ModMinded

Congrats on the new camera! The pics look fantastic, esp the shiny uv goodness. Very nice work with the light bar, that's a great look! Like the progress!

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My First Mod (Ongoing) - NZXT Lexa - Experimental Modyssey

Mod 2 (Ongoing) Peavey Bandit Amp

Make It Work Water Cooling

reedo

+ rep for pretty box

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Quote:

Japan1:Do you know what would be cool? Removing your motherboard and replacing it with a Kenan & Kel poster.

We Are The Red Tide

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The HAF 932 Case Owners Club[/center] Aumotocnic"An unfortunate member of the overclock.net insomnia club"

jpz

Hi guys! I haven't posted any updates the last couple days because I've been stuck in "sanding hell". I am hoping to have an update ready for tonight.

I'm glad you guys like the cathode light holders- but I'm not quite ready to start mass producing them.

Seriously, though, I think I'd need to go through a couple design revisions and get some new tools before I would consider making and selling them. I really don't have the right equipment to make more than a couple- these two took me forever(a solid 10-20 hours each) to make.

Every day you learn something new... at least, that's what people say. Well I must admit I learned an important lesson today, and it was not an easy lesson to learn. After making a good 40 weld-on joints between yesterday and today, I finally learned how to do capillary bonding properly. I learned a couple tricks that allow me to make nearly perfect, invisible bonds. It's a shame that I made 40-50 horribly ugly joints before learning how to do it right- but on the bright I learned something new.

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Evil-Jester

nice. i would probably pay $50 USD +S&H for 2 of those light bars they look that good lol and i agree with "Every day you learn something new" I say that all the time lol

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@ndres

Waiting for more photos...

The Fryer

ahh just take ur time bud. good things are to come.

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ok i couldn't keep it there.. just to big..

jpz

Completed UV Light-Bars(lots of good night shots of motherboard/tubing mock-up)

Before I was distracted by UV lights and and reactive green tubing, you may recall that I was about to cut some pieces(old picture from previous update):



As mentioned in the previous update, I drilled and tapped these holes:



I then cut the pieces into strips:





After cutting the pieces into strips I sanded the long edges since it is much easier to sand a few long edges than many(MANY) short edges.

After sanding the long edges I cut the strips into lots of little pieces using my trusty jig saw. Most of my strips had a long piece at the end so I had plenty of space to clamp the strip down while I cut it. However, these pieces were a little too small to make the last few cuts:



This was not a problem- I just had to pull out the hacksaw. Easily clamped and quite hackable:





See how the edge facing the camera is smooth from sanding? The edge facing to the right was recently cut with a jig saw:



Tools marks left by the hack saw:



This is sanding hell:



Every single one of the above pieces was sanded and polished. Well, not quite- I still have to do the CD faceplates.

Some pictures of the 1" x 1/2" pieces. The 1/2" edges are polished and the 1" edges are sanded for glueing:









And some more macro fun with a polished 1" x 1" piece. Center hole is tapped for 6-32:





These pieces are all sanded, polished, and ready for glueing:



As I was moving around the room, this caught my eye and I felt like I had to take a couple pictures:





Getting ready for glueing- I screwed the seven 1" x 1" into a bunch of ??seemingly random?? holes in BB bottom. The reason for this is so the small acrylic pieces are fixed firmly in place while I am glueing:



All fourteen 1" x 1/2" pieces glued to the seven 1" x 1" tiles:



After waiting overnight for the bonds to cure, I sanded the seven pieces much like you would lap a processor or block:



This is what the edges looked like after sanding:





Seven more 1" x 1" tiles polished and ready to go:





Before glueing those pieces, however, I glued these support braces. They will not be part of the case and have not been sanded or polished. I will use them to hold up the shelves while I am working:





And now I glued the seven mystery boxes:

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jpz

Lots of macro fun:























I then made this:



As you can see, my glue joints are starting to look a bit better. This one is messy around the edges of the joint(too much weld-on) but the actual joint is nearly perfect:





Hint:



I then gathered the BB panels along with the last 13 polished (and center tapped) 1" x 1" tiles, and a bunch of other supplies:



You may have noticed that my shelves, particularly the bottom panel, were not well supported and bent quite a bit under the weight of components. I knew this was going to happen, but I did not have time to add internal supports before exhibiting my case a few weeks ago. The way I strengthed the central black box was much the same as how I held the fan plates to my shrouds- tapped pieces of acrylic glued to the inside face of the panel.

First I had to peel away the protective paper backing where the supports would go:



At first I used the razor to make the horizontal cut, but after using this method a few times I found that it was easier and more effective to just tear the piece entirely using only my fingers.

This is what it looked like after cutting the paper:



I then screwed the 1" x 1" support tile of interest to BB top(the large piece standing in the air) and propped it up with a pair of carpenter's squares and some blue painter's tape:





The way I kept glue from running onto BB top was by putting a washer in between BB top and the 1" x 1" tile. After applying weld-on, waiting for the joint to set, and removing the braces I was left with this:



Not a particularly bad joint:



More pictures I took as I repeated the process on other sheets:















All done:





A few final macro shots :







High resolution photos can be downloaded in the form of a ~250MB Zip archive here.

I will proofread these two posts in a couple hours when I have time.

CD Faceplate

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The Fryer

62.... Holy $#!t..........

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ok i couldn't keep it there.. just to big..

Steve096

62!? Where!?

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