Project - Air Cube v2

[waynio]

Got the 6mm plastic, paint, fan & immediately got started masking, measuring & marking.

Messed up badly on the drilling of the plastic piece though, did it all spot on 4mm into the 6mm thick sheet, but should have used 2.5mm drill bit for the m3 thread but used 3mm by accident (I blame it on 1st thing of the day eyes half shut modding), not to worry I ordered some m4 bolts & if I'm lucky I'll have them tomorrow fingers crossed, it can & will be fixed . I'm not rushing it but I am working extra hard to get it done for tomorrow my birthday .

Used the bench grinder to give the edges a curved bevel as good as I could & used a file to clean up edges.

Got 60, 240, 600, 1200, 2000 grit sanding over 5 or 6 hours & a nasty blister on my thumb, damn it was hot .

Got the air cubes cover sanded & primed & both sides of the fan.

Got the metallic matisse blue on & a coat of clear & half of the the fan coloured & clear coated & a late night colouring & clearing of the other side hopefully.

Going to do the grill on the plastic sheet tomorrow, unsure to do lines or holes or even both.

 

[PaulGreyhead]

Great work.
Happy Birthday too

 

[waynio]

Cheers Paul .

Sweet, the m4 bolts, drill bits & switch came, so I should get the top piece finished today but the LED's haven't arrived yet so no front spacer light today.
I finished painting the fan last night so it had plenty of time for it to dry & installed it today.
I think the cardboard piece I put over the fan while painting it must have wiped the fans lubrication away so I just ordered some sewing machine oil, some of the other fans are in a similar way so I'll be oiling them all for good measure they are giving off a faint flickering noise & it must be fixed .

Right, time to make the mounting holes a little bigger for the new bolts, then I will spend most of the day doing the grill & hopefully have it installed by tonight if I really put my back into it .

 

[G-Dubs]

Happy Birthday Waynio

Looking really nice and if it's at all possible, even better than before.

Re the LEDs....Go on....You know you want to...just a few won't hurt...

 

[waynio]

Cheers G-Dubs, hopefully I'll have the LED's tomorrow .

Ok, see what you all think of this :neutral:.

Had a rough nights sleep as I fell asleep at the pc & had an auto shut down, 1 minute I was watching a show, next I woke up 9am lol so wasn't in best form for today.

The day of modding started fine, marked a grill to cut & went to work on it.

I'm unsure if it worked out well, when I went to enlarge the middle mount hole it went all the way through which was bad. I gave up on doing the grill, my files were barely doing anything on the 6mm plastic so as a result I had to cut a bigger than normal hole to get past where I was trying to do a grill (the new hole cutter is awesome though ), also some spray managed to get under a bit of the masking , but there was a good layer of clear on it so I should be able to fix that pretty easily.

Good points, it made the cover more rigid & have better temps than before the extra fan mod, theres virtually always a way to fix things up, window on the outside was either not a good idea or I just fluffed up over & over or I'm tired & not thinking straight.

I honestly don't know if this extra mod is good or bad or inbetween, but do know there are some things I could do to fix it up if I'm correct in thinking it's not looking right, but if it's good then I'll just need to fix the extra large vent hole (easy fix).

I really don't know what to make of this top piece which is why I'm including quite a few shots of it to see what you all think, designed it quick & made it quick within 3 days so it's such a drastic change from what it was, could do with as many opinions as possible please.

Again I could do with as many opinions as possible please.

 

[G-Dubs]

Realy love the top piece, and great craftsmanship also.

really not like the fan in it, but function over form is of prime importance re coolong

But really no likey the fan gril. Maybe painted up???

could you get awy with no grill???

please don't get mewrong, i think the whole build is one of the best i've ever seen.

 

[PaulGreyhead]

I think the top looks great; really good job.
I agree with G-Dubs about the fan grill. Although it doesn't look bad, there maybe other ones that would look better.

 

[waynio]

Thanks G-Dubs & Paul, I removed the plastic top piece though, it was the extra large hole that wrecked it for me

Just so you all know, I'm having a small time out, I managed to remove the plastic piece I think it was a bit of a wreck when I failed doing a grill & then made the hole to cut out what went wrong, it was hellish to get the bolts out too, all of the allen head sockets lost the sockets so had to use mole grips for all of them (lucky there was something to grip), It's off now, there was a moment where I thought I messed it up completely.

