PROJECT LOG Project R Unit

Next I constructed a little half box to serve as a cabinet to house my power switches, front usb/firewire/audio slot and power/hdd lighting effects.










And this mounts here:











And, as suggested, I cut up some panels.



For this work I like using my scrollsaw. First I drill holes at the corners. Then I drill a larger hole within the cutout. This allows me to thread my scroll saw blade—no need for a starter cut of plunge cutting.

To square the corners, I actually carefully work the scrollsaw in a sideways fashion, then come back with my dremel oscillating multitool to sand the edges to a nice square.








Mount’er up:










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Some serious wood-working talents on this forum.

Wow really nice work your doing.

I also did the back panel for 5.25 drives as you can see here:











For the front piece, I came back and added the button holes:







The button holes were made with a unibit on my drill press. The slot for the usb/firewire/audio ports was made with 2 holes made by the unibit on the ends, connected with my scrollsaw.











And mounted it up:


















Next I engaged in a little side project. I received PCI slot fascia piece by dangerden via performance-pcs.












In the past I've usually left the i/o area and pci slots just open--with a bracket to mount individual PCI slot. However, this piece does give it a more finished look.











But there is one problem: if you look closely the front edge hanging above the i/o area of the motherboard hangs over the recess for the 120mm exhaust fan. See the area circled here in this photo:


















So I needed to trim a little bit of the edge off this piece.
There are a number of methods for accomplishing this--I went with the way I felt was easiest and cleanest (not wanting to mess up the nice paint job already done on the piece.
I decided to route the edge off.











First I put together a jig to guide the edge of my router:


















Then I sandwiched a second jig on top to keep everything stable. You can see now that only the edge I wanted to shave off is left exposed:




















Then I ran the router with a flush trim 1/2" bit:

















And mounted it back up, clearance problem no more.























At this point really, all the structural components are done. So I stepped back and took a pair of pics to take a look at how far this thing has come:















On to the final aspects of this project:

Lighting.
Paint.
Hardware.





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Really moving along nicely. Can't with to see it all painted up.

Wow great progress! This is really starting to take shape. I am glad this project is coming out so well.

wow looks amazing!

Lighting


This is stuff I enjoy--basic wiring, soldering, and crimping. One of these days I'll write a guide on what I know.


My first overall concept for lighting was to continue the sort of space lab look. So a lot of cool white cathodes and LEDs. I went with a theme I often use, that being a dark plastic surface. Hit a switch, and I want the internal components to be lit up and show thru the dark plastic. By the nature of my design, the motherboard is really front and center.


So I sat down and contemplated some general placements of lights to get a hold of how many lights I needed. Pretty soon I decided I wanted some lights to always be on, and some switched. After thinking about how to wire that I decided to go with an external 12V power source. To have always-available power, you either need to tap into the +5v USB always-on power from your powersupply, or you can pull an external line from an independent line--I went with the latter.



Having decided my power source, I then had to wrap my head around how to wire this thing up. I was looking at at least half a dozen LEDs, several LED light bars, cold cathode, and switches, all with varying voltage requirements.






I know its a little geeky, but I just had to diagram it out:










I have a +12v power source. The first division is between items that will be always on and those that will be switched.

Always on: As you may have noticed above I went with vandal switched from performance-pcs; 22mm circle for power on, 16mm circle for reset, and 16mm dot for lights on-off. The LED lights for these I decided to be always-on. All 3 LEDs can handle 3v to 12v of power, however, I would have to wire in resistors to balance their intensities.


Switched: I planned on have the front motherboard box lit up by 1 12" LED light bar and 1 4" cold cathode. I would have gone with a 4" LED light bar (and thus not need to hide the cold cathode inverter box), but I don't think they make them. The back hard drive compartment will be lit up with 12" LED light bar. Then I decided I wanted to light the compartment that houses the boxes, so throw in several more LEDs, requiring resistors.





Yup...pretty complicated.



Next I decided to map out my physical wiring a little. In the diagram above, I numbered all my wired in items, which correspond to the numbers in the diagrams below.
















Given all the components that needed power, I needed a good way to split my 12v power source. So I went with an old trick: the 3 pin 6 fold pci pass thru:











I won't actually be mounting this in the PCI rack, but I am using its circuit board to generate 6 connections from one power source.












And here was my 12v power source, plus the custom cable I made to connect to my pci pass thru:












Next I tested all my connections to make sure everything would jibe, that the powersupply could provide enough power (its rated to 800mA), and to figure out all my necessary resistors.









That's 3 LED lit switches (different resistors), 4 LED light bars, and 1 cold cathode.

Then I went back to work on the PCI pass thru. Remember that a number of items were to be always-on and a number were to be switched. In this pic, you can see that I broke the trace to 3 of the ports:











Next I soldered in wires, with a connector:








Now all I have to do is to run a pair of lines from my switch, and terminate them with a female housing. When I connect the plug, the switch will now control these 3 ports on my PCI power pass-thru.







