Project car boot

ch3333z said:
It's raining where I live :(

Nice work on the cathodes. I tried doing that once but the light still came out the original colour (blue). Did you do anything special to get it orange other than wrap them up?
Click to expand...

Started with white ones, although I did have some yellow ones around also which I thought might be better (red and yellow = orange etc) but in the end for some bizzare reason the red wrap on the white ccfl looked more orange than the other combo's.

Currently having a bit of a head scratch as the little boxes you get with the ccfls are too big to go easily inside the DVD drive mod I did. Not insurmountable, just haven't sussed it yet.

Also the assault on the 24pin connector continues....
 
G-Dubs said:
Many thanks for the positive responses.


CDROM was free (it came in the doner case but the Vandal switches did cost about £8 each and the toggles with their covers about £15 in total. I very nearly bought the cheapest switches money could buy but then thought i'd rather it look nice. Sometimes you just gotta spend a few quid in the detail areas. (ahem.....like the fan controller I also bought)

So take on drive and pop it open
Click to expand...

where did you get them switches from? i have been looking for them for ages! and what are you going to use them for fans?
:)
 
Freddie589 said:
where did you get them switches from? i have been looking for them for ages! and what are you going to use them for fans?
:)
Click to expand...

If your on about the vandal switches I'm afraid i'm not aloud to say due to forum rules but i'm sure if you googed vandal switches you'd find them. The other ones are from a certain retail park electronics seller that begins with M.


I've finally completed some of the braiding and got the PSU in. Sorry the pictures aren't great.

my foam board arrived today so hopefully get it cut up in the next few days.
looking forward to getting the LEDs so I can finish the tuniq mod







 
I've taken tomorow off work so hope to make some real progress.

Especially as I now have my LEDs and my foam board.

£4.10 for the 50 LEDs, 1m heatshrink and 20 Resistors (cheers Tealc)

Foam board was so cheap I got a bit carried away. the price of the bit I needed was a shocking £1.59 including postage but I ended up spending about atenner as I ordered several other bits that may come in handy for other builds.

So not exactly broken the bank on this recession buster build.






 
Looking great! Done a good job on the braiding by the looks of it. Bet you are well proud of that ATX cable now ;)
Is that an assortment of LED colours? cos 50 is a lot of LEDs!!
 
Looking forward to seeing the results of todays work.

If the orange output of the fan isn't high enough them consider drilling another 4 holes in the fan surround and mounting another 4 LEDs using those resistors.
 
just finished the soldering job on the fan, changing to orange LEDs

fan runs, but not even a glimmer from the LEDs.

I wired in the new LEDs exactly as the blue ones I removed. each LED is fed from the hub by a grey wire and a white wire. the white wire was attached to the post with the largest element (long leg) and the grey to the post with the smaller element (shout post). I've checked all the wiring and can see no problems. what am I missing here????

suggestions on a post card.
 
Try swapping the polarity on the LEDs. If they are like my Orange LEDs then they are absolutely long leg/small internal Anode.

A LED will not cause any damage to anything if wired backwards, it just stops current flow like a normal diode would.

I'm gonna try rewiring a red LED fan to white or something, will let you know if I find anything untoward.
 
fancy re-wiring a blue one to orange????

I can have it in the post tonight!!!!

These might help trying to work out what i've done wrong.

the white wire is attached to a -ve terminal, the grey to a small solder just beside it and to the right (you can't see the connection as the white sire passes over it. this is repeated 4 times around the hub of the fan.





This is the blue LED before I took it off.




And this is the orange

 
Do you have a multimeter? Just because the wires are showing at the hub as -ve and +ve doesn't mean that convention continues.

It's also difficult to tell if they are wiring in series or independently with resistors.

Check the fan hub for resistors around the circumference.

Note: That orange LED is different to mine. My Anode is the longer leg/smaller inside.
 
Wired up some White LEDs to a red LED fan and it works, even lights up at 3v. I won't be using it anywhere near my case though as this supposed quiet LED fan by Coolermaster is one if the worst balanced fans I have ever seen or heard.

Looks nice though. It's a shame all LED fans vibrate and make lots of noise.

Do you use special paint for fans?
 
Last edited:
The ones I sprayed orange? nah, just halfords auto paint with Halfords primer underneath. tried the plastikote stuff, and it's ok but the Halfords stuff is better.

Just about given up on the led thing using the circuit that's in the fan. think i'm gonna wire in my own. at least that way I can switch it off if I want to.

Again many thanks for the help and advice you've given
 
Probably easier that way. The other benefit of doing that is that you will have full brightness at all times, even when the CPU fan is spinning more slowly. Sounds like a win to me.

I was thinking of painting one of my spare black fans white or chrome and seeing what effect I could get with different colour LEDs. Obviously the light won't penetrate the plastic and refract like it does with translucent fans but maybe it would do something interesting.
 
Halfords good for pain, but if you want chrome go for the plasticote high gloss chrome with a gloss lacquer on top. I used it on my first Skeleton build and it does look nice. The plastikote paint is a bit harder to apply though, it doesn't flow as nice so worth heating the tin in some warm (not even close to boiling) water.

A few pics of what i've been up to today when I haven't been swearing at LEDs

started with the 1mm thinck foam board which was easy to cut but too flimsy, and ended up with the 3mm foam board which was nice and rigid but a pig to cut.















Trying to decide whether to put something similar around the fan holes, ?under the mesh or on top, or just leave as is?????

 
Last edited:
i think it looks fine as it is, if you were to put the black around the fan holes i would think it would look better if you removed the mesh completely from the front apart from in front of the fans.
 
Thanks for the feed back guys. I think I might leave it as it is for now and see how it looks closer th othe finish.

I've spent the day teaching myself how to solder and wiring up the fan for orange LEDs.

A big thank you to Tealc. Cheers my friend I honestly wouldn't have known where to start with the LEDs if it wasn't for your posts and e-mails

So what do you think? I attached Resistors and LEDs in parallel by making small breakouts in the wires. Forgot to take piccys of it after I had finished all the wiring, but all solders were isolated with tape and then wires secured with glue gun (new toy)

Before



And after



















 
That looks awesome m8. I'd wager it'd look even better with the fan actually running. It's a pity the top of that Tuniq isn't translucent too, it'd pick up the orange light quite well I'd imagine.

Maybe even an array of small holes in the top of the Tuniq plate would allow some light to leak out.

Those LEDs are actually pretty bright when refracted through the fan. Looks like he supplied you with 470 ohm resistors.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom