Neptune's Trident

[Boddaker]

Removed the masking last night!

Then I put some UV cathodes behind the covers to see how it will look lit up.

This is with me holding the cathodes over the covers.

I'm surprised the white paint doesnt glow under the uv light. Maybe it's the pearlescent coating that shields it?
Works better this way, and I may not even need to light these covers from behind like I was thinking.

[Boddaker]

Was able to mock up the tubing in the lower rad section last night. Still was pretty tight (due to the thicker floor) so I had to get some 90° and 45° elbows to make it work.
Came out ok I think. I love the blue fittings on the white tubing!

[Boddaker]

the tubing looks great!

but the $1000,000 question is does the floor leak


CBB

haha, I haven't actually gotten to the leak-testing phase yet, cause I still haven't glued the floor together. I did a glue-test last weekend, but apparently didn't use enough Weld-on so I got a bunch of air pockets. That stuff evaporates fast, and if I don't get the pieces together quick enough, it dries up. (doesn't help the weather up here has been upper 90's & no humidity).

[Boddaker]

I just got done prepping stuff for tomorrow's painting session. Sorry I didn't take any pics of the boring sanding,
cleaning, and priming of parts, but I didn't think you'd mind too much.

Here's a couple shots of all the parts:

If you remember my paint scheme, it will be blue with water droplets on the outside of the case, monitor, and keyboard,
and pearl white on the inside, but only in the main top section. It will be blue in the lower rad compartment.
As you can see, I already laid down the white inside the case shell and mesh boxes, mainly because of the mesh.
If I waited til after we painted the exterior, then all the holes will be white, and I don't want that. After I took the
pics I taped all the white mesh areas so that I wouldn't get any blue overspray on the inside.

So basically we're laying down the blue base coat and clear this weekend. Then we have to let that cure before going
back over and doing the water droplets. If you're wondering why we're shooting clear before the water droplets,
it's because we are using water-based paint, and the base needs to be sealed before we do the next layer. Then
after that we'll do a final coat of clear, maybe with a hint of candy or pearlescence. We'll see!

[Boddaker]

PAINT PHASE ONE: BASE COAT

Here's my painting progress for today. We first laid out all the parts in the paint booth and wiped them with a tack cloth.

I brought with me the color of coolant I will be using so we could match the paint. But my buddy already had some
blue sitting on the shelf and thought we'd see how close it was. Turns out the first can we opened was a perfect match! woot!!

It also meant we didn't have to use the water-based paints he had to mix & match, which would have been more difficult.
So we could stick with acrylic enamel all the way through. The paint is Nason blue metallic by Dupont.

Mixing the paint with reducer and hardener..

Base coat laid down:

I still can't get over how well it matches the coolant!

PAINT PHASE TWO: CLEAR COAT

After the base set up for about a half hour, we mixed up the clear coat. This is necessary to seal the metallic so
when we prep for the water-drop phase, we won't disturb the metal flakes in the base.

After the clear was shot, I snuck in the booth for some beauty shots. Shiny!

So that will have to cure for a few days before we can do anything else. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get back
up to lay down the water drops for another week or two. However, Scott may have some time to do a few test pieces,
and if he takes some pics, I'll post them up in the interim. So until then!

[Boddaker]

Thanks guys!

Got a bunch done today, and was able to get most of the interior white pieces painted.

Cleaned and prepped all the pieces to be painted pearl white:
Motherboard IO plate; video card IO plates; IO cover plates; water pumps; water pump mounting brackets;
mobo tray cover; new & improved rad/fan mounting brackets; SLI connector cover; video card covers; NB/SB block;
compression fitting rings (not shown); & CPU block mounting bracket (not shown).

Not having full-time access to my buddy's paint booth, I had to improvise. Set up a make-shift hanging rack
by tying a rope from the ladder to the garage door track lol.

These compression fitting rings are paintable, so they're getting a coat of pearl white as well.

