Project: Terminator

This is the werklog of my new project, called Terminator. It is a tribute to the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie in which his greatest fame has earned. His famous statement, "I'll be back" is from these films. In June of this year, the fourth Terminator film will be aired in the Netherlands, this time with Christian Bale in the leading role. My plan is to have finished the case before the premiere of the film. (at least I'm going to try).
You know me from my strange cases, which are not everyone's taste, I know very well.This casemod will be no exception, because the case which I start with is a major point of discussion even in its standard non-modded form; It is the Antec Skeleton.

A kind of open case for people who quickly want to swap hardware or for overclockers. Or for people who like crazy case mods!

Thanks to the people of Antec (Maurice thanx!) who were very fast with shipping me the case.

From the last championship of the tBCL I got some real nice hardware, among other things a very nice BeQuiet! Dark Power PSU 650 Watt.

For the time being I am using a INTEL motherboard with a mini-processor until I find something better.

Something also very special I was able to negotiate with the crew of BouwEenPC.nl ; a Scythe Oriche CPU cooler.

For comparison;

an E N O R M O U S cooler, which IMO is not going to be sold a lot.I only hope that I will get it under the Skeleton top fan, some reviews complained that this is a major problem with the skeleton.

The colors that I have selected are silver and blue. The head of the T-1000 cyborg is carried out in chrome, but I have not the means to do so. I have can of spraypaint with so-called chrome-paint, but I wont believe it until I see it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Luke122

Excellent!
Also, I've had good luck with chrome paint in the past. Good prep + a bit of polish at the end, and it's very convincing! :D

---

Well Luke, from several different sources, I received disturbing news about that spraypaint. It seems it DOESNT work at all! I have to try it out on test pieces before I make a BIG mistake. Anyway, here some more pictures.

The boys of Space Promotion once again were very nice to me, and gave me several blue colored casemodgear to use.

On top of the mod (just as in The Machine 2006) there will be a Markus Mayer skull.

This time a different kind, the previous was a devil, this one must be human.

On the Internet I found many pictures and images of the chrome cyborg T-1000. (Oops, dat moet de 800 serie zijn )

I started with the skull to dispose of the vampire teeth who were in that skull.

Then I used the pictures to modify the skull.

The material of the skull is called poly-stone, a reasonable hard plastic, very easy to dremel. Just makes a lot of dust :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by nevermind1534

It's $39.99 for one can.

---

But that has no primer and no finishing coat. Could turn nasty with the wrong primer / clear coat.

UPDATE

never mind, I forgot SOME Fed-Ex costs.................

O M G

BTW, thanx Vertigo for thinking of me..... these hardware manufacterers are stealing all our good ideas and put those ideas in production cases. What a difference with 5 years ago.

Anyway, I'm jumping from one end of the mod to another, so you better get used to it :)
I really didn't like that black fan in the PSU, so we had to do something about that.

I still had a 12 cm chroomed Titan fan laying about.

There, oilchange and a lube, please.

I'm not using the grill, I guess thats a personal thing for everybody.

In the second Terminator movie, Sarah and John Conner find out that the cyborg is not
totaly destroyed. They rescued an arm and a chip from the remains. That chip is a very
important item in this story.

Here is a computer rendered version of it.

I choose the Scythe Orichi CPU cooler on purpose because of its dimensions. Lets put
some measurments to paper first.

Intentionaly I was going to fyically make the lines of the chip in the cooler, but I got
second thoughts about it. Now I am only going to use those lines visually. First tape the
vertical lines.

And after spraying it with mat-black paint, taping the horizontal lines.

And sprayed them.

After the paint has dried, the cooler looks like this now.

It's not finished yet, I want to so something crazy with the side of the cooler and my new
DREMEL Engraver pen ;)

Quote:

---

MrDummy wrote:
Offtopic news for Terminator fans: it seems that the 4th film may be canceled due to money problems.

Of course you may continue to build great casemod:)

---

D*MN! There goes my beautiful plan! -sigh- (BTW, I still try to mill grooves in it, but I need some tools for that, which I do not have at home, but thanks in advance for the tips!)

As you wrote, I still go on. I engraved the Cyberdyne logo in the side of the cooler.

But now I have trouble getting the text below.

Someone a tip or advice how I can engrave the letters? (here I am halfway through the engraving)

The mobo isnt in yet, and frankly, my intend was to start with that piece first. Now that it is really much later,
instead i'll show you another part of this mod.
There will be two arms along the side of the case and in the movie you must have noticed that arm is an
important piece that Cyberdyne rescues from the first Terminator wreckage.

