Project Dianoga

Let's Marvin Gaye and get it on.



Pop round the back



Tape.



Mark



OK now what I also did whilst I was there was take a ball point pen and mark out the stand off holes. Obviously if it can't go over those it won't fit. So I marked them out and then drilled them firstly with a 2mm HSS bit and then a 6mm Bradpoint.



So it now fits and theoretically I can fit a mobo over it.



I then took it back out and marked out where I wanted my grommets to go. I need to lop a piece out (the squirly bit) and I also want the PSU to pass straight out into the back panel. Then I need a fat one for the 24 pin and given the rig is only using a 6 pin GPU I decided to fit a smaller one under it.



OK, so the next step is to cut out the straight parts of the holes using a diamond tipped cutter. Here you can see I have my holes started and the sanding part I use to finish the holes with.



And here you can see them finished.



Now remember I am working from the back side, so I need to keep flipping it to make sure it looks good on the "show" side.



Quick note. The protective layer on it is white, so it kinda makes it look like pastel green. I assure you it really isn't. OK, so basically I am not fitting the light board and so on back into the build. It's not electronic and you have to set the light colours with a DIP switch. I have only ever had the lights in green and purple (as none of the other colours matched the build in there) and I prefer green and obs purple would look stupid now. So that means i can just fit 5mm green LEDs and remove the entire "brain" giving me more space. So I need a cable management hole for the USB, Firewire, case headers ETC. Here you can see it marked. and a bit I will be using to cut it.



Just remember whenever you are drilling acrylic always put it on a thick sheet of wood. Otherwise you will blow out the back side and probably crack/split it.

Next part doesn't take much explaining. Drill the two holes, then bridge the straight gaps with the dremel.



And done.



Fit the grommets.



Cut out anything that stops it going in completely flat against the case panel.



And then fit again.



And.



NB. As it is 3mm acrylic the light shines through all of the openings in the case. This won't be a problem once the side panel goes back on, 'cause obs that will stop the light shining through but I have used the spare acrylic for now.

Any one for lime sherbet?



And on the menu for tomorrow (I was up til midnight last night doing these !)

 
If I melted the stand offs in they would have been 3mm too high :p

Think about it man. You do that and everything is then 3mm higher. Nothing would fit :D
 
Cenedd said:
You Sir....have a VERY good point! :D
Click to expand...

I tell you what dude it's crap like that that always catches you out when modding. I guess it doesn't help that I'm not an engineer because I've had to make late changes to practically everything I have made so far. I designed the res bay to carry the hoses in between the top of the res and the top plate that bolts to the case. However, I designed it wrong and got lazy when it came to welding it in and so the hoses did not fit.

One thing I did completely by eye with only the bare measurements was that bay and I regret it. Saying that though it would have taken me ten times longer if I had got all anal about it. Thankfully I managed to get the dremel in there, crisis avoided.

Literally the first thing I did when I took the motherboard out was remove a brass post and get the hex part into my vernier calipers to see how much room I had to play with. IIRC they are 8mm, leaving me with about 5mm.

That is where nearly all of the LEDs will go. I want them completely out of sight and hidden (they look pony any way).

But yeah man, any time I get an idea I think ahead as much as I can. I bet I will be removing the whole back board and modding it a few more times before I'm done.
 
It's OK if you bodge something, just so long as you started out intending it to be perfect :D At least you tried :D

I had an idea earlier for what to do with the four mounting 'mounds' on the floor of the case. It should be interesting any way..

Also forgot why I went to the trouble of getting out the green paint..



The PSU is blue. So I am going to attempt to remove that blue mesh and paint it green, and then make some sort of decal for the side. I'm not terribly worried as you won't see most of it any way.

I also made up a molex - SATA braided in the rig colours. I know it doesn't sound like much but I hate braiding SATA connectors more than anything else in modding so I am glad I got it out of the way.
 
Thank you !

OK so tonight's work.. I can't get actual photos because it's pitch black in here and even with light it's still dark. Plus the parts are setting so look stupid..

OK, so two nights ago I had a good dig through the bag for the CPU block and checked everything was there (such is the mind of a modder, cutting it up and taking it apart before even checking the contents :D ) and had a look at how it mounts. It comes with these.



