Project - Air Cube v2

[waynio]

Unexpected update

, Even I didn't expect this update, was just meant to be with the new panel attatched to the case, but.

I went to file 2mm edge of excess panel off the top and side of the panel to make it a perfect fit, was going to just install it as is until I got around to buying an airbrush.

But I forgot about the extra can of paint which I used for a faint haze over the lighter blue and seen it sat on the shelf when I was tidying up with a can of primer and clear laquer so just thought why the hell not and cleaned the panel of any dust, oil or prints and primed it, then coloured it and then added the clear, all by the notes on the cans, so once it has dried & have it on the case and update a few more final pictures, then I can officially call this case closed & enjoy the refined case & enjoy everyone elses worklogs & look ahead to designing whatever good ideas come to mind in the future.

I very nearly forgot about the dvd bezel DOH!!!!, but luckily there was just enough paint for it .

Wanna watch some paint dry lol .

 

[waynio]

And here we go, last pictures on this case I believe, borrowed a slightly better camera for these last shots, woo hoo .

On this one my new 5870 peeks over .

Was well worth re attempting the front

 

[waynio]

Thanks booyaka

DavyBoy majority of it is done with dremel, about an hour on each grill, then a little filing and then sanded the entire face of the panel to take any rough bits that stick out off, then cleaned with warm water and a soft sponge.
This is what it looked like after a rinse of water.

Got it cleaner afterwards, then dried, then painted.

Knowing the tips in these videos is a great start, then it's all practice and getting used to the handling using a dremel, but I find 1.5mm thick or less to be best for doing detailed cuts, thicker material would probably be best sent to a water jet cutter or laser.
Heres the video tutorials.
Dremel Techniques For Case Modding, Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/user/MonsterMawd#p/search/6/9iMiH8wYTDY

Dremel Techniques For Case Modding, Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/user/MonsterMawd#p/search/8/gTDpxmGEC58

Dg, it has increased the noise but not too much compared to a plain hole, probably added another 5db but it looks better than just a hole so can bare with it hehe , and if it does get to a point where it does my head in I could do a volt mod on the fans so they run a bit slower .

 

[waynio]

Dg, it has increased the noise but not too much compared to a plain hole, probably added another 5db but it looks better than just a hole so can bare with it hehe , and if it does get to a point where it does my head in I could do a volt mod on the fans so they run a bit slower .

Tried tollerating the noise difference for a couple of hours and didn't like it much , too used to it being nice & quiet, so I went & dug out my old zalman zm mfc1 + fan controller and hooked all the front panel & side fans to it & lowered the speed a little and it's now the same noise as it were with plain circles while keeping a good flow of air going through, was considering doing volt mods but figured it be easier and cleaner just to use a fan controller, it's hidden inside the case and can catch some air flow so it shouldn't overheat and fail. Side effect of this is temps have gone up by 3c but thats not too bad.

The spiral type grills are more restrictive than the ones in the middle so I can run the middle ones a bit faster than the spiral ones and noise stays the same so it's worked out good .

 

[waynio]

Definately last pictures now because I fixed the top and to show the fan controller.

 

[waynio]

I bought some 10mm spacers and rubber washers to put between the front panel & fans so I could put the fan controller back in the box of parts and it really helped cut the extra noise from the air restriction , so back to decent temps and normal noise .

 

[waynio]

Thank you Sildeh .

Finally got around to buying an airbrush kit & basic colours so I can mix to get the colour I want, time to get heaps of practice in over the coming months , cheapo stuff until I get ok at it, then I'll consider getting a good airbrush.

After reading through Antony's How To Take Better Photographs Of Your Mod article on bit-tech, and after seeing how much better some mods are photographed I took the plunge and got an ok camera .
Because I was quite impressed with my dads new cheapo kodak camera, I decided to buy a higher model, a kodak z950 £140 cheapest I could find it in uk and it turned out the place I bought it from imports them so have been waiting since 17-feb & got it the other day, it is far superior to the olympus hand me down I used throughout air cube v2 .
Had a good mess about with the different manual settings, plenty of controls, taken some pictures all indoors with bad lighting on a tripod, I wanted to see if noise levels were good or bad in dimly lit places, I'm very happy with darkness in the pictures simply can't afford to jump into quality dslr land so this camera will do very nicely .
Anything I make in the future will be much better photographed, I'm going to make a nice big soft light box on the cheap & use a lamp or 2 with daylight bulbs & have a rotational platform to catch all angles.

