled like above..

To easily mark the mounting holes of the LCD's I've put it on it's place upside down. These holes are drilled 3mm and I also enlarged the mounting holes in the circuit board so I can use M3 bolds for mounting..

Once again the bolds are sunk in the green acrylic panel layer.

Here you can see how they will be mounted, the bolts will eventually be cut off.

And of course I couldn't resist mounting one front panel as far as possible to see if it all fits like it's supposed to

The hole for the LCD screen has to be adapted a bit, but this I will do later on.

WOW, I've modded without wrecking anything today

I'm still alive and started again

As promised I would continue working on my project after finishing my part time education for graphical designer (which I successfully finished

) in my holiday

The first week of my holiday I've been away and relaxing with my girlfriend

but I've started again.

Yesterday I gathered all of my mod stuff and drove off to work (yes during my holiday) because the weather wasn't to good the past few days and at work we've got a lot more tools to work with (thanks boss

)

I started working on the 3d front so it got just as far as the first 2 (don't have new material for the 4th one I broke yet so I'll have to do this later on :S)

Finishing of the 3d front took most of my time, but I did do a few extra things

After I finished the 3d front I drilled the holes for the power and reset switches in all 3 of them.

Don't be bothered by the rust on the steel btw, they will be treated before they are going to be painted/coated..

Tomorrow I will continue, I want to drill the final holes that go through all 3 layers of the front panels. I'll start early so I hope to show a lot more pictures than today!

Here are 2 more pictures of today's result............ on to tomorrow

Day 2

Today I'll start with some good advise

quote:
floriske.nl wrote on tuesday 02 august 2005 @ 10:28:
I've got a tip for fellow modders:

If you are going to use your dremel make sure to wear safety glasses.

When I was dremeling yesterday somehow I got 2 tiny steel splinters in my eye while wearing my regular glasses, result: hardly any sleep and a lot of pain

But the doctor took them out and according to him It'll only stay annoying for a few days

And now, off to work to mod

There, that's today's tip, now let's go and view today's results

I didn't work all day as I wanted because around 3 in the afternoon my eye was so irritated that I stopped.

I've spend most of the day assembling one case to see if it all fits so far and check if I am not forgetting something..

started placing the parts toughly together after which I could mark the mounting holes for the side panels.

After which I could start drilling them an mount the panels to the chassis.

Eventually I will have to take the side panels off again because they have to be coated, so I didn't mount it on all places yet.* floriske.nl is rather lazy than tired

I almost forgot to drill the extra holes to mount the 3 layers of the fronts together. 2 extra holes left of the drive bays, aligned with the fan mounting holes.

Mounting the fronts to the chassis basically will be done with the bolts of the handles, the left and right side will contain these handles which will be mounted with bolts from the back, through the folded part of the side panels and the front panel.
Simple, but successful.

All in all I'm pretty satisfied with today's result, didn't expect that the assembly of one case would go this quick

and ............ at least as important ............. so far everything fits and I think it still looks promising

2 more pictures of what the case looks like now:

see you in a few days!

1st 'chassis' ready for use

I had to make a choice today: Either mount the side panels to the second case, or make the first case's chassis ready to mount my workstation in it.

Eventually I chose the second option, first of all to keep a bit of alternation in the build process and to empty another "non modded" case so I can start working on that one as well

Like I've said before, my current workstation will eventually become mediacenter and will be cooled with a thermaltake bigwater cooling system.

To be able to mount the pump and radiator the HDD's had to be moved so I would have enough room.
After a bit of brainstorming en making the conclusion that I would never use 2 DVD/CD players in one system I decided to mount the HDD rack underneath the DVD player.
But, in such way that it can always be placed back in its original place when needed.

First of all I removed the top of the rack to have just al little less overall height. Once the harddisks are place they will make sure it wont deform, so the top isn't needed anyway.

As I could have expected I also had to replace the mounting holes in de rack because I want the disks to stick out in front as much as possible so I will loose as less space inside the case as possible.

Between the LCD en the chassis front there is 3cm of room, the harddrives will eventually stick out 1,5cm so they won't be in the way.They also won't interfere with the mainboard inside the case because they won't overlap that.

I also had to do some minor adjustments to the front to make it all fit (edges aren't sanded yet on the pictures

)

The rack will be mounted almost the same way as before, except upside down an in such a way that I can take it out from the front of the case.

To make sure the rack won't bend due to the weight of the disks I simply mounted a rubber foot under it.

And that's how it eventually looks.

As some of you might have noticed the side panels stuck out of the side of the fronts a bit.
I've done this on purpose because it's easier to take a bit off steel of it than add some to it.
Here you can see the edge that I had to cut off on both sides.

On with the hardware mounting now

I have removed the side panels so they can be powder coated, mounting them again can simply be done while the hardware is already mounted so I can continue preparing the chassis for mounting the hardware.

To mount the radiator I didn't have to do much more than cutting of some small edges en drilling 4 holes as you can see in the pictures

Mounting the pump is a different story, as this has to be placed where the HDD rack was mounted and there isn't much steel to mount it to in that place anymore because I cut that away.

It took me a while, especially because most likely I want to use another type of pump in the future, but I figured something out, a PCI slot cover plate did the trick

not the prettiest solution but an effective one and I only had to drill one hole in the chassis.

I want to run the cooling "dry" before mounting it on the hardware, so I took a few pieces of plywood and temporarily mounted the hardware to those.

Officially the GPU block had to be mounted vertically, but because of the lack in height in the cases I had to measure and improvise a bit to mount it horizontally.

I also mounted the CPU block on the right place on the wood, after which I went home for dinner and mounting the hoses and filling the system.

I would rather have mounted the hoses less messy, but as this is my first liquid cooling system it this was something I lacked experience in, next time I have to refill the system I will reroute them.

I'm going to let it run overnight now to see if it doesn't leek anywhere.


done a lot, not much pictures and text ;)

Because mostly I've worked on things I already did on the first case there wont be much pictures and much of a story in this update

Today I've e did the same work to case 2 and 3 as I have done to case 1 so far:

That's it for today

miniature update

Not a major update but another good reason to drink a beer to it tonight

I have de-mounted chassis 2 and 3 today and mounted my server in one of them so I can start working on the final chassis as well

As some of you know I have wrecked one of the green layers of my fronts by standing on it and unfortunately I am still waiting for a new Acrylic panel for it

(by mistake they had send me a 4mm panel instead of 3

)

I did do all the rest of the work on the fourth chassis today but unfortunately I can't pre-mount the front yet due to the lack of material.

