A good, small-toothed, carbide-tipped blade should do you just fine for that.
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A good, small-toothed, carbide-tipped blade should do you just fine for that.
Well the 10" is unavailable so I guess its the 7.25" one.
Scratch that. Found it.
Finally got parts in.
AMD Athlon II X4 640
XSPC 2 meter Orange LED kit
OCZ 1000W PSU
Came with these nifty Velcro ties.
2x2GB G.Skill RAM PC 1600
Media Card reader
Lots of Orange sleeving and shrink tubing.
Still waiting for the framing and for my sponsor to reply about the Plexi.
Cheers till later.
I feel like this has become a thread that encases multiple mods. lol
Eh? Its 1 mod.... I'm just going through design changes and I needed to know what tools I needed.
that's some pretty sleeving you have there
Why thanks StormRider. I've got a good update coming but will wait till Sunday to post everything.
Forgot to add a few things I got.
Plexi scraper and blades
Zip tie mounts
100' black 20AWG wire to make custom SATA power cables
Got my saw yesterday :D Just waiting on a few more things to arrive then its off to work!
All put together!
New blade installed.
I should be finalizing the deal with my sponsor on the plexi today or tomorrow then hes shipping it all to me. Hopefully I get the drill press soon.
Cheers till later.
Got my Drill Press today :D
Not as many pieces as I was expecting.
All done.
Vise
Circle cutter for the fan holes.
Cheers till next time.
Yay for new toys. :D
Started working on the side panel again. I wasn't happy with the last one so here is the new one so far.
Going to be doing more work tonight on it.
Got the motherboard tray from Mountain Mods finally and I decided its time to test out the hardware to make sure its all good. I didn't attach the other back part that had the fan hole in it because it will just get in the way when I go to mount this to the case.
Mobo, RAM and Power/Reset switches installed.
CPU
PSU
Since Everything was hooked up correctly I figured it was time to power it up. I flicked the switch on the PSU and hit the Power button and BOOM. The freaking $200 PSU blew up. I was so mad. Luckily I have my old one that I'm giving my sister.
That PSU booted just fine. I started the RMA already with Newegg for the PSU so I need to mail that out tomorrow.
Here are the switches in the dark. The "O" one is power and the dot one is the reset button. I put the LED for the reset to the HDD activity LED so it gets lit and I can see the HDD activity! 2 with 1 is good!
Everything after that went pretty smooth. I found out that my SATA DVD drive was bad so I put on an old IDE one and it installed WHS just fine.
My Plexi sponsor is sending me the plexi tomorrow or Friday so I should have it in about a week and then I can remeasure everything and start cutting the frame. Once that is built I will start to figure out how to mount all the plexi to it.
Cheers till then.
Found a new rendering program. Its pretty cool. Called Kerkythea. Well its new to me but the last revision of the program was 2008.
Looking at some more mods I thought of a few new things to do. Pics to come later today.
Got my order in from Newegg with some nice case fans!
8x Zigmatek 140mm Orange fans with White LEDs
They have small blades but they move a ton of air.
Now lets make them look pretty!
Removed the sticker.
Sleeve them!!
At first I kept the stock white connector but I then decided that it would look funny and stand out. So I replaced them with the black ones I ordered for the fan extension cables. Didn't take a pick but they look good.
All of them done.
I got bored last night so I figured I would start cutting the shrink tubing to 15mm lengths.
14.99.... close enough
These are all ready
Need to trim these ones down later. They are about 1mm off. Maybe less. Just need to trim a hair off of them.
Cheers till next time.
So I spent the past 6 hours roughly working on the design. Leaning some new techniques too.
Here are the shots I took after figuring out how to get Kerkythea and Sketchup v8 to play nice. They are all very low res for now. The final design will be all high res. They will take probably close to 15-30 minutes to render ^^
Inside the mobo side
You can see I started playing with the cabling up top where the ATX Power cable comes through the pelxi.
HDD side
Now in the middle I had an ingenious to hide my cabling. I would put a piece of plexi down the center about 1 to 1.5" off the center panel. It would be anchored with nuts and bolts and I'll use aluminum spacers to make it sturdy and exact. there is also a piece of orange pexi that will either be UV reactive or have LEDs in it.
This is not the final layout. Its getting close but isn't there yet. Lets see if I can score a WC sponsor or 2 and then we will have some major changes. I have them in mind but don't want to jinx myself by making the model yet.
I found a few things out and I just might have to put some tutorials together for everyone. But that will take a few days.
Cheers till next time.