OK so I guess it's fair. Cheap block cheap looking fittings. I wanted something green to contrast with the black and silver in the rig. However, after many hours of searching I could not find any anodized green thumb nuts *anywhere*. I even ran it through that search engine and still came up empty handed :(

So all of a sudden I had a brain wave. Dust caps. Like car dust caps. They're cheap and you can pretty much get them in any colour look and finish you like. Plus because they are unrelated to PCs they are as cheap as chips. After some measuring I realised that the thumb nuts that came with the CPU block were about 8mm, give or take a few tenths of a mm. I got the size for dust caps and realised they were too small inside, but I figured I could use a grinder in the rotary tool and mill them out somehow.

So this is them here. £2.99 delivered.



I figured it would not take long to shave out the inside a bit so that I could glue them to the thumb nuts. And you'd never guess what? I was wrong as usual. I started to grind them out but all that was happening was me creating pink dust. It was just as bad as trying to make the power button hole bigger in the stereo project. I lost my cool and decided that as soon as they passed the lip of the dust cap I would smack them in with a hammer. Of course that didn't work and they went in urine style and were completely lop sided. And now, worse still, they were stuck fast :(

So in the end I had a brain wave (thank god) and found a long M3 bolt. I gripped the dust cap with pliers (in a rag of course) and managed to press them out. Phew !

Thing is I still had no way to mill them out. Then as I was starting to lose hope (and thinking of throwing them in the bin, I found this.



I'd never used it before. God knows what tool it came with (I've killed two so far and I'm on my third) but hey, it mills aluminium really bloody well :D

So now they are glued and setting. I will get a pic tomorrow. Couple of tiny chips but I have ordered a green Sharpie for a pound and will touch them up with that :)

Modding is like an RPG. You start out with the best intentions sticking to the main quest and then you start to find side quests. And before you know it you are totally side tracked doing nothing but side quests - ALXAndy 2016 :D
 
Cenedd said:
You can get a lovely set of tungsten carbide burrs for a Dremel off Amazon from China. All sorts of shapes, single cut, double cut. Surprisingly good quality. Can email you a link if interested.
Click to expand...

I should be OK dude tbh. As I say, side quest and it's done now :)

I've got your email though so if I change my mind I'll give you a prod :D

I forgot to mention, these will not be under any pressure as I have some black disk ones I am going to fit first, so these are simply to dress up.
 
Cenedd said:
Clearly needs bigger tubing; those fittings aren't quite toppling it over yet! ;)
Click to expand...

haha I don't think you can get bigger tubing can you? I'm clearly too good at balancing things is what it is :D

OK so here's what I got up to today. First after lots of measuring and a bit of cutting I lopped this off of the remaining sheet. Quick note - the sheet is a little warped. I didn't notice it until this morning. So if it looks like it isn't straight? it isn't. I need to fit a couple of solid blocks to keep it straight once it is final fitted.



I then had to bolt in the res bay. What a nightmare. After trying all sorts of hand gymnastics it then dawned on me that when I drilled the holes it was firmly taped to the roof. After about ten minutes and lots of swearing I realised that I needed three hands to do it. Or, you can just tape the bolts down, turn the case upside down and then slot the res bay over the bolts.

So I put on some double sided tape.



And then stuck the panel to it. I then removed all of the res bay bolts and went to take it out and it fell apart. Turns out there was a rivet stopping it pushing down all the way so I cut out a notch. Then I had to perform the same and annoying ritual again before getting this.



Which then allowed me to turn it over like this.



Remember I am cutting back to front on any dress up panels. The reason is that the rotary tool has a screw that holds the cutting disc on. This often burns along the edges of the piece. I have tried double masking and even duct tape but it still goes through. Obviously the other side is fine, so I have had to mirror mark everything which is pretty tricky.

I then marked it out (using the res bay as a template, hence why I needed them stuck together) and cut it out.



Then covered in masking and marked out some drill holes, then drilled 2mm pilots.



And, well, you know the drill on this bit (well actually soldering iron).



And in.



