Project - Air Cube v2

Thanks mistePK, still a way to go until this xbox is complete, much closer now though, still waiting for dremel discs so fairly limited for what I can do.

Thanks for the compliment dazza13 :).

Didn't get much done yesterday or today as the sun was too tempting to miss after a long grey winter :D.
Got the rear fan properly secured down while the xbox was properly closed, filed the corner supports of the rear fan so the strip of metal would fit closely for it to be well in place.
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On this back shot I plan to get rid of all the internal mesh, fill in all the plastic mesh & create a nice hole for fan wires to come through & a little cut to size strip bent to get rid of the gap from the fan to the plastic xbox case so it doesn't look rough, I'm also going to fill in the dvd slot hole & keep the eject button functional, waiting for some velcro tape to secure the dvd drive down which will reduce dvd vibration, the actual dvd tray will be stealthed also.

Measured, marked & placed little angle bars in place & riveted them to the xbox shell & tapped a hole on them ready for fixing a cover which I'm still thinking about best way to do it.

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Thought I'd try & make a 1 piece cover, 1st try at using my cut to smaller pieces steel flat bar from my 1st metal bender, tripple checked the required measurements & marked the sheet, ready for cutting the corners out, it's really a pretty good cheap method for cutting sheet metal, think I'll use this method quite often :)
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Human jigsaw lol :D.
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This is a shot with the cut up steel bar from my previous sheet metal bender, they are cut to size for making back pci/io pieces, still not tried making my own yet though.
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Going good so far.
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Woo hoo :D :banana:.
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The edges will be smoothed & closed together, I just had enough for the day lol.

1 tiny detail I forgot to think about is the right side clip on piece, 1 of the upper slots will not be able to slot in, but I'll work something out for that & luckily it's not the important hdd side :).

More soon :).
 
Didn't get anything done from tuesday to friday, here's why.
To keep this bit light hearted I'll just say my bro messed up badly again, I needed some time to brighten up after this latest do, seems he'll never learn that legal highs are just plain bad for him, I'm losing count how many times he has come close to death now & they could be & probably are laced with toxic crap. It's been hard keeping bright when he plays up like this, but spring is definately helping with some nice blue skys & sunshine, long grey winters make you really appreciate a nice blue sky & some warmth :).
I have come to a firm conclusion that many people who say they are bored should rephrase it to I'm a boring person, time to change lol :D.

Right, now my excuse for no updates is out of the way, onwards with the project woo hoo :D.

Thank you rpg :).

I have tried out the upgraded cooling on the 360 without the casings though within that time, main 2 fans blowing on the components, rear fan pulling air out, played some gta iv for 10 minutes, turned off put my hand on the gpu heatsink, was nice & cool :), did same on cpu & it was very hot to touch.
So I flipped the cpu fan over to take air away from it & had the rear fan blowing in, both gpu & cpu run nice & cool to the touch after half an hour of gta iv mayhem :D so I'll make a duct to guide air out of the side & put an easy to remove & clean dust filter on the back to minimise the need for clean outs.

So it's looking like a very good anti rrod fix so far :), concernig the cooling layout it's a good thing I had a little downtime else it would have been done wrong, I'll take the 2 temperature sensors from my 1st 360 mod & place them on this new mod so I will be able to see if the fans start failing + it might make it look a little better :).

I would do a cooling mod on my new ps3 but it is still under warranty so that is why I'm just doing a ventalation mod outside of it which I hope will be enough for it's longevity, it does get pretty warm sat on a desk but a good flow of air passing above & below it should help.

Here's what I got done over the weekend, should be back on track with regular progress from now :).

The 360 is coming along ok :).
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Whilst I was without a dremel, I started drilling, filing & sawing to get things done, silly me I tried the same technique for the air cube right side panel & ended up putting it aside until my cutting discs with the correct 1/16" hole in the middle arrived.

Well, got the cutting discs :), I cut along the lines I marked out perfectly, filed & sanded all the edges, thought jobs a gooden, pulled all the masking tape off & the drill holes left a bit of a mess on the psu grill, yes it could have been patched up with body filler but I prefer not to use it so I filed away settling for some wonky lines instead, I'll mask around the grill & give it a quick spray of matisse blue & spray some into a pot & use a fine brush to do all the bare edges.
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The other window will be removed so I can get the white double sided mounting tape cleaned off & replaced with clear mounting tape.

Thats all for now, more soon :).
 
Maybe I missed something about it, but would you not be better to just make a complete new purpose built chasis for the Xbox using that aluminium?

It looks a little weird at the moment tbh
 
Diggsy said:
Maybe I missed something about it, but would you not be better to just make a complete new purpose built chasis for the Xbox using that aluminium?