Yes, through internet, ( just like the skull ) you can buy brilliant replica arms, even in lifesize. But I am making
my own arms, and now i'll show you a piece of the hands.

My first prototype I made a mock-up with nuts and bolts.

Allthough it wasnt bad, I decided to make another version of them.
To get lifesize, I used my own hand as example. Routing it over a piece of paper.

Adding all the measurments.

The large middle piece I draw as a fold-out model.

Cut it out of the paper.

Traced it into aluminium.

With some creativity, I added some depth.

For the fingers, I used this thin aluminum tube.

Cut it and sorted to size.

This is the drawing with the tubes.

I will use stiff electricians-wire to connect it all together.

For the phalanx I used this square piece of wood.

All the phalanx come from this piece, connecting the fingers.

I will make them one by one, as soon as I know the correct position of the hands. Then paint it metal/silver and
done. ( oh and then the whole process again for the other hand.)

Once again I've been cocky/pigheaded. Although many of you had told me it wouldn’t work, I still started trying out the "chrome" spray paint.
I toke the standard 140 mm fan of the Scythe Orochi and an old fan from my BFG mod.

First I cleaned them and then added a layer of primer. Then two thin layers of chrome paint over it.
As you said, it dries just not quite enough, it stay a bit tacky. (OK, even on the bus it says that "lightly" sticks, ahwell)
Here you see the result. It is not chrome, more of a silver-gray with a glossy coating.

When I started with this cooler, I couldnt stop. This is the toppart that sits over the cooler.

Underneath you can see a little chamber, there was a green LED. I swapped it for a
bright blue one.

Toppart on the cooler again.

When it is on, it looks kinda cool.

Even more so in the dark.

Because the Scythe Orochi was not intended for this socket, I had to make my own mounting, with the 775 bracket as an example.
A nice piece of 2 mm hard aluminium, I got from my friend Roger ( thanx man ! )
First drawing the lines.

And after some sawing, hacking, slashing, cutting, blood sweat and tears...

I also engraved the 'Cyberdyne Systems' text on the side.

Anyway, the little cooler I mounted on the side of the Orochi; I mean a Core I7 920
with passive cooling is just a little too risky for me (although I never overclock)

Brings me right to the specs of the Terminator. The "content" of the Terminator is a Gigabyte GA-EX58-X58 motherboard UDR3R,

3x2 Gb Corsair Dominator DDR3 memory,

a Core I7 920 processor which is cooled by a Scythe Orochi cooler
and the graphics come from a Sapphire HD 4870 video card.

Could be worse, huh? Oh and the OS will run on two Hitachie harddrives

The OS I am going to use a 64 bit Windows7.
This hardware is partly from generous sponsors, partly bought with a discount and a part I had to pay myself. Thanx Maurice, Ben, Bernice, Bill, Jeroen, Bjarn en Kenny!

Thanx guys, much appriciated !

Time to look at those boring fans. Here you see the Corsair Dominator fans, still crispy new in the blister pack.

Unscrewed and stickers removed.

First, a primer layer and then with the "chrome" spray of Praxis over them.

After drying mounted together.

Then the HDD fan from Antec itself. Everything is black on the fan, but that is too boring.

Disassembled.

And after spraying and drying put back together. ( without the mesh! )

Now I couldnt stop anymore, so that big fan on top of the case was next.

Disassembled.

The first layer of primer.

and a photo of the "chrome" layer in the sunshine. Again, I wont mount the mesh here.

Just for fun I mounted the most important components together, it almost looks like an
engine block :)

Now we can see what extreme size the whole thing is, here you see the video card sticking out beyond the motherboard.

Here you see the Orochi a bit beyond the back of the mobo.

And the other side of the cooler because I mounted that silly fan it sticks out quite far.

Beautiful weather outside, here an outdoor action shot. Here I turn the fan down with 4 socket screws.

The color is still a large difference with the Titan fan in the PSU.

Here you see a normal DVD player with standard front, boring huh?

Just detach the front.

I have a piece ACRyan Acrylic Panel mirror left over.

Very nice stuff, and very light. Ideal for a new front.

This is an Asus OC Gear controller, "a 5.25-inch module that allows you at any moment you graphics card overclocking. The OC Gear is also the speed of the fan and the volume of the sound control. " I got it from a friend who had no need to / for his Asus card.
I'm not sure if I can get it to work properly, but it looks cool.