Looks great! :up:
It's really starting to come together. Looks great.
Kerkythea is awesome but I wish I had the patience to learn it. I got frustrated right away. It's just me.
Received lots of goodies and started working last night. I'll have an update in the next few days.
MNPCTECH is full of awesome. They give great advice and are an asset to the community. Can't wait to see the goodies on the machine.
Since this is my first scratch build I am a bit out of my comfort zone. Before I get to what I did here is some stuff I received.
Orange LED strip
Its not very bright for being 12v....
Honeycomb mesh from MNPCTECH
It had a thick end to it that had to go.
Tin snips worked great but this is what I had left.
So on to some real modding...
I had some scrap pelxi left over from an old mod that I started expermenting on. I traced a 140mm hole on it and started drilling.
And after the first round of sanding.
2nd round
3rd round was finally enough. Here it is with a fan.
Its not 100% smooth but its damn close. I'll probably use a 140mm hole saw on the actual case plexi. This was me trying it out by hand.
Now to the frame. Here is the little mock up I made so I could figure out the best joint to use.
It proved to be pretty sturdy. It's not exact... so I have to make sure my cuts on the real pieces are exactly on.
So to solve the gap I used some J-B Weld.
Its curing right now. I'll sand it later tonight or tomorrow and post pics of how it looks.
Here are the screws I will be using. 6/32 self tapping hex head screws.
They grip like nothing else. Greatly improves the joint over the crappy screws I used at first. I might switch these for some black anodized hex head screws that I'm using everywhere else in the case.
And finally I didn't want the mesh to look all flat and lame. I wanted it to be "domed". So I cut a peice, put it in the mock 140mm hole and pouned it with a rubber mallet. It came out rather well.
Well that's it for today. I have a 3 day weekend so expect another update. Hopefully I can get the frame done this weekend.
Cheers till next time.
Very nice, keep up the good modding :):up:.
I worked all day today fabricating the frame. Too a lot longer than I was expecting but I guess that's the price to get it right the first time. Well... pretty right. There are some small gaps but I knew that would happen because the L brackets I made are not exactly at 90 degrees.
Here are the brackets. I cut 1"x1" 1/8" thick angled aluminum in 1/2" sections.
I then measured and drilled the holes for the screws. Very easy but time consuming job when I needed 32 of them. Plus spares.
The first side cut.
And all put together.
I then measured the straight peices that connect both sides together and cut, drilled and installed them on one of the side pieces. (Sorry about the yellowish images. I took these at night so no natural light coming in the window.)
No real gaps like my small model I made so that's a good start. I won't have to use too much J-B Weld to fill the gaps.
I then put the other side on top so I could make sure it came to 18" exacly from end to end and it didn't... I was 1/8" off on all legs. So I marked them and will be cutting them down first thing in the morning. Its too late to cut now.
More work on the frame tomorrow and probably starting to map out the cuts in the acrylic. I probably won't cut any of it until after my vacation.
Cheers till next time.
I finished putting the frame together and I have to say, its really nice to finally see something from this mod.
Now that it is all together lets see how the plexi aligns with it. Hmm... a bit off...
Ok so 3 corners are too high. Well that's better than being too low. Can't add but I can cut. So after about another 4 hours of cutting, re-drilling and recreating 3 of the parts everything aligned nicely.
Just perfect!
Man... this piece is about 2mm off... Its the side so its not a huge deal so I'm going to let it ride for now. If it looks horrible later than I can remake the 2 pieces. They are very easy because they are not angled. Just straight pieces.
Now here is a 1.5mm gap.
I took the dremel to that back corner and shaved away some of the aluminum. We will see how it aligns again later.
Since everything was good except for those 2 parts I decided to start the J-B Weld process.
It has to cure for 6 hours before I can work on it again so maybe tonight before bed I can sand it down.
Cheers till next time.
I've been working non stop to get as much done before my vacation next week. Last night I got the dremel out and used a sanding bit to sand off all of the excess J-B Weld. Worked out well.
Then I started designing the front, back and center panels.
Here I had to cut a notch in the center panel for the aluminum frame to pass through.
Next I traced where the PSU would be sitting next to it so I had a frame of reference when I do the mobo tray.
Then I started on the front panel. Here is how the fans will be mounted.
All drawn out. Its pencil so it might be hard to see... sorry.
Back panel.. deff hard to read it but you get the idea.
A closer shot.
And the center panel design. The big rectangle in the middle will be raised 1 1/8" off the center panel. It will be a hiding spot for all the cables.
