Project: Stargate Atlantis

[Drum Thumper]

Does anyone have any recommendations for a cool looking blue 80mm fan? Something that might go with my theme.

Would this work?

[Bopher]

Sweet...

Now I would just have to explain to the wife where I'm going for at least a day. To bad WOM doesn't have any stores in Minnesota... Hmm, might be time for some suggestions to the office now, lol

[Drum Thumper]

Sweet...

Now I would just have to explain to the wife where I'm going for at least a day. To bad WOM doesn't have any stores in Minnesota... Hmm, might be time for some suggestions to the office now, lol

Bring her along, and I'll talk my very soon to be Mrs into coming along for the ride as well!

And I really can't see WOM opening stores that far away--to be honest, I was surprised that you told me they had stores in Wyoming. I figured it would just be Montana.

Enough thread hijacking, I've got work to do.

[Visionary]

Ok, I finally got a chance to begin working on my case. I started last night with the tray that’s going to hold the motherboard and power supply. Here’s a rough sketchup of the layout. It’s designed to be slid out the back of the case for easy access.

To make the frame I used a couple metal strips that are used to hold up ceiling panels. They’re not the ideal material for the job, but they were free. I’m helping my brother remodel his house and this was some of the trash that got thrown out. I wanted to make the motherboard tray out of metal because I thought that wood might come loose and fall apart after years of being pushed and pulled on.

The first thing I did was make a paper template from my sketchup drawing. I used it to figure out where to make the corners then I cut out 90 degree wedges with my dremel. I think these strips are made out of tin. They’re pretty flimsy, easy to cut and bend.

I used bondo on the backside to hold the corners in shape. Then I cut out a separate piece for the top.

I used bondo to attach that piece. After it dried, I filled in the entire back side with bondo. This really stiffened up the frame and made it look nicer. I’ll glue a sheet of styrene onto the front when I get a piece. The cardboard box taped onto the front is a placeholder for my heat sink and fan. I’ll need to make sure that it will fit inside the case as I begin building it.

To finish the motherboard/PSU frame I'll need some styrene and the back off an old computer. But I should be able to move on to framing the rest of the case. Hopefully I won’t have to resize my sketchup model to make everything fit. I guess I’ll find out tonight.



On a slightly unrelated note:

What the F! All I did was take my computer apart so I could make sure the motherboard would fit onto the frame. Then I put it all back together. It’s exactly the same as it was before I took it apart this morning. Grrrrrrr……Annoying! Maybe my atlantis machine should run linux.

[Drum Thumper]

You didn't happen to leave out an optical drive did you? Or switch the position(s) of the hdd/opticals from slave to master or vice versa?

Cause that can cause you to get the annoying activation screen.

Looks good so far, have a +rep from me!

[Visionary]

You didn't happen to leave out an optical drive did you? Or switch the position(s) of the hdd/opticals from slave to master or vice versa?

Well I didn't leave out an optical drive, and I had the jumpers on the back of one optical set for master and the other one set for slave. I guess it could have been the harddrives. I don't remember how I set them up. Still it could explain how I've gotten this message now when I've taken apart my computer so many other times without getting it. Thanks for the information.

[ChevronX]

Good work & good luck with your mod. I cant wait to see how this turns out.

[Visionary]

Here’s the updated plan. The side panels are gone and a larger base has been added. I could probably use all the extra room in the base for a reservoir. It only seems right that atlantis should be water cooled. I also increased the scale of the entire case. Now it stands 4’8” instead of 4’. The bigger the better. It'll compensate for the outdated hardware that I'm going to put inside.

This is what I’ve gotten done so far. It took a little longer than I expected. For some reason I though this was going to be really easy. Getting all the vertical pieces to go straight up without leaning over was a bit of a challenge. Anyway, the wood is lath from plaster walls. I got a massive pile of it while fixing up my brothers’ house. The lath is held together with wood glue and staples. It turned out to be quite sturdy. There’s nothing really interesting about assembly so I’ll skip all that.

Now that I can physically see how large this thing is going to be, its occurred to me how much styrene I’m going to need. It could cost hundreds of dollars to get enough styrene to cover the thing and to make all the little panels. I’ll spend the money if I have to but I’d rather try a few alternatives first. I'm thinking about using cardboard painted with urethane resin instead of styrene. It'll be awsome if it works. I'll test it out and let everyone know how it goes.

[Visionary]

I’m not really sure how much detail I should put into a work log. I’ve never done one before. I'd like to put up alot of pics, but that could take hours on a 56k connection. If I need to post more pics or go into more detail just let me know.

This is the base. It’s not quite finished. It still needs the bottom hexagon.

Here I’ve propped the main part of the case up on top of the base. It doesn’t fit quite right. The top part wants to fall forward because there’s nothing holding up the front.

I didn’t think wood glue would be able to support all the weight so I put in a wood strip between the upper frame and the base.

I used bolts to secure the two pieces of the case together. Wood glue would have probably done fine but I didn’t want to take the chance. This is probably one of the weaker points in the case.

Onto the base. I cut 12 pieces of lath and stapled the ends together to make two hexagons.

Then I glued shorter pieces on top leaving gaps at the edges.

The gaps are just big enough for a lath strip to fit into. This will strengthen up the vertical pieces of lath and keep the ends from moving around after they’re glued.

The top and bottom pieces glued together without any trouble.

I think I need a work bench…

[Visionary]

For the outside of the case, my first plan was to brush fiberglass resin onto cardboard. But I read somewhere that fiberglass resin shrinks when it hardens. I was worried the shrinking would cause the edges of the cardboard to bend or shrivel up. The site, wherever it was, recommended polyurethane resin. Well I don’t know what polyurethane resin is, but I did have some polyurethane so I tried it.

I tried a thin layer of polyurethane on some cardboard first. It's on the left in the pic. It left a thin hard surface, but the cardboard was still easy to bend. If something were laid up against the case the cardboard would easily bend. I needed something thicker and harder. For my second attempt I tried polycrylic, the stuff on the right. When I opened up the can, I saw that it had about the same consistency as the polyurethane. I doubted it would work any better than the polyurethane, so I decided to put it on really thick. That was a mistake. The outside layer of cardboard got so soaked that the ridges on the corragated middle started to show through.

The cardboard was still not strong enough, so I went to wal-mart to get some fiberglass resin. And I thought bondo smelled bad…

The fiberglass resin really strengthened up the cardboard and left a smooth sandable surface. Unfortunately it left brush marks, as you can see in the pics. I could smooth it out with high-fill primer or something, but it would be costly and time consuming. It might make more sense to use 1/8 inch styrene.

My next idea was to use paper. Actually I knew the paper wouldn't be strong enough, I just wanted to see what would happen.

I brushed the fiberglass resin onto one side of the paper allowing it to soak through leaving the opposite side free of brush strokes. The whole thing looks and feels like a very thin piece of plastic. It’s hard to believe that it’s actually a piece of paper. I could us it for the white lighted surfaces on my case but I'll need to put more resin onto the backside. It isn't very strong and still tears like paper with only one coat of resin.