First ever - "Bubbler Mod"
At least as far as I know, this has never been done before. It looks great, and is amazingly quiet considering all the bubble activity and the pump. It is about 90% done.
When done - the cylinder bubbler will be wrapped with 4 different colored EL-wires, barber-pole style, and they will be sequnced to turn on/off sequentially, using a Sunbeam Lightbus which will sit in the front bay. The Lightbus allows you 2 patterns (they should have added several more), or you can turn any of the 4 lights ON with no flashing, or fade them all On/Off/On/Off etc.
To make the side panels, I created 2 watertight boxes (6 x 15 x 1/2") from acrylic and a lot of trial and error using Weld-On #4. The panels are attached to the bay panels using velcro so that they can be easily removed. I also made a tall acrylic cylinder for the center of my clear acrylic PC. Everything is tightly sealed. I included exhaust tubing for all the bubblers which I used two "T" fittings so that all 3 of them merge into one tube that runs out the back - this way the water vapor coming out of the top of the bubblers does not get into the case and cause corrosion. That lightning thing on the bottom is a 6" "Luminglas" plasma disk - there in one on the right too, just inside the bubbler panels.
NOTE: you may want to go to my website for tons of details and a bunch of videos detailing various case mod items ( http://www.CaseModVideos.com ):
Obviously this is a very "busy" theme and includes everything but the kitchen sink. Therefore I included three extra power switches on the front (UV Lighting, Colored Lighting, and the Bubbler Pump system) - so that I can shut down major areas of lighting and activity when I just want some quiet. This is actually a demo for my Website, showing a bunch of various things you can do to a machine. Lots of electronics are included [2 types of RGB power LED controllers, 2 types of LED chasers (8-cherry drop LED's on top and 16-blue LED's on the bottom), plasma ball, LED sequencers on the fan faceplates, etc]. Here is a full-size image of the case - as you can see I have a lot of wire management work to do before boxing it up. The Plasma Ball globe has not been sealed yet since I need to take it out a lot right now, which is why it is at an angle:
To get air bubbles into the 3 bubblers, I added a sealed bulkhead to the bottom side of each - this was the most difficult part of the entire mod - especially to make it NOT leak !!! I connected aquarium airstones to the bulkhead, and they stay at the bottom, and send up a wall of bubbles. I then ran in aquarium tubing from the outside, sealed it with epoxy, and connected the tubes to a set of lighted gang valves to control the air flow amount.
The gang valves will hang neat the back top of the left panel so that I can control the air flow to any given bubbler from outside the PC. The gang valves have air pumped into them by a "Whisper 30" aquarium pump (the Whisper 10 and 20 were unable to power all 3 bubblers). The pump requires 120vAC so I drilled holes into my PSU, soldered wires directly into the 120vAC input lugs, and ran the wiring to a switch mounted on the front of my PC. I then ran another set of wires back to the pump.
In addition, I added a Neosphere "brain shaped" Plasma Ball on top which I was able to do by taking a dreamel, cutting a line in the collar, and popping out the globe. I added a scrolling LED sign in front, and a couple of LED chasers that I can control the various sequences by lighted pushbuttons that I mount on the left panel. Another set of pushbuttons controls the sequences for the two RGB controllers and power LED's - they, in turn light the bubbler panels (from the top by two custom made power RGB LED strips) and the cylinder (lit from below by a Lamina BL-4000 RGB power LED on a heat sink).
The whole project has been very challenging, but a blast. I will, when time permits - create a full work log. Here is a full pic describing the items I have added - I still have some more items to add, too:
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by kevk