And this one is for you, Cenedd. I title this "3mm fail". :D

 
lmao drain pipe :D that would be, as we called it in Brixton "Chucking a sausage down Regent St". Obviously we weren't referring to drain pipes though :D

I was cracking up laughing yesterday. I realised that if I laid the rig flat on the floor so the mobo panel was at the top and applied just about the right amount of pressure that it would create a lovely deep bassy note that reverberated around the kitchen.

Obviously the funniest part was the stain that lives downstairs. Must admit I totally steamed up my glasses laughing with a mask on lol.

At least I couldn't hear him yelling and screaming at his ever suffering wife.
 
There's a killer on the loose..

OK brief background. I bought this card second hand just after my lady and I moved in together, oo around 2012? I really liked the way it looked and liked the red LEDs even more. Sure, it was no better than a standard network card but the software was good. Any way, about three years ago I removed it from the rig I had and packed it away.

Before I started Elvis (name change coming soon, for good reason) I dug through every dark cupboard and corner looking for junk I could use for the build. I found the Killer 2100 but sadly after doing some research I realised it would not work in Linux, which I will be using for this rig after temp testing under water (specifically Elementary OS).

So I did research into which network cards work under EOS and found out that Realteks were good. I went onto fleabay and bought a network card for £3.50 and then removed the shroud on the 2100 before giving it away. Here is what I had.



And.



Here are the bolts I wanted to use. Bigfoot used nasty non coated self tapping posi screws but they looked jank. NB - these bolts turned out too short so were replaced later.. You will see that.



Melt them in. NB - the plastic is not acrylic and I melted the holes very slightly too big for M3.



Time to tape up the shroud.



And mark it up for cutting.





OK so remember those nasty orange dinoc shapes? one is for the NIC. I designed and cut these with scrap vinyl. It saves loads of marking out.



OK so I cut it out. I then traced it down onto some junk clear plastic (not acrylic) and sanded off the spots before placing it over the shroud's back. This way I can get the holes right, as I forgot to trace the card before giving it away.



OK after drilling etc I test fitted the back plate to the shroud.



Cool, so it all lines up OK. I then put the card onto the shroud like this.



OK so no clearance issues that side. I then marked out the inside of the back.



OK so this is where all of the stuff on the back of the card is that would make the plate go wonky. I ground it out (this takes a good set of hands)





And whilst I was there I made a 5mm LED holder out of 8mm left over acrylic.





I then coated the inside with scrap silver vinyl. I did this because I do not want the light to bleed through the back plate as it will show the shape of the tiny card in there lol. I need to do this again in black, but it would need two coats any way (of vinyl) unless you used really thick 3M.



No messing about now, glue it in with power glue lol.



I used what I had left over of 3M to make a light block for the LED holder. Glued that in too. Later I will go over all of the silver again.



OK so now it is time to finally give away the colour scheme. You will note I have been hiding the colour of the acrylic so far.

Basically it is similar in ways to Rise Of The Triad, because it is a play on shades and textures of the same colour. In ROTT I used black chrome on matt black. For Elvis (soon to be renamed) I am using gloss lime green on candy apple metallic green.



NB - those are just scraps I made a swatch with.

Bring out the plotter !



Glue has now dried.



Clean all of the parts ready for decals.



Mask decal.



Enter the Killer....









All that is left to do now is more light masking (30 second job) and ten minutes of soldering and braiding for the LEDs.
 
Cenedd said:
First Marvin Gaye and now Thin Lizzy!


Because you can't stick to the Elvis lyrics?! :p ;)

Shroud's looking good too :D
Click to expand...

Not a fan of Thin Lizzy. Was going to do Adam and the ants (Killer in the home) but CBA lol.

/serious hat.

A while back a modder I know posted that his body was acting weird and his glands had swollen up. He posted and said "I think my modding days are over..".

He died about two weeks later :(

It turned out Wayne had an inoperable cancer that had spread so fast he had no idea.

I've never met some one so calm and so determined in all of my life. His mods were incredible.

So yeah, I've been thinking about doing a tribute for ages now but when I started out with this project it was just a joke and was going to be pretty crap. Not worthy, if you know what I mean.

