Project Stealthlow

[Waynio]

Somebody get miniature, sanitized plungers.
I need my eyes pushed back in.

Cheers AmEv . I can finally resume now I have the parts I ordered .

Been ages or so it seems since I done anything & got the needed bits to continue now hopefully to the end of this project.

So continuing with working on the fan holder lighting this is with a UV LED strip inside the acrylic with about 8 sheets of laminating sheet in front of the strip, the strip needs it's waterproof cover removing so they take up less space & the holders will need some of the center of the bars filing down a little so here is a rough idea of what it will look like & the outer alternating tint pieces will be white LED from the fans .

I intend to get stuck back into this properly tomorrow & make up for that long wait on the order .

[Waynio]

I finally got the modding feeling back, better late than never & actually grabbed my nice camera & tripod so I could get this back to being a log rather than what it was turning into as a show & tell .

So the fan holders & this different way of lighting them simply required the stick bars to be thinner there was no other way & thought I might get away with just filing a little bit out of the bars but nope lol I need them to be 5mm thinner so the 24 sheets of laminating material which comes in at 2mm needed & the 3mm LED strips, I only placed 3 tiny dots of the acrylic adhesive on to hold them together this time but even that really welds them together but a nice razor & hammer can carefully separate them, was a bit of a gamble but it was worth it to get these spot on.

Cut & peeled all the water proof material off the 3 LED strips.

Filed the corners down on the top of the fans.

A clear demonstration of how these stick pieces will be lit up, sticks, diffusion, LED strip.

24 layers of laminating sheet.

Creates this .

Measuring & works out at a needed slimming of 5mm so now I need to make all the 12mm stick bars become 7mm.

Lapped the lot so they are perfectly flat & even & I'll continue getting these to precise size tomorrow .

[Waynio]

Everything antiqued after grinding down the 12mm sticks to 7.3mm.

And the fun begins oh yeah, this is them after the disc sander.

After 160 grit going 1 way, length ways so they will polish up better.

240

600

Sure wouldn't be able to do all these hours & be able to slightly smile without my trusty mp3 jukebox .

1200

2000

Polishing.

Result .

After cleaning them all up I started sticking them back together.

Copper ? clips, that's right not P clips but ? clips lol .

Anyway once the revised fan holders have cured that's the last time consuming bit, then it's just the optical tray & eject button & a tiny bit of wire work for a molex cable & the power switch, then the final touch install the lighting & get the copper ? clips installed & then route all the wires tidy, then I think it's done & time for the final photo shoot can't wait so I'll get it completed ASAP .

[Waynio]

Installed the optical drive to gauge what depth is needed for the tray cover = 5mm & same for the eject button but an extra piece on top so it's pushable so decided on a 3mm piece of alu & a mix of 2mm copper & 2mm alu for a tray cover, figured I should power it up to make sure the tray can eject it couldn't but only needed a tiny bit of filing to let it work which required me to tweak my design a little again.

OK the good stuff .

I pre brushed the panels & then masked them up because some of the pieces would be impossible to brush once they are cut (many tiny pieces), then printed, cut up & stuck my designs on with prit stick it really works excellent, far nicer more accurate & faster method than marking manually saves me many hours so I'll do this all the time now, putting this student version of sketchup to good use .

So here's the scraps from what I done.

And here you can see fan label covers for front & back, a plate I did for the psu side where the label used to be, eject button bits, optical tray cover which needs a little filing so the middle fits inside the copper one & lastly the ssd cover with yin yang alu/copper placed inside the circle I didn't think I'd get much use out of the scroll saw for the rest of this project but I guess I couldn't resist .

The ssd cover was going to be mirror polished stainless steel but I gave up trying to cut it well so tried polishing some alu sheet but wasn't anywhere near as good as the steel so brushed it instead & I'll paint that piece matt black (has to be a different look to the alu/copper & black should be sweet could get some brass but then I'd end up adding brass trim bits all over the place also ), bear in mind the bits you can see here are the rough ugly side the nice side should pretty sweet .

[Waynio]

No cats or dogs for this log, just this little curious guy sat watching with all the shiny stuff about .

Got the stainless steel cut, I ended up using 1 of the band saw sections in the scroll saw which changed a half hour job into a minute & this is after a coat of metal lacquer on all these bits.

The corsair force 3 120GB which I bought the other day, need some double sided tape though to make it semi permanent & it still fits in the case .

Optical eject button made with 5mm opal frosted acrylic which I'm kinda hoping will catch optical activity light & create a slight glow around the 2mm copper top.

Replacement for the psu sticker.

Covers for the labels on the backs of the fans.

Pattern covers for the front of the fans.

Optical tray cover & friends .

Randoms .

List of things to do in order of which I'll tackle first on the final steps woooooo I could dance like a freak with or without music .

Work out exactly where I want the cables to be & add extra mounting holes to mobo panel
molex cable
Fix led strips cables from molex to a fan adaptor or to work with the fan cable = half done
Lay gap filling material next to all faint gaps where there will be light.
Make a block that helps keep the light control box stay in place next to psu.
Fix light strips to curve bars.
Install hardware .

Get a pile of junk food & beer & get that 30lbs back or not I'm liking the extra energy levels I have with that gone .

[Waynio]

Ejecting working correctly had a tiny bit more filing to be done.

[Technochicken]

This is looking amazing! Are you going to do anything to keep the copper shiny, like a clearcoat?

[Fuganater]

Looks awesome bud. Things are going very well for you.

[msmrx57]

Looking awesome!!!! Love the detail work on those fans.

[Waynio]

This is looking amazing! Are you going to do anything to keep the copper shiny, like a clearcoat?

Thanks mate yeah I've been brushing a coat of metal lacquer on it all & it's prevented me needing to re-brush it over & over I lost count how many times I had to re-brush it so the metal lacquer really helps keep it nice & clean & most importantly will prevent the copper from tarnishing .

Looks awesome bud. Things are going very well for you.

Cheers Fuganater it's good that you brought up about MOTM over on bit-tech as when Antony sees people bring it up he usually sorts something out, I'll put a word in also for an extra nudge .

Looking awesome!!!! Love the detail work on those fans.

Cheers msmrx57 I nearly added more but had to say to myself no, no more lol .

Last fabrication update I think depends on how the sata data cables are if they need a clamp piece adding to keep them tidy or not.

So I added all the required mounting holes to the mobo tray to support the cable holders.

I also decided to make a cable clamp holder also, I added the mounting holes for this before making the part & took the cable to be clamped & took measurements off it with the digital callipers & got to it on sketchup to design & print the needed piece complete with cut/bend lines & excess length so it could be trimmed down & rounded, couldn't be bothered setting up my basic bending brake & just did a quick setup with plywood & the vice & manual pressing which is easily doable when material isn't very wide.

Held the piece where I wanted the piece to be & marked where the mounting holes are & then drilled the holes in the new piece, needed an accurate drilling with me not being able to clamp this down so the drill press came in handy as it sometimes does .

All done for this piece & all the mounting holes & that's all for the fabrication of this project, now it's just the power/hdd activity switch wiring & a molex cable & installing the lighting .

So might not have completed the project yet thanks to me using the wrong adhesive for quite a few parts & having to re-stick them with epoxy resin but all the challenging stuff & slightly challenging stuff is done I'd say . Hmmm actually I have a mass of cabling to pretty up & it has to be done with windows being on both sides it's the sata data cables I'm unsure about looking tidy but if they are a nightmare I could make a couple of clamps like I did for the 24 pin extension.