Project DEEP PURPLE (The Introduction)

[modding.fan]

Purple and black are two my favorite colors and the armor is one of the only cases I like. GL with this project, it looking good so far. When I was considering getting it, I was curious about the drive mounting rack, but now my questions have been answered ;p.

Stay tuned...I've got more info on the drive racks coming...you may find it interesting before you decide whether or not to buy the case.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,
MF

[modding.fan]

Welcome back to another installment of DEEP PURPLE!

Today I’ll be covering a couple of the miner (though, they probably are my biggest) mods to the case.

First is the installation of my ‘under-the-trap-door’ DangerDen Fillport.

Step one was marking where it would go. I would have preferred it be dead center underneath the door, but, due to all of the media-port holes, I had to move it some so it would actually have *some* contact with the case once the hole was drilled. I used the bottom nut from the fillport for positioning and marking.

Some initial Dremel work, and I’ve got a (very) rough hole, ready for smoothing:

Can you tell it’s been a few years since I used a Dremel.

Smoothed out the hole a bit, made it a bit more round:

Some smoothing of the top and bottom, getting rid of the burrs. I love working with aluminum…so easy and fast to sand.

And I realized that the hole is too small…so I had to redo the entire process with the hole considerably larger (see…I measured off the inner diameter of the nut, threads and all, Yup…I’m blonde in spirit, if not in genetics), and voila:

Oh, and a recap from yesterday…I couldn’t put this picture in because TBCS limits us to 25 pictures per thread…

Here for all of my modders to witness, is why it’s always important to wear proper safety gear. See, when drilling yesterday…this happened…and somehow it put a nice chip in my safety glasses:

The other small project I had to complete before painting was the removal of two of the supports from the drive trays to allow me to install my 2-bay tall harddrive cooler (remember the issue I had above?):

First, I counted and recounted, then marked, and recounted to ensure I was cutting off a matching pair, in the proper place, before I paint and reassemble:

Then some quick work with the cutting wheel…well, not easy, it was a pain in the butt…

Followed by some sanding to smooth it down, and this side is done:

The other side, with the much longer drive support (see one side only had about 1” long ones, the other ones had about 3” ones) I decided not to dremel, as it was a complete and utter pain in the butt. Instead…I had the ingenious idea of using a small hammer to flatten it out. Unfortunatley, it didn’t work out *quite* as well as planned…but…in the end…it’s not visible, it’ll be painted black…and…well…um…it worked. LOL

Okay, so it’s not bad at all, and honestly it’s fun to use hammers.

That’s all for now, next up paint prep and priming!

Cheers

-MF

[modding.fan]

Yup, another post for today, as I’m trying to catch up on all of this weeks work. And it’s been a lot.

Next in the process was painting…but first I had to go through the effort of prepping my room for paint. Basically, all I did was attach (with small nails) a huge drop cloth 3/4 up the walls on 3 sides of the room to act as a back drop. Any other paint dust shouldn’t really matter:

Now, I first gave every piece a nice warm soapy bath…scrubbing everything down and quickly sanding all of the pieces so they would more readily accept paint. Then I laid out all the parts on the paint-boxes (so I could paint, then move a full box at a time for drying):

Wow…that’s a lot of pieces needing paint…and some of them need it on two sides. First up was priming every piece…don’t fret over the pictures…the room was oddly lit, and I took many of the photos while the paint was still wet. So a lot of it looks uneven, due to the wet paint (just some examples…not all the same photos from above).

Of course now I’ve got to break posts…since I’m limited on photo numbers and on text length. Before I go, I’ll say this…I *way* underestimated the amount of paint I needed. That said, I only get one coat of each paint (prime and final). I may have my folks send me another can of the purple for some recoating on the external parts…I hate only having one coat as that means that I can’t sand and final like I wanted to.

Cheers for now!

MF

[Custom]

It is looking great so far modding.fan, I cant wait to see this when it is finishedl.

[modding.fan]

It is looking great so far modding.fan, I cant wait to see this when it is finishedl.

You think *you* can't wait...just try standing in my shoes...it's sitting on my dining room table right now just mocking me with the ferocity of 10,000 FedEx employees.

[modding.fan]

Back again with more updates to DEEP PURPLE!

So I left off with my pieces nicely primed. I’m a sped, and didn’t take any pictures of the quick sanding I did on them…but…it’s just sanding between prime and paint…nothing fancy.

For what is really only my second experience in life with a can of spray paint, I think I did alright. Of course I had a spray paint respirator, and I had lots of airflow in the room (big filter a/c filter mounted into the open window to prevent dust, and the exhaust fans running in every room in my house to draw air out through that room). I’m big on safety…residual of my military training…they beat it into us. I also set myself a maximum of about 15 mins in the room at any given time.

So, without further ado…my work in painting…again not many pictures…but it gets the idea across. Painting isn’t much of a project to get verbose on, so the pics can speak for themselves. Again, many of the pictures were taken when the paint was wet, so it looks a bit odd, the dry parts look, to my untrained and somewhat colorblind eyes, fantastic! (With a couple exceptions that will be noted.)

First, the gloss black accent bits and the internals:

Drive faces, filters, and buttons:

The Mobo Tray:

One of the drive-bay’s, the case bottom, and the front part of the case:

Both parts to the back of the case and the top:

And the other drive-bay and more accent bits:

After plenty of drying time (mainly because some of the pieces needed to be flipped over to receive purple paint), I swapped out parts to a more permanent curing location (namely the laundry room, where they would be undisturbed for the rest of the night) so I could paint the rest of the parts with the purple:

The outside parts to the back of the case:

The top and bottom of the case:

The front bezel:

The Wings:

The front door:

Lots of the little accent bits:

That basically wraps up all of the painting. There was one problem with the painting that came up primarily due to my impatience. You know how it is… Anyway, on the wings, I painted the ‘outside’ of them and gave them a solid hour to dry (the paint suggested 20-30 mins to be dry to the touch). I flipped them so I could paint the inside, another hour later, when I picked them up…some of the paint came off. Worst part is I’m totally out of purple paint so I can’t touch up till I get my folks to send me another can. But, it’s a couple of minor spots so I’ll live.

Anyway, here is what the whole thing looked like spread out on my table again after all the pieces had ample time to dry (no wet paint on the redwood table!).

Next will be what we’ve all been waiting for…putting it all back together…and then finally starting to put in pieces!

Cheers for now!

-MF

[dgrmkrp]

i have to say: very nice work! looking very purple!

but wait.. u should make sure the paint is hard enough.. and maybe even clear coat it for protection.. i painted a case; seemed nice enough; didn't coat it; paint eventually came off when moving it.. bad.. new case; moved it around; paint had no clear coat (not glossy nor matte); got scratched again.. i hate that.. learn from my mistakes use some protection

[MAC]

i have to say: very nice work! looking very purple!

but wait.. u should make sure the paint is hard enough.. and maybe even clear coat it for protection.. i painted a case; seemed nice enough; didn't coat it; paint eventually came off when moving it.. bad.. new case; moved it around; paint had no clear coat (not glossy nor matte); got scratched again.. i hate that.. learn from my mistakes use some protection

or cover it when youre moving it j/k

good work man

[brouhaha]

And we have purple! Wheee!!! Nice progress man.

[DaveW]

And we have purple! Wheee!!! Nice progress man

lol...i like this guy. The mod looks cool man, nice paintjob. Look forward to seeing it re-assembled.

-Dave