I did some more testing with the extra fan & found an even better spot to place it, looks better & cools better, pretty much just above the bottom side fan so the left side panel will require an extra vent which will probably be the most difficult part to do with it already having a window there.

Set myself a realistic goal of having the top & side done by the time Mafia II releases which is 27-aug (game I'm most looking forward to this year ) I'll probably have it done way before that date but gives me a chance to step back & really think this out & do this properly .

I'll try & save the next update for when it's finished .

 

[waynio]

Lol that was a small time out .

Was going to make my last update my final but delivery delays so why not a quicky before the finished pics .

Ok so here's the new top, made a frame from 20mmx3mm & 40mmx3mm flat bars to cover up the mounting holes from the previous plastic top piece, painted them same colour as the fan frames, stuck them down with 2 part araldite epoxy resin, put my left over ac-ryan mesh x to use, barely had enough to do this, painted it the same colour as the fan blades, for the time being the mesh is held in with scotch mounting tape & for the finishing touch 2 3mm thick windows that slip into the 2 vents in the top making for a flush fit, the top windows can easily be removed just by poking through from underneath & lifting out, the side panels needed a means of getting fresh air so I went with the mesh on both sides so the entire case is awesomely air cooled & very well ventilated.

Excuse the nasty surroundings, my room is like a bin at the moment lol .

Here is the new revised placement of the extra fan, I stuck a 1/2 inch angle bar to a 40mmx3mm flat bar for extra support & stuck the flat bar to a middle level flar bar, it's a very close fit for the fan mount but is just perfect, honestly amazed at the temperatures now.

Re-made the front spacers & added 5mm LED holes, 8 LED's for the tripple mount, 4 LED's for the single mount & going with blue & green, waiting for the extra LED's (tested it with 2 green LED's & it looks good glad I went for it .

Still waiting for sewing machine oil so I can fix the fans, must have wiped whatever lubrication was on them off when I painted them all.

All in all this is mighty close to finished & I'm far happier with the new top, can't wait to get all the fans lubricated & install the new front lit up spacers & call it finished.

 

[G-Dubs]

Me Likey

 

[Tealc]

Yes me too. Mesh does look good on the top like that.

Acrylic and LEDs go together so well.

 

[PaulGreyhead]

Me too. The mesh and new top look great.

 

[waynio]

Me Likey

Yes me too. Mesh does look good on the top like that.

Acrylic and LEDs go together so well.

Yeah .

Me too. The mesh and new top look great.

Thanks for voting to go with extra LED's, definately better .

Still got the other half of the LED's to come tomorrow, once I place them where I want them, I'll work out the wires so it all uses 1 molex for each spacer instead of 6 & so it can be switched on/off, yet to figure out where to put the switch, here's some daytime & night time pre final shots .

Day

Night

Another thing kind of off topic but, my razer lycosa keyboard has been playing up by blacking out for a second now & again so I dug deep & ordered a steel series 7g, looks a great no nonsense quality keyboard, the lycosa had issues with the media control panel not long after buying it, I fixed that by snipping the connections to the boards internals & now randomly blacking out making me miss letters in words now & again not even a year old, so after looking at gaming boards they were all overpriced gimmicky nonsense types, the roccat valo v2 would have been a good choice if it weren't for the extra 100 macro keys lol, the logitech g19 needs ac power for the bling it carries, thought there were no good gaming keyboards anymore & then read up about the 7g & my mind was made up almost instantly so should have it soon woo hoo .

 

[waynio]

It's kinda northern lightsish but static .

Got the extra LED's today but need to wait for braiding supplies because all the LED's have piled up the wires so I'm going to modify them all to be nice & neat so with luck I'll have them tomorrow.

 

[rhysduck]

This is looking fantastic waynio!

I've read from the start and have followed every update to the day, if not posting anything. I must say that either you have a very patient wife/gf or you have a lot of time on your hands. It truly is a masterpiece

The new cover and LED lighting that you are doing looks very swish! Looking forward to the "finished", as it probably may never be , product.