Other pieces that couldn't or didn't have to be hung were placed on a piece of cardboard.

After the pearl top coat:

After a few hours, the pieces were dry enough to handle, so of course I had to assemble some things to see
how they looked! I mounted the water pumps and screwed in some fittings:

Fastened the IO plate back onto the motherboard tray:

That looked great, so I had to set the mobo tray cover on as well as the hard drives and covers:

Should I go get the motherboard and video cards? Sure why not!

A close up of the SLI connector. I masked it off to match the hard drive covers:

Another angle of the motherboard. I don't have the cpu block yet, so the mounting bracket and fittings are just there for effect.

And a shot of the video card back plates. The one on the right is different because I am using slightly different versions
of GTX 260s. They are all EVGA cards, just one is a bit older than the other two. I'll probably put the odd one in the middle:

I'm still working on the video card covers, so I didn't get those painted just yet. I got something planned for them,
and I think you'll dig it, so stay tuned!

[Boddaker]

wow, just amazing man! great job, keep it up!
are that three video cards?... why the hell you need that for???
doesnt mean i dont like it!

-AntraxLife

Yep, those are 3 video cards. Bod doesn't need em, he has them cos he can hahahahaha.

Well, I can't very well have just two cards in a "three"-themed case now can I! :p

Oh, I love it when you finally get to start assembling all those shiny pieces together. Excellent work my friend! +rep.

Thanks Dan! It's getting real close now, only a few more weeks to final assembly.

[Boddaker]

Thanks guys!

I'm finishing up a cool piece for the video cards, and should have another update for ya tomorrow. It's a cable cover that will route all those unsightly video card power cables down through the motherboard tray and hidden from view. And of course it's trident shaped. :p

[Boddaker]

Made a piece to cover the ends of the video cards, where all the power cables plug in. I wanted the cables to be hidden,
so I fashioned a trident-shaped cover that routes the cables down and through the motherboard tray. I'm making
my own extension cables too, so the actual power cables from the psu will plug into these behind the mobo tray.

Here is the mess of cables: two 6-pin plugs for each card = 36 wires!

First thing I did was glue them all together with some acrylic and styrene spacers.

Once glued, I can remove them all as one.

After measuring, I cut out the trident shape and side pieces.

Gluing them together, using the ruler as a square:

Testing the cable assembly in the cover..

Test fit on the cards (one of many, many test fits lol)

Another test fit, this time with more side pieces glued onto the cover:

You can see how the cables are being routed to the center of the cover and down.

After the usual sanding-filling-sanding routine, the cover got a coat of white and pearl, like the others.

Here's a close up shot of the hole I made in the motherboard tray, where all the wires will go through. The cover will
conceal this hole from view.

A wide shot of the video cards with cover. The cables are not plugged in yet. I will need to have the case reassembled
to finish the wiring on the other side of the mobo tray.

A final close up shot of the cover. I had hopes of permanently gluing the cable assembly into the cover, but plugging
all six connectors in at once proved very difficult at best, and would be near impossible when concealed by the cover.
So I will be leaving the cover loose.

Next up are the three custom bottom plates for the vid cards.

[Boddaker]

Nice idea with that cover. Maybe a light effect under it, would be nice.

Would be nice, but hard to do with the wires in there, I would assume.

Yeah, I was thinking about doing a glowy effect on this piece as well (which is why I made it from the blue transparent acrylic), but I decided against it since it will be right next to the hard drives, and the vid card bottom plates will have a glowy EVGA logo on them. And I dont want to overdo it.

Mate, that was suck a cool idea. I have never thought to do anything like that, very nice idea.

I'm loving those power connectors, if you don't mind I'd like to copy off of that idea for my future crossfire setup.

Every post you find another place to perfectly integrate the trident theme. Not only is this mod clean, but it uses some creativity...I like that.

-Indybird

Thanks guys. I always disliked how the power cables on video cards are always placed right out in the middle of everything, so I sought out to do something about it.