I have to say though the compression when pictures get resized for forums on picture hosting sites lose a fair bit of detail.

First mini project for the airbrush is to paint the fans, but not before I play some more heavy rain .
Completed it with all positive outcomes, best & most unique game I have played in a while, I hear you can really change the outcomes from all actions made through the game so I'll play through this many times .

I'm having a possibly silly idea of making a big gaming stack system to hold my supercooled xbox 360 with a real psu instead of power brick, then the ps3 cooled from underneath whenever needed during long gaming sessions, and my pc on the top, these are rough sketchups without panels, just the frames.

 

[waynio]

Thank you han_solo & Tiamat21.

Got some new motivation to get a couple of things right .

I got it in a usable state in august 09, then just used it until february, did a couple of days on it to get the front panel how I wanted & was almost going to just carry on using it as is, but decided to perfect this case as it might be getting featured in a magazine pretty soon & pro photographed so that motivated me to fix a couple of cosmetic flaws.

Things to do over this week.

Paint the fans tomorrow or the day after.

Found a local aluminium stockist so I don't have to worry about delivery costs any more .

New angle bars to re-do the main corners because of a cosmetic build error which leaves a small hole on both bottom corners on the right panel.

A square solid bar for re-doing the feet with a polished finish.

A new back panel with the same grade of aluminium as the flat bars that is great for polishing also I want to flip the psu so the fan faces the exterior so it can take new air in & add an exhaust fan in the middle for hdd heat, which means I'll have to do the mesh again & some polishing & a new lick of paint but should be well worth doing, could confidently have pictures taken from any angle then.

 

[waynio]

Air cube part 2

Can't really call this a new project, more of a part 2 , I wanted a nice new unit for my consoles, pc & favourite games/dvds to be all in 1 space saving stack, had quite a few redesigns & settled for this one, seems my modding has overspilled into making furniture .

It's going to be a stand for the air cube on top, ps3 level below with great ventilation, a level below for my xbox 360, dvd storage below on the bottom 2 levels on both sides with a psu sat in the middle of level 2 for powering the xbox 360 & fans with room for control pads inbetween the dvds.

I'm also working on a new top & rear panel for the xbox 360 to accommodate for better cooling replacing the gpu heatsink for a 360 cpu heatsink & placing bga coolers on all chips with 120mm fan intake & exhaust & dvd drive relocation .

 

[waynio]

This aluminium was for redoing the corners & bottom sides & back panel.

When doing my design over & over I figured I dont have to re do the corners & bottom sides but I still have good use for the sheet to reorientate the back panel a little, so the angle bars in this picture are not needed for the build, had a slight redesign after I made the order.
Here is the right side panel botch shots, they will be covered by the chunky angle bars that hold the air cube in place, this mod has spawned from the botched corners & price of delivery not being worth just doing the air cube.

This is the aluminium for the new build, I beleive if the frame is good & strong then there is no true need for expensive thick sheet, especially for what I'm making.

I was sat on this aluminium for over a week which is a 1st, I usually can't wait but I wanted to do this properly, I needed a tool for doing clean bar cuts at 45 degrees & 90 degrees.
Missed out on a bargain for a really good cut off saw at £100 it was worth £300 but because of very low money I had to get a much cheaper alternative, a manual cheapish £30 mitre saw, the build would have gone tragically wrong if I didn't .

Should have been 1 of the 1st tools I added to my collection when working with aluminium bars, it's proven to be a very awesome tool for this build .

Finally the work begins woo hoo .

Friday
Got the angle bars for all levels cut to size, all 45 degree cuts.

Saturday
Got loads more cut to size, not much more to do other than a few more bars (but the thicker ones) & 6 thin sheets.

This is 1 of the basic levels

Got all bars cut to size today except for the main corner angle bars, want to get everything correct before I do them, so I'm just working on making the levels 1st.

Did a loose fit of all the levels & they are great, the bottom panel will be ultra strong, it looked pretty reasonable in google sketchup but in reality it does look a bit overkill, nonetheless it will be very strong indeed lol .