I didn't take any pictures of the adjustment of the chassis because you've already seen this before, but I did take some pictures of my server in it's new housing and how I got rid of the cables as much as possible.

Add on to the first update of today

After coming home and firing up my server I heard something that has been annoying me a while already, the CPU cooler making an awful lot of noise

the orb series of TT has the reputation of not being the most quiet cooler, but mine wore out as well so it was hell to listen to it.

At first I wanted to remount the original boxed cooler, but than it came to me that I had a Zahlman CNPS7000-CU lying around somewhere.

Standard it doesn't come with mounting material for socket 423 (the server is an PIV 1.4 willamette) but with a little creativity I managed to adjust the clamps from the boxed cooler in such a way that I could mount the Zahlman with it. Simply drilling 2 holes and cutting thread in it did the trick.

As you can see, all I had to do was remove the original socket 478 brackets and mount the modded original williamette clamps to the cooler

The TT indigo orb kept my williamette (running at 1610 MHz) idle around 39 degrees, but the Zahlman lowers that temperature to 32 and with a fanmate in between and the fan running at it's slowest it still manages to keep it to 37 degrees

(and awfully quiet

)

First 2006 update

After hardly hearing from me for about 4 months finally here's another update, more pictures than text, but hey it's an update

First of all a few pictures of the reason why you didn't here from me for such a long time.
In october I got the key to my first own (rented) 2 story apartment and I have been working hard on that (and just like my mod I somehow never get finished

)

First of all the living room:

I wont bother you with the outside, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, hallway, toilet, shed, dining room etc. but one thing I do have to show you "where am I going to work on my mod from now on?"

The hobby room on the top floor that is (complete with self build workbench

):

But enough about my new home now, most likely you are much more curious about my mod

As some of you knew I have a new workstation in the meanwhile and my old one has become mediacenter, I also got a PIII for free for the fourth case and messing around with linux.

off topic:

for those who are curious, here are the specs of the workstation:

-Athlon 64 X2 Toledo 4400+, Socket 939, Boxed
-Corsair TWINX1024-4400C25PT DDR SDRAM, 1 GB, PC4400 cl 2,5
-2x Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 10 250 GB, 7.200 rpm, 16 MB cache Sata
-Asus A8N-SLI Premium
-NEC ND-3540 16 x, 8 x, 16 x, Silver, OEM
-Antec True Power 2.0 550 Watt
-Asus EN7800GTX TOP/2DHTV 256 MB, PCI Express x16

As you could have expected I have already built it into one of the chassis and momentarily it's running like this on top of the stack:

As you can see I didn't install the water cooling yet, I did get started on that in the empty chassis I have left, this way I can work on mounting the radiator and pump without having to miss my workstation.

The chassis that currently contains the workstation will eventually contain the PIII.

Like said I started on mounting the water cooling which contains the following parts:

-Aquacomputer 120mm radiator
-Aqua computer Cuplex Evo 1.1 CPU block
-Alphacool NexXxoS NVXP-3 6800/7800 GPU block
-Eheim compact 600 pump with....
-Aquatube reservoir for compact 600

The pump and radiator are mounted in their place

As you can see I mounted the pump rotated 90 degrees, this way the reservoir is the highest point in the cooling system and it will be easy to refill. It's also mounted partly isolated from the chassis with bolts through rubber to prevent resonance as much as possible.

How are we going to go further after such a long time?

Well, I've got more good news, the side panels are send to the powder coater and will be ready in about a week, when they are I can start mounting aluminium gauze behind them and mounting them to the cases so they wont have to be de-mounted AGAIN

I also have to do some things for the water cooling before I can mount it onto the hardware, for the 230V pump I'm going to make a relay switch so it will turn on with the system. This will be build into a metal box and I will have to put myself to realizing that

After that? I have no idea, I'll just pick up the work and I still am not in a hurry, so I'm still going to take my time and work as concentrated as possible

The wooden cabinet won't become black anymore, but it will be the same color and style as my furniture, I will see if i can adjust the 3D render one of these days.

That's it for today.

p.s. for those who don't like to read through the entire topic, here's a short to-do list:

done:

- All 4 of the chassis are nearly done
- side panels are done,
- Most of the cutting and drilling work on the front panels is done (except for the led's)
- I have made a replacement for the broken green front layer.

to do:

- build in workstation water cooling
- mount PIII in the last chassis

- mount aluminium gauze into the side panels
- final mounting of the side panels
- build led's into the fronts
- final complete assembly
- build the wooden cabinet

because I had the picture, here you can see the 2 crates which currently contain all of the projects mod stuff

Water cooling relay switch

My first intention was to do this yesterday, but didn't get to it, so I've worked on the relay switch for my workstation's water cooling for a few hours today

The entire switch will be built in a die-cast aluminium box and will contain a molex connector which can be plugged in inside the case and a 230V connection.

I started mounting the molex and 230V chassis and testing the relay on a loose power supply.

After that I had to make a hole where the pump cable could run through, I placed a rubber in this hole so the cable stays in place and won't get damaged.

The box is mounted on the back of the case where you can normally mount 2 60mm fans, but because I wont do that this is the best place for it. Also because it was very easy to make the molex chassis pluggable inside the case (see next pictures)

You can also see how the pump's cable is running on the second picture.
Both 230V wires (phase and null) are switched by the relay.

Here you can see the box completely mounted and connected in its place.

In the second picture you can clearly see how it will be connected to the PSU, unfortunately the hole for the molex isn't too nice because I Miss-measured a few mm

but I don't think it will be noticeable once all hardware is mounted.

There, once again not much text, but hey, it's friday and I didn't feel like writing a long story and I think most of you rather see pictures than text

Water cooling is finally running

One of the shortest updates in the entire work log I think

but someone's waiting for me behind me on the couch

so I'll keep it short today

My Digital camera is giving me some problems lately en it took me quite some effort to take pictures of the cooling system after mounting it.

I already found the first disadvantage, while the set keeps my processor and video card (of which I accidentally reversed the in- and outgoing port

) cooler than my previous air cooler, something else is getting pretty hot because the airflow dropped: The Chipset.