Now though that I am sinking in the hours I think it's a bit more fitting.

It's funny because I had never met Wayne in real life. However, when you watch some one mod you are seeing a different side of them. What's in their heads. And to that ends these people become like a family to you.

Without them things are a lot more empty and sad.
 
So the doorbell just went. It was Hermes.



A power supply perhaps? felt a bit light.



Oh wait no, it's the ram cooler lol.



The only thing I did not know about this thing was how to get it apart. I studied photos of it for ages but could not see how the inner fins were held in. I was worried they were like pressed in or something, but....



Seems the fan holds them down. I've had a good look at it appears to use 3mm LEDs. I will connect it up later and buzz the LEDs to see how much voltage they are getting.

Not sure if I will change the LEDs yet (it will be really fiddly) or cut them out or just leave them red.
 
Not a bad day from the postman. One of them was from Hong Kong, these are the exciting ones. Sadly my GPU block did not arrive :(



A4 black 3mm acrylic (for the feet) Sharpie (for touch ups possibly, only on the CPU bolts) some lime green vinyl and 8 LED strips. If it all goes to plan these will be inbuilt and you won't see a single one of them.



Duly tested of course. Hate the uneven nasty green shrink on there but that will come on any way and be replaced with black shrink and green paracord.

Had a bit of a result too. I got an email from the guy in China who I bought those two pumps from basically telling me they were going to be delayed because of customs for up to 30 days. In other words, he doesn't have them in stock and has wasted a week of my time.

It's not all bad though, because I actually don't even need them any more and it's £5.88 back into the pot for smalls :)
 
LePhuronn said:
I had a similar issue with a DDC pump top from China. Perfect fit for my limited space and flowed in a single direction from side to side. Grabbed it and it showed up in 4 days...at an address the other side of the country. Took him 3 weeks to acknowledge anything and then just opted for a refund because he had no stock any more. Not that the refund ever showed up.

Almost crippled the project actually.
Click to expand...

That sucks dude. I've never really had any issues with ordering from the far east. I mean yeah it's annoying but he's refunded me and I'm no worse off.

The only thing I need to come from HK really is the GPU block. The rest I can easily get in the UK (at a price of course, but it's only piddly things now like the 5mm LEDs etc).

I've literally got the entire loop sitting here in boxes, minus the GPU block. That's the only thing that could scupper me, but he has posted up a tracking no even if it's completely useless :D

It won't be finished this month any way. There is far too much to do to get the detail in (an entire day making a network card as an example to this) so I don't want to rush anything through.

I guess that's the nice thing about paying for it yourself and getting help from fellow enthusiasts, you've paid for the parts yourself and there's no sponsors so you can double finger salute any deadlines etc.

So probably the last log of the day is this.



It doesn't look like much I know but it's had three coatings of silver dinoc. You won't see this unless you literally stick your head in the rig (and I doubt a head will fit at the end) but it's there to hopefully eliminate any light bleed.

If it still acts up I will order some cheap black stuff, then coat it with black and then silver again. I will not be using Dinoc on this project. It was fun back in the day but there are vinyls now which literally look like custom paint jobs (the candy apple metallic for example) so there's no need to stick carbon fibre everywhere.

I have now mapped the panel into Photoshop with the exact dimensions etc.



That took me about an hour. Hence why something as small as a network card can take an entire day. It's not just cutting and sticking things on it has to be mapped out and put through Photoshop first.

I will probably begin the design on that tomorrow and hopefully have it all cut and masked so it can be done :)
 
Well what? seven hours later and it's nearly done. Just need to make up a plaque. Maybe from a scrap piece of alu, not decided yet :) Will try and get some pics tomorrow when it's a bit lighter.



That's the template there.
 
Last edited:
The keen eyed among you will notice that ATM there are two visible joins. One goes up into the case so you can't see it and the other will be covered by an engraved plaque.

 
OK so today's job was making the back plate for the GPU. However, again I wanted to up the difficulty a little. In the past I would simply draw around the GPU and cut out a piece of plastic before sticking it on with double sided foam. However, it's gappy and uneven. I mean don't get me wrong it looks 100% better than no back plate but yeah, not exactly what I had in mind for Elvis. This will be made worse by the completely standard and ugly M3 bolts the GPU block comes with. I don't want to see them at all.