Using the acrylic panel I made a new front on the DVD player.

If you look side by side, you might see some color differences, but not much IMO.

Here are the 5.25 devices. Bit strange solution by Antec, they have only one small screw to fixate to the case (HDD's as well)

Hmm, a slight miscalculation, the front hits the case ... just.

There, fixed.

The the-Orochi-cooler-does-not-fit-in-an-Antec topic. : D
I've begun to take some shots from the side in profile,

and then into a drawing programm to look at the view in issue.
As expected, to get it fitted, I would have to cut a large piece from the case which is neccesary for the support.
So with pain in my heart , I decided that the extra cooler has to be replaced.

The space that I have left ...

Is exactly the size of the original Orochi fan, but mounted on the side!

Lets Dremel. First I cut off, as tight as possible (you can always remove a little more if necessary)

Immediately after the cutting, we're going to see if it fits.
Here you see the fan is sliding along very smoothly.

The Orochi fits perfect (ish). Just beneath the large fan.
The support bracket construction is well thought out, and can hold a lot of strength.

Together with the double back plate screw from the video card, it is good and solid.

Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it goes bad.
I left you with the fingers and the phalanx. Here I laid out all the phalanx per finger.

In order to get them together, I use default installation wire, 3.4 mm thickness (including insulation)

I have drilled holes in all the phalanx pieces (*** work!) exactly where the wire passes through.

After that I gave all phalanx a little color.

And here you see a robot finger.

My hand.

My robot hand.

The bottom-side you do not see, so I can do with it what i want.

Two hands done.

*** And then it struck me ..... struck me big.
WTF was I doing?
A cyborg hand with cyborg fingers and a human palm, my own human flesh and blood hand.
That is wrong. The fingers are o.k. so that I use, but that aluminum plate for a palm, I threw away. I am making a new cyborg-skeletal version. ***

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by THRASHER2

I love anything that has to do with the Terminator :D

---

Yeah! Do you have such a DVD player? Looks soooo cool.

To connect the cyborg hand to the arm, I have devised a wrist connection.
On the one side, there are 5 fingers.

On the other side are 4 connections for the arm.

From sheet aluminum plate I made two wrist pieces.

Here are 5 large screws for the finger sticks.

Here are the 5 sticks attached to the screws and the 4 large bolts for the arms.

Bended, the bottom view.

And from the top view.

All fingers are attached.

I must still do a bit of touchup, but they look much better now like the terminator example.

To make it look even better, I got me some carressorierings.

I stuck the rings on the side of the phalanx.

On the rightside of the case, i am mounting a hand which holds a SF gun.
This one is from the Aktion shop, and cost almost nothing.

My friend Giel provided me with this slick laserpointer-pen.

Inside is this very tiny laser module.

Soldered some wires to it.

And mounted the whole thing inside the gun-optics-barrel.

Mounted the right hand to the gun.

And made some final smaller adjustments and paints.

Time to show some of the skull. From the Aktion Store I got these two LED keychains, in the form of a light bulb (you know, grandma used these) They have exactly the good dimensions for eyeballs:)

With the Dremel, I made the holes in the eyes a bit bigger.

Here they sit neatly side by side.

The cool blue LEDs go off and in go two high-Brite red LEDs.

Bare LEDs

In the pear-shaped Aktion housings.

Off.

and on.

If we now look at various internet photos, you'll see quite a difference, you see only the front emittes light.

I was a time to think and experiment how I would get that. I decided to use sticky aluminum foil.

first cut out holes.

Then right on the center of the eyeball and cuts along the edge.

than apply the foil around the eyeball.

And then they look like this...

The aluminum foil is my "solution" for the chrome skull issue.

With a lot of patience ...

IMO I get a reasonable result. I made the skull very smooth and applied the film using sticks of soft wood.

Overview.

Side view.

Hmmmm. Problem. The eyeballs stick out too far forward. Looks like a frog:)

Here I let the left ball fall a lot deeper inside. Now you see the difference already.

I think the eyeball is now in the right place. (Little dusty on the skull :)

Now I need to find a way to make the eyebrows more evil-looking....

Thanx guys, I guess patience pays off in the end.... :)

Oops, forgot to post these pictures as requested;

Ok, He looks so suprised now, we got to do something about that.

First meausure it with a piece of paper.

With some cardboard and foil I made a sturdy layer.