More updates soon

 

[waynio]

, Yeah I think doing a good pci back piece is the trickiest piece to fabricate, buying a motherboard tray is best option or use 1 from a previous case, I used 1 from my last lian-li case so it's a gooden .
With a quality pan folder it would be pretty easy, but they cost too much for a modding hobby, good cnc machines cost too much for a modding hobby lol, was able to do the motherboard tray though.
I placed the pci back piece on the edge, marked it & used a motherboard as a template for the mounting holes, there is a special drill bit that is just pointy that heats up sheet metal causing it to dip whilst making a hole & then it's good for being tapped, not got one of those so flat square nuts on the other side helped with that.
It's in the log on this page.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18029052&page=2

I have seen many simple but awesome cases made, 1 that comes to mind was made entirely with little square wooden cubes as an 8bit theme, check it out, very cool .
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22059

I took a little break from doing the stand to get the back panel of the air cube done, was going good until I tried doing the mesh part, I done my sums wrong, should have been 10mm spacing but I did 7mm, would have been ok if I used a smaller drill bit, worked out too close together creating a bad mess, so had to come up with something else, I'll hopefully have that finished & cleaned up tomorrow, if not I'll put that part on hold & get back to making the stand.
My dremel has become useless, so can only use the air rotary tool now, it's miles better but noisy as hell so I only use that late morning til afternoonish, don't want my modding to annoy any neighbors

Thanks for comments all .

 

[waynio]

Oh no's, done the spacing wrong by 3mm for the mesh, should have been every 9 or 10mm, should have stopped after the 1st hole & remade the grid to follow, but no I ended up with this & thinking I'd have to buy another sheet.

My dremel has been dying slowly lately & has now become useless, it was getting lateish so couldn't use the air dremel (very noisy) so I made a quick alternative for the design & drilled within the areas I wanted cutting out & done a ton of filing, even used a hacksaw blade pushing & pulling through the area to get it done lol, was thinking it's just too rough looking but carried on anyway, it could still use a little more smoothing out here & there but I think it's turned out not so bad, what do you all think?.

 

[waynio]

This update covers the last few days.

With my dremel being useless now & the reinforced cutting discs having the wrong sized hole 1/8" making it a hassle to change discs because they also need aligning, I tried this other cutting air tool but couldn't see where I was cutting so put it away, this picture shows the new right side window & grill for the psu & also the 3mm higher motherboard tray, the flat bars are a temporary loose fix at the moment, they will be attached properly when it's time.

This shows the washers & 10mm spacers I used to cut down the noise from the restrictive front grills, I realised I only mentioned it in the log so heres a picture .

I can get to work on a few other things while waiting for stuff to come, the new cooling & top & back for the xbox 360, the ps3 stand, paint the fans, trim the back panel & smooth out any rough spots & get it painted, so no excuse for not getting something done while I wait .

Getting the feet off the air cube might be tough because I used araldite which sets like stone, it was the feet that introduced a little wonkyness to the case, seems it's sat correct on the right side & not on the left which is why there was a gap on the top left, can picture myself having to hammer & chissel them off so I can tap a solid bar for a good fit to existing bolts coming through the bottom.

I decided to do the xbox today, made a good bit of progress, spent near 12 hours on it, figured I'd keep the gpu heatsink so it will be about 130mm at it's highest point, got the basic functionality sorted on it, just need to make a nice cover for it all then the xbox is ready for painting, got the tap & tap wrench & it works a treat, used it for the rear fan mount, holds it nice & firm , this was a rrod xbox I bought & fixed it had a 0020 error code & figured the only way it will stay fixed is if I boost the cooling, all of the long screws still have their place but I'm thinking of loosing the middle back one so I can create a duct for the rear fan, as you can see it's half in & half out. Ha, it just dawned on me while looking at the picture that I'll probably have to make a new hold down strip else it might not close, doh! .

 

[waynio]

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 .
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.

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.

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

Human jigsaw lol .

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.

Going good so far.

Woo hoo :banana:.

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 .

 

[waynio]

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 .

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

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 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 .

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.

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 .

 

[waynio]

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 lol, just getting the basic funtionality sorted 1st, then the trim & clean finishing touches will follow .

 

[waynio]

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 lol.

I'm feeling good again so more soon .

 

[waynio]

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.

Needed a bit more filler.

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 .

 

[waynio]

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 .

 

[waynio]

Cheers rhysduck, will do .

Only done the face plate today (started too late), I trimmed the original dvd bezel so it was 1 or 2mm thick, placed maksking tape over the front of the face plate, lay the trimmed bezel in place & slapped some body filler over it, sanded, then flipped it over & covered the gaps for the bezel & sanded smooth.

The top piece is going to need a bit of work on it before it looks a bit nicer but it'll come together, just had a slack day lol .

More soon .