Hi,
It's proper time to do something with my old PC case - CM 690 Dominator. I will try to sell it out, but in the meanwhile I try to upgrade it the best I can, no matters how much costs are :0
As an example - this is a picture of original CM 690-II Atomic Orange mod - to show you what I shoot for. Of course, pictured case is 690-II, and I've got "690-one", so differences are obvious, but I give you an example what I try to reach
Pick up right colour as first. So much intrigued colour has been named as "Atomic Orange" and has been produced 2007-2009 for General Motors under GM418P code. It was "one stage" spray which means it didn't require lacquering, and it was "pearl"-featured. So I can forget the Corvette-like look, but I will try to do my best. OK then, there are companies that mix colours, so I've tried one and bought one can for 15 pounds (400ml). This is a sample:
.. which doesn't look good, it's much closer to brownies than oranges. After lacquering everything changes (luckily), and after many research & e-mails with spray vendor get an impression that colout wouldn't be as original. Pity.
OK then, de-riveting first . Tools: hammer drill and 2 drill bits: 2.5mm and 3.2mm (1/8 inch = as rivets used).It's good to take a photos first to know, where to rivet later, because some wholes are shared by CoolerMaster between other projects (cases).
So after de-riveting all looks like that:
Now everything gets washed, degreased and rerady to paint.
Painting is PITA: every single element needs to be sanded (unless you've got a sander), cleaned and painted with stages: primer first, "stone" effect as second, right colout later, and lacquer at the end.
"Stone"-effect spray looks like that (probably two dyes that atomize two colurs with "loogie" consistence) :
After painting all elements:
In right-hand bottom corner it's just primered element, for seeing the dfference. It's plain and smooth, later I'll paint it with Stone effect.
Most PC cases I've seen was lacquered with plain (glossy) lacquer which I'd like to avoid. It's why I've invented coarse surface.
Sanding side panels:
And now it appears that thinking has a future
If someone is going to do something similar, cut a whole to plexi-glass first (and bore some wholes) to save some time
Cutting the whole in side panel - tools: jigsaw + metal bit and Draper with metal bit as well. Draper is used for cutting small elements between holes, and after that I put jigsaw here and "follow" previously drawn trace:
You see a hammer, piece of wood and metal "tool" for finishing laminate floor it was used for banging surface as jigsaw waved it a bit. Warning - you can't hit a hammer directly to panel (because you might wave it even more), I was hitting through this metal "tool". I de-waved panel in 95%, and the rest was done by sanding. It has to be smooth finish from outside
And now - painting of those panels. Three poor layers of paint are much better than a reach one. Plus one solid primer at the beginning, of course. Progress of layers is shown here:
After third layer it started to look like "original" Atomic. However I didn't want to have matte-look and applied some lacquer layers to get Corvette-look, whazza
In the meanwhile - riveting. It would take about 100 rivets (!), and further painting & lacquering applied rivets. BTW, I applied glossy lacquer outside - as shown above - and matt lacquer inside, to black elements - as shown below:
Paint and lacquer are hardening (BTW, painting here is some kind of massacre - must be done above 15 Celsius, AND not with big humidity, like - for example - within, before of after raining, otherwise I get light spots which have to overpaint again during PROPER WEATHER), so I do (BRAIDING).
Front panel socket first. I developed my own mod - to get the same colur group everywhere - and put some heatshrink sleeving to each single end of small cable. Colour of this sleeving was not exact, but it was nothing else to get... For double cable you must have two (there's one more on picture below) pieces of heatshrink:
..and such tools:
First, you have to take the cable out of plug, levering plastic flap by something sharp & thin:
..and do this for each cable separately. Before you do this, remember which cable matches which whole, usually colour one (signal) matches whole described with small triangle.
Next, you have to split the cable pair and cut braiding to lenght (sometimes a bit longer than cable, because braiding - especially cheap one - likes to diverge, causing need to cutting).
I put black heatshrink on first:
and move it to the end, because it's gonna be front-panel side:
.. and after that, orange heatshrink, being stretched to bigger size, goes to its place:
...tbc...
It's proper time to do something with my old PC case - CM 690 Dominator. I will try to sell it out, but in the meanwhile I try to upgrade it the best I can, no matters how much costs are :0
As an example - this is a picture of original CM 690-II Atomic Orange mod - to show you what I shoot for. Of course, pictured case is 690-II, and I've got "690-one", so differences are obvious, but I give you an example what I try to reach
Pick up right colour as first. So much intrigued colour has been named as "Atomic Orange" and has been produced 2007-2009 for General Motors under GM418P code. It was "one stage" spray which means it didn't require lacquering, and it was "pearl"-featured. So I can forget the Corvette-like look, but I will try to do my best. OK then, there are companies that mix colours, so I've tried one and bought one can for 15 pounds (400ml). This is a sample:
.. which doesn't look good, it's much closer to brownies than oranges. After lacquering everything changes (luckily), and after many research & e-mails with spray vendor get an impression that colout wouldn't be as original. Pity.
OK then, de-riveting first . Tools: hammer drill and 2 drill bits: 2.5mm and 3.2mm (1/8 inch = as rivets used).It's good to take a photos first to know, where to rivet later, because some wholes are shared by CoolerMaster between other projects (cases).
So after de-riveting all looks like that:
Now everything gets washed, degreased and rerady to paint.
Painting is PITA: every single element needs to be sanded (unless you've got a sander), cleaned and painted with stages: primer first, "stone" effect as second, right colout later, and lacquer at the end.
"Stone"-effect spray looks like that (probably two dyes that atomize two colurs with "loogie" consistence) :
After painting all elements:
In right-hand bottom corner it's just primered element, for seeing the dfference. It's plain and smooth, later I'll paint it with Stone effect.
Most PC cases I've seen was lacquered with plain (glossy) lacquer which I'd like to avoid. It's why I've invented coarse surface.
Sanding side panels:
And now it appears that thinking has a future
If someone is going to do something similar, cut a whole to plexi-glass first (and bore some wholes) to save some time Cutting the whole in side panel - tools: jigsaw + metal bit and Draper with metal bit as well. Draper is used for cutting small elements between holes, and after that I put jigsaw here and "follow" previously drawn trace:
You see a hammer, piece of wood and metal "tool" for finishing laminate floor
it was used for banging surface as jigsaw waved it a bit. Warning - you can't hit a hammer directly to panel (because you might wave it even more), I was hitting through this metal "tool". I de-waved panel in 95%, and the rest was done by sanding. It has to be smooth finish from outside And now - painting of those panels. Three poor layers of paint are much better than a reach one. Plus one solid primer at the beginning, of course. Progress of layers is shown here:
After third layer it started to look like "original" Atomic. However I didn't want to have matte-look and applied some lacquer layers to get Corvette-look, whazza
In the meanwhile - riveting. It would take about 100 rivets (!), and further painting & lacquering applied rivets. BTW, I applied glossy lacquer outside - as shown above - and matt lacquer inside, to black elements - as shown below:
Paint and lacquer are hardening (BTW, painting here is some kind of massacre - must be done above 15 Celsius, AND not with big humidity, like - for example - within, before of after raining, otherwise I get light spots which have to overpaint again during PROPER WEATHER), so I do (BRAIDING).
Front panel socket first. I developed my own mod - to get the same colur group everywhere - and put some heatshrink sleeving to each single end of small cable. Colour of this sleeving was not exact, but it was nothing else to get... For double cable you must have two (there's one more on picture below) pieces of heatshrink:
..and such tools:
First, you have to take the cable out of plug, levering plastic flap by something sharp & thin:
..and do this for each cable separately. Before you do this, remember which cable matches which whole, usually colour one (signal) matches whole described with small triangle.
Next, you have to split the cable pair and cut braiding to lenght (sometimes a bit longer than cable, because braiding - especially cheap one - likes to diverge, causing need to cutting).
I put black heatshrink on first:
and move it to the end, because it's gonna be front-panel side:
.. and after that, orange heatshrink, being stretched to bigger size, goes to its place:
...tbc...
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