The heat sink at the end of the heat pipe needs some more airflow (although not much) to keep its head cool, else it'll run too hot.
I already intended to place an outtake fan above the CPU to increase the airflow a bit, but for now I'll just leave the case open with a temporary fan above it (not on the pictures by the way)
Right, enough for now, I'm moving to the couch

Side panels are coated and I mounted them

Finally thursday the powder coater called to tell me my side panels where ready

so I instantly drove over to pick up my parcel.

I couldn't resist mounting them, but first I had to go to the local hardware store to buy me some rivets and the right tools to apply them because I didn't have that at home yet and I didn't feel like waiting till next day so I could bring it from work.

My PIII system was also still waiting to be build in the 4th case, because I was working on the cases anyhow I did this as well.

The system has the following awesome specs:

-Intel Pentium III 450 MHz
-2x 64 Mb 100 MHz SDRam
-8,4 Gb Samsung 5400rpm hdd
-mitsumi disk drive
-samsung cd drive
-Belkin 100MBit ethernet card
-motherboard? no idea, didn't even pay attention to it

4 systems cause a heck of a lot of cables, I'm glad there is a cupboard underneath my desk in which I could hide them

my scanner is in the drawer and the printer in the cupboard next to the desk.

On the left picture you can also see my new KVM switch, a real el-cheap sweex version, but hey, the thing works like it should

And that what the system stack currently looks like, nice view don't you think.

The next thing I want to do is mount the led's in the fronts, because this will be quite a lot of work.

I also have to arrange some mesh for the side panels at a friend of mine and have been thinking about filling the triangles in the side panels with green acrylic panel, but I'm going to test how that looks first.

I will only start with the actual cabinet at the moment the 4 cases are finished.

Final cabinet design

It's 99% certain that this is the final design of the cabinet that is going to hold al 4 of the cases. Not just the looks, but I've made the 3D design so that all parts are sized, placed and shaped like they will be in the final build. The explode view shows all parts. (does anybody have a clue if there is a simple way to create exploded views in max, did it all one by one by hand now

.)

Why this many parts? Because the panels of the cupboard have to look like they are 30mm thick, but I want to keep the cabinet as light as possible if I would really make all panels 30mm it would get way too heavy

so this way they will look like they are 30mm thick but aren't.

The cabinet will be completely build from Finnish Birch multiplex wood in 15mm and 4mm thickness and will be stained dark brown and finished with transparent lacquer.

Led holes and mirror foil mounted on fronts

I'll start with a picture of what the fronts looked like before I started working on them again, part mounted.

Because the led holes weren't drilled in the steel layers yet and I wanted to drill those before I started applying the mirror foil I had to take the fronts apart for now..

After that I managed, even though al front panels where handmade, to mount all parts together so I could drill all holes for the led's at once (so my measurement skills appeared not to be that bad, because at least 2 holes where in the exact same place in all 4 of the front panels, and the rest nearly as well

)

On these 2 pictures all the holes for the led's are drilled, 14 pieces in each front.

Finally I could start with the mirror foil now

I bought this at a local sign maker, they fortunately had a leftover piece big enough for my fronts which I could buy for small change.
I also orientated for the foil color for the final look of the fronts, but I'll get back to that later.

On the pictures above you can see how I applied the foil:

-first of al I cut a piece of foil slightly bigger than the front.
-peeled of the protective film and cut it in half
-re-placed the protective film
-made a nice mixture of dish wash soap and lukewarm water
-placed the foil on the front with the protective film down and put weight on one half to make sure it would stay in it's place
-soaped in the other half
-gently from the center out I rubbed on the foil with an old discount card
-et voila, that's one half, for the other half I used the same method
-the top front is with, the bottom one without foil
-and repeated that 4 times
-and now it's time for a.............

That's it for today, I'm not sure when you can expect the next update, but as you can see, I'm still working on it

Tiny little update

* I'm glad I didn't became a monk

(a dutch saying meaning a lot of (the same) work that needs a lot of concentration goes: "Monk's work")

why? because I'm not a huge fan of monk's work as you can see above

30 holes in each front, which makes 120 holes total (for those who dislike math as well

) cut by hand

But hey, It's all in the game

Mounted the mesh in the first case

Finally, for those which got curious because of all my stories about the mesh in the side panels, here's an update with pictures.

Because I got the mesh from a friend of mine rolled up it took me some effort to get it nice and flat again.
First of all I cut the pieces in the correct size at work (because of a tiny mismeasurement I eventually had to cut them a bit smaller afterwards

but luckily not bigger

) after which I placed the pieces between a few pieces of plywood to get them as flat as possible.

I had already done the left side, but didn't take any pictures of the process because I was more obsessed with finding the right adhesive etc.
The pictures all show how the right side is done, but it doesn't really differ from the left side, except for the fact that I had to take the power supply out for mounting the right side.

On the exact place the mesh has to be mounted I placed a piece of cardboard first on which I drew the letters of the panels (I did this for both sides separately)
This way I could place the mesh on the piece of cardboard and see exactly where to put the adhesive..

After trying some different types of glue and tapes, I eventually chose 2 component "Bison Combi Power". It's applicable very easy and is very strong, so not much is needed to get the mesh thoroughly in it's place.

Above that, the glue has a workable process time of 15 minutes. If, after applying the glue, you wait 10 minutes before attaching it, the mesh almost immediately stays in it's place giving me the advantage that even when the mesh wasn't completely flat it would stay pretty much in it's place.

The entire process was simply mixing one part of glue with 1 part of hardener, apply the mixture, wait for 10 minutes, place the mesh in the case et voila:

and here's the final result (perspective on the 2nd picture looks a bit weird

but the letters really are cut out straight

).

You can see the applied glue from the inside of the case, but I don't really have a problem with that, the inside won't be visible eventually but who knows, maybe I'll paint the entire inside later on.

I purposely chose to place the mesh over the entire inside of the case because I liked this better than just the letter with a tiny edge around them.

So far for today.................


The very beginning of the cabinet

Finally I got to pick up the wood for the cabinet today, unfortunately I'm pretty occupied with all kinds of other stuff and didn't do much work on it yet, but I couldn't resist showing the few pictures I took

2 Pictures of the wood for the cabinet, a lot of small pieces and the 2 side panels with the holes roughly milled in them.