I wanted a two phase design that would go from black to green. So the first thing I did was put the back of the GTX 950 under the scanner, as this card is unique to MSI.



I decided that today I was going to take you guys through about 90% of the process so you can see what goes into this. So here is the GPU with the unimportant parts and scrap area cut off.



I then created a 5mm frame.



Then with Photoshop I reduced the opacity so I could see what it would hit.



OK, so now everywhere it fouls a resistor or solder pin ETC I had to cut. Here it is with all of the problematic areas removed.



Some of that ends up around 1mm thick lol. Still, nothing ventured nothing gained and failure is always an option :D

So I changed the colour to black for the plotter.



Now I needed some vinyl. I am using leftover scrap that I nearly threw out to cut templates.



Cut a 10" strip so I can fit it in the plotter width wise.



Cut down to A4 height (around 300mm)



Note, when you take it off of a roll like that you need to squeegee it to get the creases etc out. I have already done that in the pic. OK into the plotter.



I have marked two for cutting however I will not be using them both. I always cut two of everything in case something gets screwed up or I mess up peeling. The issue is this part may change shape slightly due to heat and stress. Remember, I am really pushing it here with 1mm tolerances with a Dremel. No machines, no CNC, just my hands and a 25mm spinning blade.

Here they are cut but you can't see it too well due to the yellow.



First peel. This is the easy one.



Second peel is considerably more difficult as that very thin frame gets snagged and wants to lift and go out of shape.



Talking of out of shape. Make sure you measure it to make sure it is the correct dimensions. It's easier to pull it around a bit on a slippery piece of backing than it is once you have stuck it down.



OK so we are within .5mm which is good enough.

Note, I do not photograph the actual work stage. The reason is that my best camera is a part of my phone and I don't want to wreck it. There's not much to see any way, just me wearing a gas mask with a Tshirt over my head pulled down to below my eyes and concentrating.

I will leave Morgan Freeman to explain how the next bit works. This is from The Shawshank Redemption..

Geology is the study of pressure and time. Thats all it takes really... pressure... and time...

It fits.



Bogey time.



I deliberately over cut this by .5mm so I could sand back. Obviously if I hit the black too hard I will blow through the thin edges, so I made the green slightly larger so that I can sand it into the black rather than the other way around.

OK so what I have done here is completely tape off the edges and seal them. This is so that the Plastic Weld will not pee out of the edges and wreck the piece.

Talking of which.



About fifteen minutes later after I was sure the reaction had completed and.





Not bad. I will sand it later, once I am absolutely certain that the process has completely finished. Once it does? you wouldn't get that off with a hammer and chisel.

I bet you are now thinking "hey, he has missed that cut off bit at the end"

I didn't :D



Like a glove.



Once I have done sanding and edge polishing I will design some graphics for it.
 
LePhuronn said:
Happy day, love the process. Already in the ideas stage of a second project involving watercooling an old Radeon 5770, and I'll definitely be using your scanner technique to draw out the backplate and *cough* custom water block *cough*.

Yeah, I can't even cut MDF straight for 1 project and I'm already thinking of CNC copper blocks for a 2nd!

What can I say, your craftsmanship on this and the audio system has inspired me :D
Click to expand...

The first power tool I ever used was a jigsaw. IIRC I was about 13 and made a speaker box. That's when the love affair with making speaker boxes began, back in the late 80s. Now it's computers :)

Cenedd said:
Nice when stuff fits perfectly. Obviously nothing to do with the impeccable preparation you did first :p
Click to expand...

TBH that was the easy part. I've been using/designing with Photoshop for about fifteen years now. The hard part was making that frame with a Dremel. It was so delicate that I could not even hold it with any pressure. It would have just snapped. That's the part that surprised me. I'm usually pretty ham fisted and easily annoyed, at which point the air turns blue and I throw a strop and snap it into a thousand pieces haha.

Edge polish and decal and it's ready :)



Really can't wait to get the white cooler off and fit the block !
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom