Project Stealthlow

[waynio]

Ah, it's good to see the 20 or 30 image limit has been lifted .

Brushing the small copper pieces with metal lacquer left me with an impression it was easy to do without hiccups, some spots it looks nasty especially under certain light but I'll rub all the bad spots out & do a fresh brush of lacquer to get it so it looks nice all over.

Glad I had a few extra things to do to the motherboard tray really as I rounded the square holes on all the main pass throughs & the hdd pass throughs & looks much nicer now, didn't need to change the optical ssd pass through as it's out of sight & works perfect, oh & added a 16mm vandal power switch which only just fit silver with white ring & finally I drilled 5 or 6 holes & put helicoils in so I could use the MDPC cable clips if I can't be bothered with making copper ones .

On with the photos .

And for shots like this is why I wanted a different lens, just couldn't get these shots with the fixed focal macro lens.

Wow that was a load of shots but hopefully good viewing with the building up part lol.

 

[waynio]

I've not been project logging properly lately with changing my camera which is too nice to be in a dusty environment & the tripod is huge & I have limited work space so it all just gets in the way of what I'm doing so to log better I'd be best getting an extra memory card & compact tripod & use my kodak for workshop stuff & save the nice one for out of the workshop, in the winter I hardly took my camera over to the garage as it was sub zero temps & I doubt that's good for the camera, my mp3 sometimes crashes it gets that cold .

Ok excuses out of the way & I'll do this to fill at least 1 blank since everyone seems to like this fan mod & 1 so far is even willing to pay for them, I won't be selling any, I've better things to do, I probably would sell these but have no idea on nice fair pricing for the buyer & for me I'd feel wrong for charging something to make it worth my while & I'd be stupid to do them for virtually free so here is a guide I just made so anyone who either hasn't got the tools or experience you could go get them cnc'd like many modders these days , it's good to share knowledge, keeps modding evolving rather than keeping the how's to yourself .



Custom rims tut for enermax modular type fans (revised).


So you need a good strong pointy pin

Carefully unclip all 4 main connectors.

Then carefully unclip the centre holding clips, the rest don't need it as they don't hold as much force.

And do the same for the ones on the other half of the fan, you have to unclip on both sides of the half circle & then they just fall out .

There, shouldn't have anyone breaking their fans while doing this now.

These fans have loads of potential for sweet customisation especially if you can go with CNC as you could add your own cool cut patterns or logo.

The strips come in 2 half circles & measure 182mm x 18.5mm x 1mm I flattened 1 out & kept 1 in good form as an example for this tut.

The cello tape I used was 90mm diameter & think it works better than just a hard object as it allows you to squeeze it to a further form, this setup virtually makes a perfect form for the 120mm fans although with raw material it requires a little extra forming which you can do with strong fingers & a hard surface.

With a raw material it's likely it will need a little extra curving & this works for me.

It also seems to matter where you place the half circles, the enermax ones have a bunch of slots that help it stay in place so if your using a flat material it can be tricky to get both in correctly, they shouldn't be overlapping each other at all & they need to be in every single slot on the bottom & top or the fan blades won't spin because of the slots being bent towards the blades.

Once everything is aligned well you can carefully press the connectors down into place & make sure it's fully closed & that's it, you have a cooler looking fan providing you cut & formed the rim to exact spec .

Modding this fan has opened up loads of awesome ideas for me which I hope to do some time if I can get the right tools.

I took the stickers off the psu .

And got the fans back in there.

 

[waynio]

The right angle ATX plugs & scroll saw blades came on Saturday .

But, looks like the right angle ATX plugs are for soldering to the motherboard with both ends being male I aint soldering anything on the motherboard lol so those 5 bits are heading straight to the random bits box probably never to be used, probably .

So I've ordered a male & female ATX plug & I'll make a custom extender that wraps around to the rear of the mobo panel so it doesn't obstruct air flow, this isn't a bad thing really as I'll be able to make the 24 pin cable go in the shape of the curve with the extra slack I'll gain from this.