I just wish I had scope to mod my CM690 case. It's too sexy and black to take a dremel to it.
Keep it up pal

 

[waynio]

Thanks Rhys, No wife/gf yet , just don't get about enough, Yeah I am 1 of the few modders that has actually got too much time on my hands, was having too much idle time so modding helps fill a bit of a void in my life & keeps me productive & learning, I enjoy getting through the trial & error too, could never sit around watching daytime tv or evening tv come to think of it lol think I'd go crazy fast .
I see modders with healthy finances to do epic builds & have good ideas but lack the spare time with their busy lives but still manage to squeeze an hour or 2 a few times a week, I'm the opposite, plenty of time so could almost go all day every day, but really low money, but don't drink or have nights out so manage to do this instead, a holiday is way overdue though .

I can assure you though that once the LED cabling is sorted it's finished, I wanted to get everything some steps closer to perfect because it may be featured in a magazine & I didn't want it to appear in the magazine & then I go & change it again, this was the extra motivation which brought it back on track to perk it up .

Hopefully for any upcoming mods I do I can gain some sponsorship, it would massively help me to carry on making new cases, theres only so many times I feel ok switching my ddr2 based hardware from case to case before I want to upgrade , I only jumped over to ddr2 just before ddr3 showed up.

If you do want to mod your nice clean CM690 practice a fair bit on something else of low value until you are confident with your abilities, I think all modders start off pretty bad unless they have some kind of experience in making/designing things or start off with plenty of patience, planning, determination. When I started I rushed my cases tripping up all over the place, was crap on google sketchup so couldn't make any solid plans to follow, 1st build took about a week, 2nd one took about 2 to 4 weeks, latest from start to finish took a year but had big lenghthy breaks from it so if I compressed all the work time on it it would probably boil down to about 2 weeks solid work, maybe not even that much time.

People who say tools are an issue, just take a look at oldnewb over on bit-tech, the things he can do with an average jigsaw, drill, files is just truly amazing .

--------

Back to the mod, I've thought of the perfect place to put the light switch, underneath the case at the front left area, there is a nice empty space there that'll do fine as a stealth switch .

Also good news, fixed the air compressor, just needed to make a new gasket .

 

[saayinla]

Welldone, This look brilliant!

 

[waynio]

Thank you saayinla .

Woo hoo, all main work finished, but yeah you guessed it theres still more to come lol (most unprofessional worklog ever).

Had a problem with compacting the pre-made LED cables combining green & blue LED's to use 1 molex passthrough, the green ones were wired funny compared to the blue ones so had to do them seperate so the front lights use 4 molex passthroughs, originally had it all nicely heatshrinked & sleeved for the first 2 times, then lost the will to sleeve them properly & instead used thin strips of gaffer tape wrapped around them & used my glue gun to stick the cables to the plastic spacer so at least it's tidy wires, just not pretty looking like sleeving is , next time I'm playing with LED's I'll be making them myself, still got to make it so the lights can be switched on/off.

I removed the meshx, like I said earlier the panels I cut barely fit so if looked at a cirtain angle I can see small gaps so it's not a perfect fit, also tested if temps were affected with solid covers for the sides & they were not so I have some 0.7mm sheet aluminium spare & since the air compressor is back up & running good I'm thinking of doing some designs for grills to fit inside where the mesh was & then stick a window behind them, need to think up a nice design first though, want it so you can still clearly see the insides which the meshx failed on imo so I'm chomping at the bit to do some dremel work after struggling with human jigsaw method lol .

On with the latest pictures without the mesh & side windows & LED's done & plain windows in the top for now until I make the new grills , night & day pics.

Can't wait to get busy with the air dremel again.

 

[PaulGreyhead]

You change your mind more often than a woman!

 

[waynio]

You change your mind more often than a woman!

This is what happens when you only design the basic frame & make everything else up as you go along lol.

Woo hoo the new keyboard came but is that a home key I see missing.

then an 8 key

then a hash key with the missing keys in the box.

They plugged back on easy , decent sturdy board, nice keys, no silly touch sensitive panels just a straight up good board.

I've always ditched palm rests from keyboards but with the height of this board it actually makes it better so it went back on & here is the design I'm going to do for the side grills & mini ones for the top, the nice thing about these grills is I'm taking zero risk in damaging the already made panels so no pressure I'll hopefully have at least the side windows done & smoothed out today will be a joy to do on 0.7mm sheet, maybe an update later .