As you could see on the first picture I couldn't resist making a small start

I've build up the base of the inner part of the right side panel.

not much text in this update, but tomorrow I'll continue working on the cabinet..............


And another few hours of work on the cabinet is done

As promised I continued working on the cabinet today and managed to do quite a bit of work on it.

I started building up the second base of the inner parts of the side panels

After which I mounted the strips of wood which make the side panels look thicker from the front..

In one of the 2 side panels the hole in it was accidentally milled 3mm bigger than it should be, but nothing we can't solve

I glued in a small strip of wood which sticks out a tiny bit, later on I will sand this level with the panel and you will hardly see it afterwards.

Here you can see how the inner part is mounted onto the side panels

Because wood is a product of nature which doesn't always take the shape you'd like it needs some motivation once a while (reed: brute force and glue clamps)

And with the second side panel. in place it is starting to look like a real cabinet.

Because my girlfriend likes a little attention once a while this will be all for today, but I made quite a bit of progress and everything is still going according to plan

continued with the cabinet

Despite having a barbeque

this afternoon I got quite a bit of work done again today.

First of all I started making the panel which separates the 19" part from the bottom cabinet.

After which I continued mounting the top of the cabinet. Once again, to save weight and wood, I didn't use full panels of wood, but one full panel with strips mounted on it to make it look thicker from the front.

On the second photo you can clearly see how I use the 4mm plywood to finish off the ends of the panels.

The exact same story for the bottom, except this is 45mm thick instead of 30mm. I couldn't clamp it to the side panels, but because it's the bottom and you won't see them afterwards, I used screws to keep it in it's place

Than I continued finishing off the front edges of the cabinet.

And that's what it looks like at this moment, all the front edges finished off with 4mm plywood, nest step is to finish off the inner parts of the side panels with the same 4mm plywood..

* floriske.nl waves

Part 3 of the cabinet ;)

I could mention that I continued working on the cabinet today, but hey, who expected something else? so I won't

Today I started with squaring off the corners of the hole in one side panel. (yeah I know, not 100% perfect yet, but just wait and see till it's finished

)

Here I mounted the first part of the 4mm plywood to finish off the construction in the left side panel., and, call me stupid

I'm two of these pieces short, some for the top and bottom

Tomorrow I'm going to arrange some more plywood so I have all the pieces I need.

If you don't have enough clamps what do you use? ......................... right, tape and leftover materials

Here you can see the 4mm plywood finish on the insides.

Between the case I will also place the same 4mm plywood which overlaps the side panels a bit (7mm) so it will neatly cover the top and bottom edges of them.

On this picture all 4mm pieces on the left side are mounted, the seem at the top is a bit bigger than I had hoped, but I think I will manage to get rid of this with some filler an sanding

It took me some effort because no one was around to help me (girlfriend has an evening shift) but I managed to get the bottom case of the stack on my desk out of it so I could have a quick look if it would fit in the cabinet (I just was too curious

).

There, that's it for tonight, now I'm going to enjoy a cold glass of rosé wine.

CHEERS!

* I'm a star in putting on weird faces

Mounting the feet;)

Today I worked on the cabinet for about an hour, I should have been in bed instead, because green stuff is slowly filling up my head (and running out of it

) but I couldn't resist working on it for a short while

Here are the feet which will be mounted underneath the cabinet and which make the whole adjustable on an uneven floor.

My patented "vacuum while drilling" system

After pre-drilling the holes I took a 7 hole saw with a 45mm diameter and drilled 20mm deep into the layer of 45mm plywood.
With some brute force I cut out the wood from this hole so a 20mm deep hole was left. 45mm diameter en in the hart of the hole a smaller hole through all 3 layers of plywood.

I drilled the center holes slightly bigger than 10mm and the first part even a bit bigger so I could mount an M10 threaded T-nut.

The feet are crewed into this t-nut and the thread will be reachable from the inside of the cabinet so it can easily be adjusted from the inside.

I will make slots in the end of the feet's thread so I can use a screwdriver for the adjustment.
(not completely my own idea by the way, Ikea

is using this system for some years now

)

Once again, times 4

I think I have said this before, but don't pay too much attention to the rough looks, I will thoroughly fill and sand after the cabinet is finished.

It's in the living room at the moment and to prevent as much dust as possible I sand as less as possible at this moment.


Here we are again

I took some time to work on the cabinet again today and yesterday.

Yesterday I've been working on cutting the holes for the 4x 230V 120mm outtake fans in the cabinet.
I've got 4 of those fans which will be switched on and off with an adjustable thermal relay, so they will switch on only if the temperature in the top of the cabinet gets too high.

The bottom part of the cabinet will get a door in it, behind this e.g. my kvm switch, router and subwoofer will be placed.

But I also wanted some storage space for games etc. That's what I've been doing today.

First of all I've cut all pieces and glued them together.

After which I glued the whole construction in it's place. It wasn't easy to keep it in it's place but eventually it worked out fine.

The shelve is 215mm high and 400mm deep, the rest of the bottom cabinet will be left open so I can reach some cabling and equipment more easily.


Another little piece of cabinet ;)

As the update title makes you expect: I got a little bit further.

first of all I (after having picked up the final pieces of wood on friday) glued in the 4mm plywood finish in the right side panel.

After which I thickened the center shelve of the bottom cupboard and finished of the front of it with a sheet of 4mm plywood as well.

This is what the cabinet looks like at this moment, on the second picture I have temporarily placed the door into it.

All the rough woodwork on the cabinet is done now.
Next week I will go out and buy some hinges for the door and prepare them, after which I can take the entire cabinet to the factory of a friend of mine where I can start sanding and it will be painted.

A week of short mod moments

You didn't hear much of me the past week, but I have been doing some useful things between other more important stuff I had to do.

I've mounted the hinges on the door, which means the cabinet is now completely ready to be sanded and painted

the pieces of wood which are behind the hinges on the pictures where necessary to be able to mount them correctly, after mounting them I replaced them for 2 smaller pieces which are less visible.

I all goes well I will be taking the cabinet to my friends workshop this week where I can start sanding it.

In the meantime I continued working on mounting the mesh in the side panels of the cases, but unfortunately casemodding doesn't always work out like it should

After mounting the mesh I noticed it doesn't have a consistent structure and that some pieces where mounted upside down regarding to others.