I started out on the front bottom copper panel & was my first go at cutting on an angle with the scroll saw, quite difficult really as it turns a 2mm sheet into 4 or 5mm & it catches easier so got through quite a few blades & I had to press a lot of force downwards to stop it jumping around (wasn't that bad all the time but I'd say 50/50 so just did piece by piece spreading it out over the day & finally got the rough cut done, now it needs a good sanding session on the bevelled edges to get rid of any jaggies, things have moved forward that bit more .

The metal lacquer I had some trouble with, the first time I lacquered it all it left some drips & some blobs, I stripped those areas down, re-brushed & re-lacquered & all is mostly fine except the right side panel where the brush finish got messed up & the top right area doesn't go in form with the rest so I'm thinking of stripping all the lacquer off, re-brushing & re-lacquering, PITA but needs doing really if I want it as my best effort, I'll just have to be more careful when I lacquer it next.

Also since the perfection thing has got a grip of me I'm going to try to mill drill some of the side panel windows a little more because some aren't quite flush to the alu & it's irritating me whenever I look at it & see a glare from the windows that are sunk in by 1mm or less .

Got some nice shots though with the morning light, enjoy .

More soon .

 

[waynio]

Looking amazing now waynio

Thanks Gary .

Slithered bits off the front bottom copper panel with the scroll saw & then smoothed off the copper panel by pulling strips of 240 grit paper back & forth to get most of the cut marks out & then brushed & lacquered, took quite a bunch of hours but worth it.

And also fixed something that has been irritating me every time I see it, not every side panel window fit flush so I took the offending pieces out & took them to the drill press with milling bit, it's a pain to set up for the depth & it's a bit of a nightmare controlling the piece I run through but managed it just fine & now I have 100% flush windows .

 

[waynio]

Looks superb Now get some hardware in it and start enjoying it!!

Oh you have no idea how much I'd like to but it only requires a few small details so I'll hold out a little longer should have the ATX extension bits tomorrow hopefully, today I'll have a go at making my own copper P clips for the cables, hopefully I'll be able to make nice enough ones ordered a bunch of stainless bolts so they don't stand out as bad also which I'll give a brush finish so they really blend in.
Cheers Diggsy .

 

[waynio]

Everytime i look at this it just gets better and better, the small details being put into this are superb! I honestly cant wait to see if at a finished product?

Love to know how good the airflow is in that case

Great work!

Thanks mate .
The air flow seemed a tiny bit lacking without the cpu cooler push/pull fans but with them in it seems to flow really nicely & the lower area catches very good flow too while being silent so it's definitely better optimised for a tower air cooler but I believe I'll be able to keep the nice overclock going in this even when it's warm, but I won't be doing any torture tests except for my usual run it for a minute on 100% to get an idea of what temp it get's up to for safety , for me as long as it's stable in all situations & safe temps for what I use my pc for & I don't get any crashes at all then that's good enough for me, I'm not into torturing hardware to find out how Jack Bauer it is hehe I never get to use 100% cpu anyway in anything I do.

 

[waynio]

that looks awesome mate! wish i had the know-how to do a project like this, good luck with the rest of the build!

Cheers David .

Fair play, that's just beautiful! The attention to detail is absolutely superb!! If you don't win a prize or two for this build I'll eat...erm... something inedible!!

Cheers mate, unless I enter it into competitions then the only comp it might end up in is MOTY 2011 which I'm really looking forward to as many of the best modders from around the world have been busy making some sweet cases & case mods so I'm keen to see how this holds up amongst them, air cube made it into MOTY 2010 just gone but didn't make it to the top 10 so everyone who came past 10th place you could say all came in 11th I don't know why they don't let people know the full placings, maybe so it doesn't make people feel like crap if it came in last I dunno .

Just got a couple of ATX plugs & some other bits so I can make an extender & a really short 1 just so it doesn't interfere with the air flow from the front fans & I'll be able to have the wires go in the shape of the curve with the extra slack .