Then with some sort of Bondo making an eyebrow.

And at last again with the foil.

( next the teeth! )

BOOO !

And youre wish is my command........

More work on the skull. Made a drawing of the jaw-actuators.

Played around with some chrome and stainless steel connection parts.

And here it will fit against the jawline.

And then on both sides

Here the skull will fit on the case.

Made a connection plate drawing.

Hammered it from a piece of aluminum plate.

And here the skull will sit together with two (fake) dampers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DrumThumper

That blue led going to disappear I hope?

---

hehe actually there gonna be even more blue in the mod. You don't like it ? Suggestions ?

At first I thought I would have a problem fastening the damper to the case, because of its shape.

But after I used my 1337 drawing skillz... :P

...I made two neat little brackets, that did just the job. Screwed to the case with one laagbolkopinbus-screw. (trans ?)

I also filled the two giant holes on the side of the skull with some polystyrene.

And with some model building parts...

Playing with the design ( of course the picture of the real skull beneath it)

Spray painting.

And now it looks like this.

Maybe I will work on those inner parts with some black paint.

Well, After some second-thoughts and much deliberation, I have decided to re-do the entire skull. I stripped the foil off and I will try to smooth out the skull as much as I can. Then I will coat it with the 'chrome' spray paint. I tried it out on the Machine-mod skull, and that turned out very good ( better then the foil ).

V2 ? hmmm...

Never mind, I dropped the skull........ :( :( :(

Thanks everybody for your support. I hopped over to a medieval store in Belgium, and got me a slightly different Markus Mayer skull. This one already has "evil" eyes, but unfortunately, the teeth are all wrong. That will take me the most time, I guess.

I have two options, a set of false teeth/caps, ór airbrushing a set of chompers on it :)
Status so far;

My friend Kevin got me a nice set of demonstration dentures.

Slicing and dicing.

Cut a piece out of the skull.

Next I will fit it in, and finish the skull.

This is the left arm, this one grabs the front of the case.

And the right side, which holds the gun with the laser led.

Now I have to come up with two elbow pieces that attach to the case.

BTW, did you see this one :

I gave my new skull 3 layers of spray plaster and then two layers of chrome paint.

The eye-balls, LEDs and jaw-actuators are also mounted.

The movie is out in the USA and it wont take much longer before it will show here in the Netherlands.
My mod is not finished yet, but I made a promise, so I will have to show you something in return .

You might recognize the silicone-mold from Dragon's Lair.

With dentist-plaster and some water...

Mix is up...

This time I am using only -one- tiny bit of that mold.

A little skull !

Not so big eh ?

He does look a bit angry, doesnt he ?

Oh look, he brought some friends !

I'll come back to these shortly, but first; Slot Protectors.

These are black AND UV reactive.

They are needed here, over all the open slots on the main board.

Here a close-up of the PCI-E slot next to the Sapphire card.

And now with a protector over it.

With some patience, I managed to cover the open connectors beside that one as well.

And all the other open slots.

There. I toke it all and piled it together for a photo session.

Perhaps I was not clear enough when I posted the last set of pictures. The reason was to give you a update on the progress, nothing else. The mod is not finished yet !

I've been working on moving the skull to the center AND give it a neck. This is what I made so far, also; its only an update.

This is the core of roll of wire, made from real thin metal.

Divided into rings.

Wrapped around a aluminum tube, it looks like this.

I gave the rings two nudges to create a flat front end. The drawings on it are just something I'm working on still.

My first AutoCAD drawing! ( started a coarse, had 3 lessons so far. )

Two strips of aluminum profile, cut out an angled piece.

Knocked out the holes.

And put it together in a cross-support.

Cut the aluminum tube.

And made it to fit over the cross-support.

The rings and the skull come on top of that.

Got a bunch of stainless steel wires, tubes and chrome shower-hoses here, which Im going to play with now :)

I tilted the skull quite a bit forward, then fastened it to the neck.

I used the cables and chrome tubes to dress up the neck and also to cover the wire that comes from the

eye-LEDs.

He looks a lot more angry now, doesn't he ?

Due to personal circumstances I was unable to do much more. The last thing I did was to take the mod as it was with me to the T.i.M.e.S. lanparty here in the Netherlands.

The casemod compo jury thought it was good enough for first place and that made me feel a bit better.

I hope that 2010 will be a better year for everybody. ( :mad: crisis suxx :down: )


Link to original thread.