I had to take these pieces out and start all over again, the one I mounted a while back and of which the glue really hardened took me some effort to take out and didn't survive my brute force. So I had to make one new mesh panel.

and mounting the mesh "again"

A few weeks ago when I came downstairs in the morning I noticed that my download pc wasn't running anymore

I have no idea why, but I thought windows update had something to do with it.

However, after restarting it didn't take long before the system shut down again, and I came to the conclusion that the water pump of my Thermaltake bigwater set died.

Unfortunately my bios automatically shuts down the system if the processor reaches more than 60 degrees celsius.

hail to that

I've ordered a new pump with reservoir at aquacomputer in germany (same as mounted in my workstation) which arrived this week so I could mount it.

Because it's mounted the exact same way as the pump in my workstation I won't go into details, but have posted the pictures.

Another conclusion: I'm never going to use thermaltake cooling liquid ever again, why that is shows on the pictures above

The left bottle is the liquid as it should be, on the right you can see the liquid that came out of my system

I'm using alphacool liquid in my workstation's cooling system which still is crystal clear, so I've filled up this system with it as well.

here's another picture of the cabinet with 3 cased (with mesh) placed in it.

My workstation which isn't placed in it on the picture still needs a new piece of mesh on one side.

Those who placed close attention must have noticed the poorer quality of the pictures of the last few updates. This is because my parents borrowed my camera and I have to take pictures with my girlfriends camera at this moment.

Here's a little sneak preview of an idea I have for the side panels

It took me some effort, but here's another update

My workstation is out of order at the moment at first i thought the mainboard broke down, but later on it appeared that it actually was the power supply..

That's why it's a bit harder for me to edit all pictures, because I'm currently working on my mediacenter system which I don't want to pollute too much with all kind of software.

*there are supposed to be some pictures of me sanding the case, but they are still on my phone*

2 weeks ago the cabinet moved from the living room to the factory of a friend of mine / colleague modder. There I've been sanding it from top to bottom so it could be painted.

On november the 30th (a week later) I got the good news that the paintwork was done and that I could pick up the cabinet. Because it was my last day at my old job I was lucky to be able to borrow a bus to transport it .

Above you can see what it looks like at this moment, with 2 cases placed in it.

Somehow I can't seem to get some nice coloring pictures made with my girlfriends cybershot

I think I'll have to claim my own camera back at my parents

Here you can see how I've placed and wired the LED's in one of the front panels.

First of all I have sanded the led's flat and shorter, they now the length equals the thickness of the green acrylic panel layer + the steel layer + a rivet (which just gives it a finishing touch).

After that I've mounted all led's in the front panel and, if necessary, glued them in place.

The led's are wired parallel in 4 groups of 3 and one group of 2 led's. The necessary resistors are soldered onto a small piece of breadboard which is powered by a piece of wire with a molex on the end.

Unfortunately the tip of my soldering iron was pretty well worn so the soldering doesn't look too good, but it's thorough and works.

Here you can see the effect of the LED's in the front panel I'm very pleased with the result so far and hope the final look will be as expected.

Especially on the second picture you can see what the LED's do with the edges of the acrylic panel.
edit: a few night shots:

Another point on the to do list is done


Because the final sign up date of the Benelux Casemod League is coming closer I wail have to make sure I'm finished in time of course (read: try to........)

So I've done a few things again yesterday and today.

Yesterday and today I have been working on mounting the four 230V outtake fans in the top of the cabinet.

These will eventually be controlled by a temperature sensitive relay which will automatically turn on the fan if the temperature in the cabinet gets above the set level.

I'm also thinking about mounting some sort of speed control in between because they are well noisy

I've mounted a magnet lock on the door so it stays nicely shut.

The first of these 2 pictures is the finally the first one made with my girlfriends cybershot of which I can say the color looks pretty accurate

Unfortunately I couldn't find the exact same handles as on my other furniture, but this one looks pretty much the same and even cooler because it's stainless steel instead of painted metal

see you next time



Tiny little update

Yesterday I've mounted and soldered the led's of 2 more front panels, so only one to go

I've made a simple test print to place in between one of the front panels so I could estimate the final result with signage foil, and I must say that I'm quite happy with the first impression even though it's a quite simple design

Now I can take a few good looks at it for the next couple of days so I can see if I won't get bored of it quickly


1st USB hub mounted

Today I've been working on mounting the first USB hub in one of the acrylic panels which will be mounted in between the cases.

edit:

I Already de-mounted the usb hub, but I found an old picture with the de-mounted hub and the drawn measures of the holes in the acrylic pane

this one fit's nicely in between here

First of all I've cut 2 metal brackets from an aluminium corner strip to mount the hub to the acrylic panel.

The bracket had to be mounted underneath the circuit board because else I couldn't place the bolds for mounting it in the middle of the acrylic panel. To make sure the usb connections wouldn't be to deep behind the panel I had to cut a small corner out of the circuit board. A little test with my multi meter turned out that this wouldn't be a problem.

I've made m3 thread into one side of the bracket for mounting it to the circuit board

In the other side I drilled a 4,5 mm hole and then mounted the brackets to the hub. Here you can clearly see the bracket being mounted underneath the circuit board and bolted onto it from the top.

I still didn't have enough room for bolting the whole onto the acrylic panel which problem I've solved like you can see below.

First of all I've drilled the holes in the acrylic panel.

To make sure that I could put a nut on the bolds which mount it to the panel I've made some spacers from an old piece of steel rod I had lying around. I drilled a hole into the center of the rod after which I've cut of the length I needed so it became "short tubes" which I could use as a spacer.

This way I could easily mount it all together as you can see.

Only three more to go, but not today


USB hubs are mounted, photo shoot


As some of you already knew all 4 of the usb hubs are mounted in the panels.

This doesn't mean that the panels are done, they still need some extra metal reinforcement behind them so they won't bend and of course they need mounting holes.

Today I've tried to make a little photo shoot of what the whole looks like after all the work that's done so far. Once the project is finished I will borrow a more decent camera, as well as some film lights to make a decent photo shoot, but the pictures below give a really good impression of the final result (beware, they are still taken with my girlfriends cybershot )

right, pictures:

Reinforcing and mounting the usb panels

Today I've been working on reinforcing the usb panels en mounting them.

