Project: APASF ("A Post-Apocalyptic Steampunk Future")

Right, final small update of the day.

I am officially knakered, I need a shower, badly (lol), a bit of dinner, a movie, and bed, can´t believe the weekend is already over and work tomorrow :S

Aniway, I finished preparing two of the borders.

Vinyl:

Leftovers on the wall, yep.

And the ageing proccess aplied, i.e. final result:

And with this we reach 99 pictures on the project! I hope you all have a pleaseant evening and again, thanks for reading.

More tomorrow.

Todays Update.

I´ve started with the paint. Basically everything that´s not wood, is copper, but adding the post-apocalyptic flavour in there. This technique I´ve been developing for a while and it´s the first time I implement it in to a mod.

By the end of this update you will not see the final product, you will see what it looks like before the ageing process, i.e. the copper goes in most places a lot darker, like real copper, the reason for the extra light copper color is to be able to have highlights once it´s ben aged. The turquoise is the opposite, it is very pale here, and it will have aged highlights once finished. The reason I can´t do this today is due to the fact that to get to this point requires quite a few coats and it needs a lot more time to dry, which it needs to be completely for me to aply the ageing process to this.

Without further wait, the process pictures.

First, the primer.

To continue, a solid coat of the orange-y copper and before it dries, a light coat of turquoise. Once aplied, using absorbant paper I go all over the fresh paint creating a non solid surface or color which will be the base.

Once dried, I aply a almost solid coat of the copper orange from further away than the usual, as you can see the dried paint uneven surface is doing it´s job by not allowing the fresh coat to reach every corner. I also further the paper usage to create a more uneven surface for the next coats.

This goes on for 2 more coats alternating both colours.

To finish off, I give a completely solid coat of turquoise and very quickly another of the copper. The wet coats and the surface react with eachother giving me the final look before the ageing process.

Here´s a variety of pictures of it with and without flash.

The final rusted copper look coming tomorrow.

Update,

Had some internet issues last night so you couldn´t upload the pictures.

Aniway, the rust effect is finished, I aplied the ageing technique and several tones of copper to give it a more realistic look. The turquoise is very mild and I can´t quite catch it on camera, I took some pictures outside in the sun, hopefully that helps.

You´ll also notice I decided to add some extra effects and I´ve made it look as if the case had been partially submerged from the bottom left corner upwards.

This has without a doubt been the hardest and most time consuming effect I´ve ever done, the whole copper rust thing.

Hope you like it.

Update:

Today I haven´t done much progress in the sense of progress I can show you with pictures. The 3 hours I had today to work on the project I pretty much spent measuring up and deciding mounting of the liquid cooling components (yes, they arrived today).

But, for the sake of posting a picture, here´s a teaser on where the rads will be.

Initially I had planned to mount them with spaces, however, I´ve decided against it for two reasons. First, the weight of the rads would provably unbalance the tower if separated. Secondly the metal sheeting, while thick, isn´t thick enough to keep the rads firmly straight and I don´t like them being able to move at all if touched as it can weaken the sheet metal.

So due to these 2 reasons I will be mounting them straight on the metal plate.

Hopefully, a rather big update tomorrow in prepation for the final update (I´ve taken tomorrow morning and friday morning off work in order to have enough time to finish this by friday midnight, the deadline for the competition, wish me luck!

First update of D-Day -1.

I am plausibly going slightly crazy...

...yes

Started drilling based on measurements taken yesterday and test mounted both radiators.

Matt black painted the chasis, even though in the picture it doesn´t look matt, that´s because paint wasn´t dry yet.

Painted one side of both radiators (mainly the middle as the the non-radiator-y-bits will receive the wood treatment later today. Before anyone goes crazy about loosing performance and all that. I´ll say what I´ve said every other time I´ve painted a rad or heatsink and noticed no loss of performance. If you do it with acrylic paint, it´s fine. It´s not fine when you do it with synthetic or plastic paints. You can argue all you want, but I wouldn´t be doing it if I hadn´t tested it countless times : )

I´m hoping I can run the system without fans on the radiator to acceptable temps, since there´s 2 rads and all they are cooling is the cpu, if not, will add fans at a later point, but for the "final" look they won´t have fans on them.

Painted the plastic parts of the reservoir...

...and it´s mounts.

And finished all the wood effect trimmings.

Piping won´t be done today as all the parts need to be mounted and while that will happen today, it won´t before the plumbing supplies shop closes for the day.

So will be going hopefully first thing tomorrow morning and getting all the piping done, leave the loop running for as many hours as I can allow it to and still have time to mount the hardware and psu in and finish by midning tomorrow.

...I can´t believe I haven´t aplied the matt clear coat finish yet...

Now I have to go to my actual job and pretend like I´m not freaking out about not finishing this in time :S

Right, I´m at then end of D-Day -1, tomorrow is the last day.

Now, a lot of stuff has been finished but because some where still drying I didnt want to risk mounting what I need to measure for the piping till tomorrow morning, then as I mentioned in the previous post, piping time.

Anyhow...

Rads finished.

Reservoir unmasked...

...and aged with a touch of "filth".

If all goes well, tomorrow 1 to 2 updates + final update... after that, beer and a nervous breakdown :D

looking great, definitely my favorite mod atm.

this thing is coming out awesome! :D

Right guys, we´re at that point, this is the update before the final update (in theory aniway).

So, this morning I assembled all that needed to be in or on the case in order to do the piping.

So, rads, motherboard and other assorted pieces.

And this is what the case looked like pre-piping.

So went down to my local friendly plumbing supplies shop and with some help from the shop attendant (my mate) and later on the owner of the shop (he was intrigued on what we were doing), I put it all togueter, it was incredibly hard to measure everything up correctly, tighten all the fittings being very carefull with the fragile ones (like the plexy ones on the cpu cooler or the plastic ones on the pump and reservoir). And after almost 4 hours, got it ready.

So here is the bare essentials case (nothing is screwed in, details wise, only the liquid cooling related stuff.

I now of course have to aply all the ageing effects to the fittings and pipes.

After that I went to my actual job (as I mentioned in previous posts I took both yesterday morning and today morning off to work on the project but still had to work 4 hours in the evening.

I´ve taken the motherboard out and left the loop running to be sure there´s no leaks before I put everything togueter.

And yeah if there´s no leaks I feel optimistic about meeting the deadline but words cannot express how tired and generally exhausted I feel.

Again, thanks for reading and following the project.

The pipes you can darken up and make for interesting coloration by hitting them with a blowtorch, as long as your fittings don't have rubber/plastic in them at the time. There are also chemicals you can put them into that will cause them to oxidize, rust, darken or other cool effects.