I just finished designing, printing, sticking, cutting & forming the copper P clips, the big clips are P clips, the smaller ones it wasn't possible to do them nicely because of the thickness of the copper so they are a slightly different version of the P clips, was the only way to make them in a nice way & the copper sheet I ordered I got lucky with the off cut as it was mirror polished on both sides so was pleasantly surprised , only cost me £7 with delivery, I said I'd make enough for 3 of the fan pieces for someone on another forum & he wants them brush finished so I might use the ones I made from this mirror copper & send him the ones I already made depends if I like the look of them when installed .

Also I've got around to thinking about lighting & decided I could make the bottom section fan holders better since my marking method has drastically improved compared to when I started this project I print the designs now & stick them on the material so it's far quicker & more accurate to my design than marking manually & I have the scroll saw now & just ordered a drum sander that is usable on the drill press & can use any sand paper on it so could take it to 2000 grit without a ton of effort , there was a couple of things I didn't like with the fan holders, after I stuck them together I continued wet sanding them to get a perfectly seamless finish on them but it went wrong & some gunk worked it's way into the seams so when viewed from an angle it didn't look so good especially with light in there & didn't like the fact I had to drill mill some of the holders down a bit & even then the fans were too tight (so tight I cut myself when pushing a fan back out of the holder).

So I'll re-make them but for the depth of the fans I'll use 9 x 3mm sticks of acrylic instead of 5 x 5mm with a luminous orange stick in the middle, the apollish fans don't add any light to the stick areas so it opens a way to light them differently & I'll be making them function as the hdd activity LED so should be a sweet little feature & got all the bits I ordered except for the drum sander .

Making them again should take no longer than 2 good sessions or even 1.

And the other lighting thing I've thought about is RGB LED strips, 1 600mm strip for each curve bar & possibly 1 300mm for underneath the case, it will have a remote control for selecting whatever colour I want & could turn it off when I want so can't wait to get that to put in but can't afford it just yet , anyway only a few steps away from complete .

 

[waynio]

Going back in time to re-do the fan holders .

Just finished cutting the acrylic for re-making the fan holders so thats near 60 sticks & 15 fan hole pieces waiting to be sanded, the scroll saw really likes cutting acrylic, the disc sander & drum sander will make pretty quick work of finishing the edges the orange is called lava orange & looks like a neon light, these will be in the middle of the stick pieces with a white LED behind them so should create a great effect amongst the black & white colours in the bottom section, the stick sections don't catch any light from the apollish fans so allows for something nice, I will run a test before I stick them though to make sure it is good .

I started very late so only got this far so I'll do the sanding later & see if I have material for making a really accurate jig for sticking parts together, has to be a perfect jig & something placing inside the jig to prevent the bits from sticking to the jig so I don't have to do further sanding after sticking.

 

[waynio]

Sanded to 2000 grit & to get them perfect I'll have my first go at flame polishing.

Loosely stacked.

 

[waynio]

I tried out a polishing mop on the bench grinder so see how it turns the acrylic pieces I wet sanded with 2000 grit which took 2 hours for 6 pieces, they turned out awesome within a couple of light passes but the other pieces turned out quite crap really & wow I can't be arsed wet sanding the other 9 fan hole pieces & then the 54 stick pieces so yeah I'll just frost them all, far easier option & still a good option really, but wow the polished ones really did turn out excellent but it's just too much work, it would either be 24 hours or even 48 hours to do :wacky: it would be possible for me to do it but I'd need quite a few beers to make it less monotonous I rarely drink but I've found a couple of beers lets me just get stuck in without thinking much about how many more to do .

 

[waynio]

Heres all the pieces 2000 grit wet sanded, polished, cleaned & ready for putting together with dots of tensol 12 acrylic adhesive.

All stuck together & I need a break, I feel wasted .

 

[waynio]

Perhaps it is my eyes, but I see no frosting so did you go for the beer option instead?

Hehe yeah but without the beer I just put a thick sheet of acrylic on my desk, threw a bit of water on it, placed a sheet of 2000 grit on it so it holds it in place, threw some more water on it & got busy for the whole day while watching Fringe & had to clean my screen afterwards as there was quite a lot of plastic gunk that flew onto it .

