Project: MHR²

[blackacidevil]

It seemed my former place of employment was great for finding things to mod, after all, H.A.B.T.T came from there (an old gigantic case mod i had done, that has since been scrapped), and so did these. My old store was being renovated with new paint and lights being put in, so I just had to take some of the old lights home. Can’t use em, since they require a 347 volt line.
They are high-bay light reflectors for metal-halide bulbs. Hence the name MHR²; Metal-Halide Reflectors.

I snagged 6 of the shades since those are the only part of the light I’ll use. The shade’s diameter is 16 inches at the rim, plenty of space. The bulbs have a nasty habit of exploding, so the covers prevented the bulb from showering the area and starting a fire. Below is a pic of a fully-built light.

Useless 175W metal halide lightbulb (un-exploded).

Boobies?

Boobies without nipples�

Screwed together

[blackacidevil]

Due to its odd dimensions, the only motherboard that would properly fit (other than an ITX board) is a Shuttle board. I'll be hacking up my old SN27P2 box and using that. But that comes later. First I wanted to work on the lower hemisphere first. This will contain the powersupply, optical drive, 2 120mm radiators, and possibly the pump. Yes, this will be a watercooled case. Air cooling the CPU and GPU is not feasible considering the constraints.

The finalized specs for the machine are:

SN27P2 motherboard, 450W PSU, various hacked-up pieces from the case
Athlon X2 5000+ Black Edition
Sapphire Radeon HD4870
2GB Kingston HyperX PC8500 DDR2 RAM
Plextor PX-716AL slot-load DVDRW
Swiftech H2O-120 Premium WC kit with extra 120mm rad
Swiftech MCW60-4870 VGA block
2x 120mm white LED fans
2x 80mm white LED fan
80mm aluminum fan
1 plastic 710ml Pepsi bottle

[blackacidevil]

First thing to do was get the glass out of one of the covers. This will be on the bottom of the case and will be supporting the optical drive, pump, and possibly the HDD internally.

Next i started working on the frame. The cover snaps onto the lip of the reflector with these thin aluminum hooks. Two of them will be removed and serve as a starting point for mounting aluminum flats.

Popped the 2 rivets out.

Basic run-of-the-mill 1/8x3/4 aluminum flats and L's. I cut the piece to approximate length and then lined it up to the frame. Marked the curve with a scratch awl.

I cut some of the L-channel pieces and took them to task with my portable disc grinder. Sorry I don't have photos pre-cut, but these were the end results.

[blackacidevil]

Time to work on the actual reflectors now. I'll need to cut 2 holes for the rads, and a hole & square in the back for the PSU. This is a bit tricky for the Dremel being a curved surface, and no proper way to actually stabilize it. What worked for me though was to lightly groove the surface repeatedly until it was "almost" through, and then used an Xacto blade to cut the circles out. Actually worked better than I thought it would.

Mounting the PSU was going to be a trickier problem. It was one thing to measure/cut out the sections for the rads due to the ease of using a 120mm fan as a guide, but this was another. An old CD case cover would be the solution.

First drilled the mounting holes and tested its fit. Good so far.

I`ll get around to cutting the PSU fanhole and plug tomorrow.

[DonT-FeaR]

kool keep it up man nice start

[The boy 4rm oz]

Interesting idea, looking good.

[blackacidevil]

Just a quick mockup of my case. Awaiting arrival of my MCW60-4870 block.

[DonT-FeaR]

:O your back... keep this thing alive!!! lol nice work

[Eclecticos]

Wow! This is really neat. +Rep

[SXRguyinMA]

looks sweet, cant wait to see more progress