First of all I've cut 4 pieces of cornered aluminium strip which are a tiny bit shorter than the usb panels are wide.

After that I've cut out one edge of the corner so the strips are flat at the end, the rest of the strip which is still cornered will fit in between the mounting panels of the cabinet (this will get more clear further on)

I've mounted a few pieces of plywood onto my workbench where the panels exactly fit in between.

And I took a piece of leftover steel in which I've drilled 2,5mm holes in the exact spot where the mounting holes in the panels have to be.
This makes sure I can drill the holes quickly, accurately and efficiently.

The 2,5mm holes in the panels where enlarged to 4mm after that.

unfortunately while drilling one of the holes my drill broke in 2 which resulted in a minor damaged panel

I do not have the time to make a new panel before I'm going to contest in the Benelux Casemod League, so I'll have to learn to live with it

(the damage can pretty well be seen on the picture below as well)

I took me some creative thinking, but I figured out a way to keep the panels in their final position so I could take over the exact spot of the holes onto the cabinet.

The mounting holes are in a 15mm thick plywood panel which I'm absolutely not allowed to drill through, so to prevent this prom happening I wrapped some gaffer tape around the drill at the right depth.

After this I used normal m4 hexagonal bolts which I screwed directly into the wood for mounting the panels.
(it might seem like not a really good idea, but because it's it's not a problem and I can fasten them pretty tightly)

Here you can see what it looks like at the moment.

On the first picture you can also clearly see why I had to cut a corner out of the reinforcement strips.

The panels will eventually be placed a bit further forward, but I have to make some acrylic distance blocks first to be able to do that.

TBCL is getting closer, still stuff to do

Now I'm officially invited for the Benelux Casemod League I will have to make sure I'm ready on time

Fortunately all the hard work lately was worth the effort because the only thing that really has to be done is mounting the front panels (if I get them back from the signmaker who is applying the design that is )

Next to that there are a lot of small things as well, but not all of them are really important for my contesting in tBCL. One of them is placing the dustfilters (which will also make sure you can't see the inside of the case from the outside so I can make a mess inside it if I want to )

First of all you take a standard universal extractor fan filter and cut this into 8 equal pieces.

Apply some double sided adhesive tape to it on the corners

And use this to mount the filter to the right and left inner side of the cases

Et voila, the result in the dark with a CCFL behind it

With the word "theft delay" in the back of my head I have 4 panels made with a slot for a padlock in them on the same place as the slot for a padlock on the cases, these will be mounted into the cabinet in such a way that you can't reach the screws without removing the padlock and sliding the case forward.

I'm thinking about painting them eventually, but not sure yet, for now I will sand them with scotchbrite.

Because 3mm aluminium is pretty thick but loses a lot of strength due to the slots in it I have mounted u-shaped aluminium strips behind them for more reinforcement.

As said before, the panels are/will be mounted in such a way that the screws cant be accessed without removing the padlock and sliding the case forward..

I have covered the led's in the green layer of the front panels with mirror foil, this to make sure no light of the led's will be visible through the design of the front panel sticker.

I've also tested all 4 LCD's installed the necessary software on all 4 systems and mounted the LCD's into the front panels.

These eight pieces of acrylic panel with small pieces of aluminium glued onto them are meant to place the usb panels further to the front and won't be visible afterwards.

Here you can see the placement of the CCLF's, eventually they will be mounted on the wooden panels in between the cases, but for tBCL they are mounted as shown. To save space in the case the inverter is placed external. Eventually the CCFL's will be powered by an external PSU so that's another reason why they are mounted like this

As you can see I've also placed dust filter onto the aluminium panels in the back.

I'm thinking about using dust filters on the intake fans as well, I did a quick test with this and idle temp only got 2 degrees higher, but I'm going to have a look at a stressed situation soon as well.




Got my fronts back, but I'm not really happy with the result


I'll start with the least interesting part of this update:

Yesterday I've cut some slots into the bolts of the cabinet feet so I can adjust them from the inside of the cabinet.

right, let's continue with the fronts ............... I'm not really happy with them, but with tBCL (the Benelux Casemod League) just a week aqua I'll have to use them for now

What's wrong? Read on:

On this picture you can see what's wrong, the color that is

I gave the signmaker a Pantone Number so he could find the closest signage foil color compared to this.

Most likely the person who chose the color looked at the wrong color patch in the pantone guide, that's why they used signage foil which is way to dark compared to the cases.

Like I said, there is no time to correct this before tBCL (the Benelux Casemod League) but I'm going to have a good talk with the signmaker about how they are going to fix this afterwards.

First of all I mounted one front panel together to look at the result of al the brainstorming I did and the result is beyond my expectations!

Of course I mounted the other 3 as well

Because my workstation is on my desk atm and I didn't feel like disconnecting it there are only 3 cases in the cabinet, but the idea is pretty clear

On this picture you can clearly see the color difference

* floriske.nl is going to stay well disappointed the next days, but I hope that'll go over when tBCL starts on friday

tBCL was a great success!


tBCL is over again, and against my own expectations I turned out to be the first place winner in the caseconstruction category.

Below you'll find the pictures I took, together with a short review of the event and my special thanks.

tBCL started early for me on friday, I had to do some things before I could prepare to leave home.

In the morning I started preparing all cases and the cabinets for transport to tBCL.

Fortunately I could borrow a way too big bus from my old employer which I could pick up early in the afternoon.

Once I picked up the bus I could start packing:

We (my girlfriend went with me) expected some traffic jams, so we decide to leave for Rijswijk a bit early so we would surely be on time (had to be there at 17.00)

That worked out, we arrived at 16.30 on the tBCL stand at theregroup lan party.

The first thing we did was unloading the bus and place the cabinet on the reserved spots in the stand.

As you can see on the pictures I also borrowed a cart and 2 flightcases from my old boss to be able to transport the cases safely, the cases where wrapped in sleeping bags and towels to minimize the risk of damage as much as possible.

At 19.000 the regroup lan party started and the first lanners arrived, it didn't take long before most of them found their place in the hall.

I didn't take much pictures during the event itself, but of course I took pictures of all the contestants.

First of all a few total shots:

followed by the pictures of all contestants in the order they where set up in the stand.