Tonight I started drilling. Before I actually drill in the real pelxi I figured I would try out the hole for the power and reset switch.
3/4" hole
Fits without a problem.
Now... this is the first time I have to cut my own pelxi since I ordered all the other pieces to be cut by a laser.
Well it came out great and you'll see it in a few. Here is the order that I'm mounting the things.
2 1/2" bolt > 1/8" plexi > 1 1/2" tube > 1/2" plexi > acorn nut
Here it is all broken down.
Me working hard! I ordered the bolts too long for the next part and had to cut 1/4" off. No jokes about the face shield... if your not using one then the jokes on you when you get hurt.
Here are the holes I put in the mobo tray to mount it to the center piece of pelxi. 7 mounting points is way more than enough to keep this up.
And here it is mounted.
Remember that piece I cut myself? Here it is.
My measurements were pretty good. Only 2 of the 9 bolts are at a small angle but it doesn't matter because you will never see them once this gets mounted into the case.
Here you can see where the cables will come through. This will feed one side of the case to the other.
Hope your enjoying the work!
Cheers till next time.
All I was going to say about that photo was that it looks like you are dremeling your thumb. I'm all for safety gear, I don't think it's possible to look ridiculous when you're protecting yourself.
What they said about saftey gear. Heck I don't even buy sunglasses anymore, I just get shaded safety glasses.
By the way, Nice progress. :up:
awesome work so far!!
Got my 3rd sponsor today!
Lamptron will be sending me one of the FC5v2 Fan Controllers and two 2xUV Cold Cathode kits.
congrats!
So MNPCTECH saw it fit to sponsor my build with a few things.
A box! Yay for me!
OH you wanna see whats inside the box?
Beer Bottle Opener
And no the keyfob was not included... I made it myself.
A sheet of Honeycomb and Round Hole modders mesh.
Billet Machined Aluminum Case Feet
Blow Hole 120mm Fan Kit (Will be used on Project: Green Light)
A big thanks again to Bill at MNPCTECH for supporting my mod!
I never posted anything about how I plan on keeping the case together except for the threaded screws but that has changed so here it is for all that are curious. I bought everything from mcmaster.com.
6-32 x 2 3/4" screws are used to secure the acrylic that hides the cables on the HDD side.
6-32 x 1 1/4" secure the motherboard to the center 1/2" piece of acrylic.
6-32 acorn nuts are used to secure both of the above screws. Keeps the look very clean.
I ordered some 8-32 x 1 1/2" screws to be used with these 8-32 nuts to secure the fans to the acrylic.
8-40 x 1/2" screws are replacing the below 6-32 x 3/8"threaded screws. I wanted all the screws to be the same type. Black socket head cap screws.
These 10-32 x 3/8" screws will be used to secure all of the exterior pieces of acrylic to the aluminum frame. They are much bigger than the rest because I want to make them easier to take out and they need to be noticeable.
These aluminum unthreaded spaces are 1/4" OD, 1 1/2" length for a #8 screw. They worked great for the 6-32 screws because there was acrylic on each side of the spacer so I didn't need to worry about the head size of the screws.
Just got confirmation that EK will be sponsoring my mod. Their new Nickle blocks come out tomorrow and I will have some of the first ones :D
They will be providing:
1x EK-CoolStream RAD XTC (420)
1x EK-Supreme HF
1x EK-RAM Dominator-Nicke
2x EK-DCP 4.0 (12V DC Pump)
2x EK-Multioption RES X2 – 250 Basic
20x EK-PSC Fitting 10mm – G1/4 Black
8x EK-PSC Adapter 45 G1/4 Black
Big thanks out to Gregor at EK!
Congrats! That's a pretty good haul!
Still waiting for the Bitspower and EK gear to arrive.
I've started cutting the back panel.
I'm now filing it then I'll cut the fan holes. Lots of work but not much to show. More to come.
Cheers till next time.
So the hole saw is not working out. Nor is the drill press. It does not have the RPMs to cut the plexi with the hole saw.
Here it is all setup to be cut.
Then disaster happened. The arbor bit for the hole saw some how... snapped?
It wasn't cheap but yet it wasn't an expensive one. $15 Irwin brand which is a well known hardware brand.
So when the drill press stopped mid cut it torqued the whole panel and snapped a piece of it.
Its the back of the case so I am going to see if I can repair it. If I can great, if not, I have to order a new piece and spend another 20 hours working on it.
Cheers till next time.
That sucks bigtime. :( If you can't fix it and need to make a new panel might I suggest using the hole saw first. Then it wouldn't have a thin spot like that to break.