To mount my PCI pass-thru, I created some mounting blocks, again from the square bar 1/2" delrin.
















This then was mounted to the spot I chose within the case:









And it gets a cover to make it pretty:













And here are all the ports labeled:










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Now that my wiring control unit is ready, let’s wire some stuff up!



The 3 switches (power-on, reset, and lights-on) all have LED lights that are meant to be continuously on.



I wired them up to a 3 pin fan controller:










Some of the switches required resistors, which I just soldered into place.













And here are the switches all lit up:





















Next I wanted to create a set of bar lights. They are going to light up the little compartment that holds my switches. Building bar lights is a pretty simple and standard modding procedure.




First I started with some clear acrylic plastic rectangles:













These specific lights are going to be L channeled. I used some IPS weld-on #3 and glued the pieces together:












To glue plastic in this fashion, just clamp the pieces together, and apply glue along the seem. It will suck into the joint via capillary action, and with good prep, for a generally completely clear molecular bond between the edges.







Next using 220 and 400 grit sandpaper, I roughed up the surfaces of the bars to give it a matte finish:



I also drilled some 5-32 holes to receive the end of LEDs.









Next I glued in the LEDs. This time I used plain ol’ Krazy glue, so that it would set faster:















Wired up the LEDs with appropriate resistors (remember my power source is +12v).




Then I installed them into their proper location in the compartment unit:






And here was the final effect:








Lights off:














Lights on:

However, I decided I wasn't satisfied--I wanted more lighting in this compartment.

So, using the same basic guidelines, I built this little unit:










Tested here:














And now it looks like this:







(I know its a little off square--after the mounting block gets painted, the bar lights will get glued into place--right now there are just being held by double stick tape).

keep going! i love your idea and work may seem slow but its going to be worth it!

My apologies on the slowness of this project. I do several projects simultaneously, and a lot of the other projects are for payin' customers so they get priority.

A little peek at some other projects I've doing at the same time the last few months.






Here is a video of the lighting effect within the switching chamber:













Now to move on to lighting within the motherboard compartment.


For wiring purposes, I started with a 12” LED light bar.

However, these light bars are actually somewhat directional, as opposed to a CCFL which throws light in a 360 degree cylinder. So to get the light pointed in the direction I wanted, I needed to glue on some corners to the ends:








Then it sits in a bracket at a 45 degree angle:










And here it is lit up:







Pet peeve alert: A lot of folks just stick a light bar inside their case to “light things up”. I find that a light bar haphazardly mounted in a case mostly just blinds the viewer and/or induces a migraine, because a good portion of the light is shining right into the viewers eyes.

I want to light up my components/motherboard, not blind the viewer. So I will place my lights or mount my lights in a bracket to light up what I want visible, but shield the viewer from direct light.





Here the case sits unlit, dark and mysterious:











Hit the internal lights, and Pow! There’s your motherboard!











Video:

Omg I love this case. I am gonna have to borrow your LED acrylic bar idea and I like how that light bar lights up the interior like that, totally unexpected.

Lot of things you can do with an acrylic light bar.

Check out my name badge on this previous project.


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Hmmm... maybe I can do something like that with an AMD logo on my case. Where did you get that tooless HDD rack in that picture? I am gonna need something like that.

that lighting is great, i will keep this thread well looked at for when i do light mods, i always though bright lights looked garish.

Dooms101 said:

Hmmm... maybe I can do something like that with an AMD logo on my case. Where did you get that tooless HDD rack in that picture? I am gonna need something like that.

Click to expand...

I use to get them from performance-pcs, but I just checked and they seem to no longer be carried!

Side Project Alert!


I decided to take a little time and work out my paint process.

My overall scheme was for white, slightly faded yellow, and black, all with a super glossy finish.

I took a test piece of scrap MDF.

I put down 4 coats of primer, loose 220grit sanding between coats.

Then I laid down 3 coats of color, loose 220 grit sanding.

I used Rustoleum spray, hi gloss, plain White and Summer Squash yellow.

The top layer of color, I came back and sanded with 400 grit.


Finally, I hit it with 4 coats of Hi gloss clear coat. Again sanded in between with 220.



This was the result:









As you can see there was a fair bit of orange peel effect. But I decided on the whole 9 yards automotive finish.





So next, I sanded the clear coat with 400, 800, 1000, and 1500.



With sanding, the orange peeling goes away:











Then I finished it off with 3M rubbing compound on a cotton rag and some elbow grease.


And here was the finished…finish:








Nice smooth finish—there is a bit of halo-effect which is actually more an artifact of my camera.








Yup, refective top coat!












And here was my test sample next to the case, to get an overall color scheme:








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That sample came out really good, looks like a lot of time went into it sanding painting sanding. Can't wait to see it finished.