First of all Caseconstruction "XIXIV" by Floris Bosman a.k.a. "Floriske.nl" (me that is )

Casemod "Gemini" by Gert Hengeveld a.k.a. "Koradhil"

Caseconstruction "The kings castle" by Sebastiaan van Buizen a.ka. "TeamIkke"

Casemod "Stacker830 mod" by Faried Makhlouf a.ka. "Faried112"

Casemod "Illumili" by Sylvester Anink a.k.a. "Mydogisgone"

Casemod "Bouweenpc Casemod" by kenny bakermans a.k.a. "Kenny"

Caseconstruction "Stealth" by Matthijs de Vaan a.k.a. "X-Gamer-X"

Casemod "The Machine" by Frenkie Janse a.k.a. "Frenkie"

Caseconstruction "Red Rogue" by Jeroen Grit a.k.a. "Godric"

and last but not least Caseconstruction "Tomb Raider Casemod(TRC) by Danny Terwindt a.k.a. "Terw_dan"

After all contestants gave there creation a place we all got a personal spot at regroup.

The problem was that most of us (like me) didn't have a system to use on the lan party because it was on display for the contest.

For those contestants who decided to be present everyday it where long though days, but fortunatelly everybody got along very well and there even was some room for pulling weird faces once a while

Me and my girlfriend booked a hotel around the corner an we left on friday around 23.00 (I can hardly remember hitting my pillow )
We didn't really sleep late, my girlfriend went home on saturday and I arrived at tBCL around 11.00.

Saturday evening I did go back home because 2 nights in the hotel would be a bit too expensive and a friend of mine wanted to come along on sunday.

Once we got up to the price winner announcement they started with the winners of the regroup compo's after which it was tBCL's turn.

It was really exciting until the 2nd place was announced, normally I'm a quite modest person, but when I knew I won the first place I went crazy, I even think I acted like a complete idiot on stage

But If you see the price package you can imagine why that is a bit:

The final results for both categories where:

Caseconstructions:

1- Floriske.nl with XIXIV
2- X-Gamer-X with Stealth
3- Terw_dan with Tombraider
4- Godric with Red Rogue
5- Teamikke with The Kings castle

Casemod's :

1- Frenkie with The machine
2- Mydogisgone with Illumini
3- Koradhil with Gemini
4- Farried112 with Stacker 830
5- Kenny+ friends with Bouweenpc (BEP case)

After collecting the prizes and congratulating everyone it got about time to head on home again..

We didn't wait to long because the bus had to be back that same night.

Once I got home and unpacking everything I hooked up one system so my girlfriend could browse the internet again and took some pictures of the prize package.

So far my short (but hopefully interesting) review of tBCL 2006.

Now it's time for saying thanks:

First of all the guy who did the organization of the event Ed Buijs a.k.a. "Ediejo" of www.need-modding.nl whom you might know of the Extreme Lian-li and Batcase

His Need-Modding crew mate Neander and all other crew members.

They made sure the event went flawless and everybody had a great time.

In second place the organization and crew members. of regroup for making tBCL possible.

Of course the jury has a spot in the list, Ediejo, Waterkoud, A.P. Versteeg, ribbi en soefkonijn

All people who took the time to look at the mod's closely and voted.

All Gotters, Casejunks, Need-Modders, etc. etc. etc. who make the dutch casemod scene what it is and hooked me up with a great hobby.

The sponsors for making possible the amazing prize package.

-Icomputers
-Corsair
-Freezing Hardware
-Star Systems
-Be Quiet
-MSI
-Point of View
-H.Essers
-Skywest
-Lian Li
-AMD
-Coolermaster
-Recom
-Thermaltake
-Zalman
-Airbrush studio Ribbi
-NZXT
-Traxdata
-and even more I think.....

My girlfriend (who should actually be at the top of the list ) for supporting me in my hobby even though I can imagine it must have been quite annoying to here sometimes

And everybody I forgot.
Furthermore I want to congratulate all contestants once more and my motto to make friends not enemies turned out a 100% success

See you next time!




Cabinet in it's place and signage foil removed

After not modding much for about a week I did a few hours of work again today.

First of all I have some pictures of the day after arriving back home from tBCL.

That day I finally put the cabinet in it's final spot in the living room.

Here you can see what a cable mess 4 systems make.

To mount my kvm switch into the cabinet I had to drill some holes in it because there weren't any mounting holes in it.

The router on the other hand has a mounting bracket so mounting it was just a matter of a few screws.

And there it is, a bit blurry

, enjoying it's final place in the living room

but...............not for long because I removed the signage foil of the fronts, because the signmaker will resign them with the correct color soon.

First of all I de-mounted all front- and usb panels.

After which I peeled of the signage foil, fortunatelly this was quite easy

And there they are, ready to be brought to the signmaker, Again!

And this is what it looks like atm, less attractive then on the first picture, but if all goes well with the correct colored front panels soon

Finally got my fronts back

Unfortunately I reached my quote on my website, so I had to scale down the images to a poorer quality, sorry for that, but at least I can continue updating again.

* floriske.nl hates the fact that the weather isn't to good so I have to use the flash to take pictures.

I'm going to remount the interior CCFL's in the cabinet after which the project is about done. If I get to that point I'll borrow a decent camera and some film lights for a proper photo shoot.

Till next time!

The end in sight! : 22-10-2007

For a lot of you out there most likely an update which you've been waiting for, for which I appologise

but I would like to say "Enjoy, because it will be the last one for now! ". This because with this update the mod gets a new label "Finished"

First of all here are two pictures which where hidden on someones phone

These two pictures are made while sanding the cabinet.

From here on onto the next step, re-mounting the CCFL's.
I did this because the CCFl's mounted onto the cases didn't give the result I was looking for and because I wanted to be able to switch all of them centrally.

Of course all 4 cases had to be removed from the cabinet first.

The CCFL sets (a pretty important part of this update

I started with mounting two brackets, normally used for mounting electricity cables etcetera, per CCFL

In which I could simply clamp the CCFL's.

I mounted the inverters onto the air-vents between the cases in the back of the cabinet.

After this I removed the connectors from the original inverter power leads and made new, longer cabling from thin speakercable.
These cables run through the air-vents and go down into the cabinet together with the rest of the cabling and finally are soldered to a seperate 12V PSU in the bottom of the cabinet.
This PSU is switched by a simple RF switch normally intended for use in home situations like remotely switching lights etc.