It looks a little weird at the moment tbh
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God damn, you beat me to it!!!! :D

Seriously though mate, with the skills you have, just re-shell the thing...
100% custom!!!
 
:D I kinda agree with you both but I thought it's best to extend on the xbox frame while keeping all of it's functionality rather than make a case from scratch, I think the xbox design is quite nice but let down with poor cooling, particularly the memory & gpu being cramped underneath a full sized dvd drive, I think most of the infamous rrod's could have been avoided if ms used a little more budget for a slimline dvd drive & added a couple of slim fans to aid shifting the heat, I don't think 2 little fans exhausting is enough, although they could be if the 12v mod is done, but the 12v mod increases the noise quite a lot.

The xbox mod is being done completely with scraps except for the fans & there is still a bit to do on it before I agree a scratch build would be right, when it's all the same colour & gaps are filled I hope it'll look less weird :D lol, just getting the basic funtionality sorted 1st, then the trim & clean finishing touches will follow ;).
 
waynio said:
:D I kinda agree with you both but I thought it's best to extend on the xbox frame while keeping all of it's functionality rather than make a case from scratch, I think the xbox design is quite nice but let down with poor cooling, particularly the memory & gpu being cramped underneath a full sized dvd drive, I think most of the infamous rrod's could have been avoided if ms used a little more budget for a slimline dvd drive & added a couple of slim fans to aid shifting the heat, I don't think 2 little fans exhausting is enough, although they could be if the 12v mod is done, but the 12v mod increases the noise quite a lot.

The xbox mod is being done completely with scraps except for the fans & there is still a bit to do on it before I agree a scratch build would be right, when it's all the same colour & gaps are filled I hope it'll look less weird :D lol, just getting the basic funtionality sorted 1st, then the trim & clean finishing touches will follow ;).
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I sure hope you go with the full build. You definately have the tools and the skills
 
waynio said:
:D I kinda agree with you both but I thought it's best to extend on the xbox frame while keeping all of it's functionality rather than make a case from scratch, I think the xbox design is quite nice but let down with poor cooling, particularly the memory & gpu being cramped underneath a full sized dvd drive, I think most of the infamous rrod's could have been avoided if ms used a little more budget for a slimline dvd drive & added a couple of slim fans to aid shifting the heat, I don't think 2 little fans exhausting is enough, although they could be if the 12v mod is done, but the 12v mod increases the noise quite a lot.

The xbox mod is being done completely with scraps except for the fans & there is still a bit to do on it before I agree a scratch build would be right, when it's all the same colour & gaps are filled I hope it'll look less weird :D lol, just getting the basic funtionality sorted 1st, then the trim & clean finishing touches will follow ;).
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I get what youre saying mate.
But for all the effort youre going to anyway, a few extra ££ of alu is hardly going to make the difference when the final build is all done.
Heres food for thought...

X-box/PS3 combo box with inbuilt pad charging/storage?:D
 
Thanks for the feedback on the xbox mod, appreciated, my heart wasn't really in this the past week & your suggestions of doing a scratch build 360 got me to start on working on a design, kept my mind busy for hours & it seems to have done the trick to get me back in the mood for continuing, had to get some new body filler (the activator had burst out of it's tube & become useless while in storage), wanted to carry on for hours more but had to call it a day though because of noisy filing, don't want to irritate any neighbors in the evening with my hobby :).

I have a few 360's so I could get this one finished & then make a scratch built one some other time ;), I'm about 1/3 done with a scratch build design.

The back side is coming together, cut out the internal mesh, used little pieces of sheet aluminium held on the inside of the exterior mesh & filled over the holes & sanded down, have made the filler strip template but can't do it until tomorrow (the air dremel is noisy) & had some more filing to do on the internal metal chassis which resonates a loud racket, so I hope to get all the body work & air ducts done tomorrow, then I can put it aside until I paint it & can continue with the stack, woo hoo I found my mojo baby, yeahh :D lol.

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I'm feeling good again so more soon :).
 
went past the 10gb traffic for a month so Just went pro :)

Lol, I thought I'd get all the xbox body work done today, but only got the front gap between the metal cover & xbox filled & sanded & made the gap cover at the back, still, it's steady progress :), it looks like there is a gap still but that is just perm marker from a guide I made on the filler to form a nice smooth edge, used 60 grit, 240, 600 sand paper.

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Needed a bit more filler.
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I don't know when the body work will be fully done on this xbox, could be tomorrow or the day after if I keep at it like the past couple of days.

I'll just keep posting at the end of the day when any progress happens :).
 
sorry if ive missed it somewhere, what asre you doing with the origional faceplate? surely if you keep it ther'll be a big CD-drive saped hole? loving it anyway!
 
:) I might have missed that detail, yes the eject button will stay in it's original place keeping it's function, the rest of the tray hole will be covered & filled :).
 
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