Het gaat haast met pijn in het hart, maar met deze laatste foto's/update is het dan toch echt zo ver, voorlopig is dit project tot een, in mijn ogen zéér geslaagd, einde gekomen.

Who knows I will be doing some minor adjustments to the project in the future, but for now everything functions and looks like I want it to so I will be starting something new (more about this soon!)


Acknowledgments: 22-10-2007

Hereby I would like to use the opportunity to thank everybody who has been following, critisising, praising and carefully reading my worklog since the start of the project.

Ofcoarse all casemodders as wel for hooking me up to casemodding, without them this project would never have existed.

The organisation and all visitors of tBCL have to be named as well, thanks to them I won the first prize and inderictly with this they made my new project possible.

And ofcourse everybody I forgot!

So far for now!

THANKS ALL!

Now, let's continu to one more part of this update, one without text, pictures of the final result!

Photoshoot final result: 22-10-2007

Well, finally there it is, my (overhere) 23 posts long worklog of my latest finished project.

I've been a frequent reader at TBCS for quite sometime now, but never took the effort of regestering. Mostly because I'm a verry busy bugger and if I have to keep track of all forums out there I wouldn't have time to sleep ;)

Today I did register because I couldn't resist posting the project log of my latest finished project XIXIV which you find above.

On short notice I will start a new project (Preperations are being done atm) and I might just post the progress of it overhere as well.

I noticed one thing while posting my worklog, every image is placed on a new line in the posts, eventhough I seperated them with spaces.
Am I doing something wrong, or is this standard here at TBCS?

Enjoy reading and mostly watching this 23 posts, 600 pictures long worklog!

Welcome aboard! That's a beautiful project; I particularly love the cabinet and the finish on it. :)

Congratulations on winning the competition, that looks like an incredible prize package!

That is amazing work, absolutely brilliant and beautiful. Welcome to TBCS, hope you post some more projects for us. And no you aren't doing anything wrong. We are updating some of the display features and for a while the pics are showing up wierd, even the gig images seem to stretch across the screen but we are working on that.

Mate awesome work. +rep

Very nice job, great result +rep.

Yea they appear on a new line now, because of something that happened when code was added to make sure all images were below a certain size. So you haven't done anything wrong.

before I start replying to your comments I just want to say one thing: this is way too much credit! :redface: My first post at TBCS and on the frontpage after a few days :eek:

First of all I want to appologise for not replying to your comments sooner, but I'm a very busy bugger in my daily life, so I don't always get to posting on the different forums on a frequent base.

This doesn't mean that I don't keep track of most of them, during workbrakes etc. I always try to take some time to visit the forums and reed other peoples worklogs, it's just that mostly I get so cought up in reading that I don't get to posting :glasses:

Now, on with the ontopic stuff ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Luke122

Welcome aboard! That's a beautiful project; I particularly love the cabinet and the finish on it. :)

Congratulations on winning the competition, that looks like an incredible prize package!

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(I'll get back to the compliments later ;))

Regarding the cabinet, I'm very happy with the results as well, it just blends in with the rest of our furniture perfectly and the color came out even better than I hoped.

Most of the time all CCFl's are turned off because it becomes too much of a disco in the living room, but that only does good to the overall looks, the lights don't draw all the attention away from the cabinet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jdbnsn

That is amazing work, absolutely brilliant and beautiful. Welcome to TBCS, hope you post some more projects for us. And no you aren't doing anything wrong. We are updating some of the display features and for a while the pics are showing up wierd, even the gig images seem to stretch across the screen but we are working on that.

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Your wish is my command ;)

I'm glad to read that it's not my fault the pictures line up a little weird, I started worrying about me having messed up the forum ;)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by The boy 4rm oz

Mate awesome work. +rep

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Scotty

Very nice job, great result +rep.

Yea they appear on a new line now, because of something that happened when code was added to make sure all images were below a certain size. So you haven't done anything wrong.

---

In general: Thanks so much for the great comments! Of course I mod for my own pleasure, but it always does good to hear other people enjoy my creations as well!

Quote:

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before I start replying to your comments I just want to say one thing: this is way too much credit! My first post at TBCS and on the frontpage after a few days

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I decide if you get too much credit! :p

That was some fantastic work and an extremely elegant design, more than worthy of front page news buddy. And from what I can tell, your other mods is following the same road.

Jon

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jdbnsn

I decide if you get too much credit! :p

That was some fantastic work and an extremely elegant design, more than worthy of front page news buddy. And from what I can tell, your other mods is following the same road.

Jon

---

you're absolutely right there! You do decide that, but I can still think it's too much though ;)

I'm quickly posting this reply during my brake at work because I've been reading about the rep system, this is an awesome thing which imho should be embedded in every forum around!

I know it's way offtopic, but I couldn't resist giving my compliments about it.

I'll try to be as usefull as possible at TBCS, but like said, I have a very busy private life, so please don't get mad at me if I mostly stick to updating and replying in my own worklog :dead:

+ rep for figuring out the rep system!! :p

Oh crap dude, I totally forgot to tell you that our new writer SgtM is the one who wrote your article so props go to him.

Jon

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jdbnsn

Oh crap dude, I totally forgot to tell you that our new writer SgtM is the one who wrote your article so props go to him.

Jon

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So I actually should give you a -Rep again? :p narr, I wouldn't dare!

ontopic, I did a tiny bit of work yesterday evening, but no updat yet because it's not update worthy yet

Good to see you here man :) . Another great dutch modder at these forums :) .

http://digg.com/mods/Re_Project_CIP_...3th_of_october

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jdbnsn

[DIGG]http://digg.com/mods/Re_Project_CIP_XIXIV_X4_FINISHED_23th_of_october[/DIGG]

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When are you going to stop sticking feathers up my ### jdbsn? :rolleyes:

I'm well proud that my worklog got featured though!!

And, although I think I allready did this, HAPPY NEWYEAR ALL!!!

what??? I'm diggin all of the features. But if you don't like feathers I've got some wire brushes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jdbnsn

what??? I'm diggin all of the features. But if you don't like feathers I've got some wire brushes.

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Lol, I wasn't particularly refering to diggin it, but also to listing my project in the featured worklogs section!

Ermm, narrr, just stick to feathers then ;)

umm... is it just me or are all the pics gone/broken?!?!
:(