Now it's time to make a clamp bar for the hdd cages & work a way to have LED's plugged into the bottom of the stick bars, then that's the bottom section complete .

 

[waynio]

Got the clamp bars cut, shaped, drilled, sanded, brushed & lacquered & also cut the copper rod pieces to size which will be for handles to help taking the clamps out, power sanded edges flat, bunged them in the drill press & shaped the ends with files (only had about 3 to 4 mm to play with so couldn't get fancy ) drilled, tapped & placed helicoils inside them, brushed them & then brushed metal lacquer on them too turned out be pretty nice I think I found when brushing metal lacquer on it's best to use a heat gun on the lowest setting to speed up the initial drying which seems to stop blobs or runs forming anywhere on it .

These clamp bars aren't even necessary the hdd cages are a good tight fit but I already added the clamp supports in waaaay earlier in the project so thought I'd make them anyway lol .

Attila is the one who inspired me to turn plain bars into something nicer .

 

[waynio]

Have'nt looked in on this build in ages, Its looking amazing

Cheers Greavesy.

Man, I love scratch builds that really come together towards the end.

Thanks Roller .

those clamp bars are absolutley amazing, flawless!!!

Cheers VOoDOo other than the fact I forgot to add cable pass through holes/slots on the wire side but I got straight onto that & they are sorted now .

Loving this even more with the acrylics for the fans!

Is this case quite heavy or is it light?

Got to hand it to you for such an amazing build mate! Truly epic!

The case is ok to carry with 1 arm but when it's loaded with everything it sure is quite heavy so best to use both arms hdd's really boost the weight of a case I'll weigh it when it's complete though cheers mate .

These look good enough to lick. Or rub all over yourself. Think I said it before but the attention to detail you give to this stuff is just epic .

LOL cheers joxang.

Now this is some project.

The case is looking great and i can't wait to see it finished with the 580 and stuff in. Mind making me one ?

Thanks Greavesy yeah I'm not cutting any corners on this one & really I'm kinda making it harder for myself to do one as good or better for my next lol but I have a good idea of what tools to get so I can do things a little easier or better, I also want to master engraving & think I'll get onto practicing for that after this project, [WP@]WOLVERINE on bit-tech really shown how awesome diy engraving can be done if your skills get high enough after seeing his latest engraving project check it out, it is very amazing .

This...



But not this...

Getting the lighting done right on those stick bars in the fan holders is proving a bit of a challenge , the apolish fans give off awesome light but don't touch the stick bars so I had to come up with a way to light those parts well enough to have a similar effect to holding it up to broad daylight.

I tried an LED placed directly underneath the sticks & only lights up the orange bar & a tiny bit of the dual tint pieces but lights up excellent on the top end, I also tried sanding the edges of the LED's flat which didn't help neither, I also tried countersinking the LED hole so it would make the light brighter & wider but didn't make a difference, so had ideas of frosting just the stick bars internally or using light tape or el tape stuck to the frame of the fans to give a consistant glow but light tape is fragile & expensive, I even tried a laminating sheet which looks frosted when it hasnt been used this helped a bit but still not what I was aiming for, so my latest idea is to make a block of opal frosted acrylic & bung an LED inside it & have it replace a 5mm portion of the stick bars hoping it will create an awesome spread of light to act like it does when held up to daylight but even with that I think I'd be best to frost the insides of the stick bars so it works excellent I made the acrylic too clear by polishing it , this light block idea won't be seen because of the clamp bars so should work nicely.

At the moment I'm waiting for deliveries for molex pins & the opal frosted acrylic so could be Tuesday or later before I get to try it out.

 

[waynio]

What you need mate is something like this?


The flat LEDs have a wide angle of light, far more than the 20 degrees of the standard round. They won't blind you like standard LEDs can because the light is more like 130 degrees and subtler.

Or this...



SMD LEDs are suprisingly bright. Basically it's like the light element of the normal LED package without all the crap.

Here's a single Orange SMD 1206 all lit up.



And a string of 5.





Depending on your need and colour you could use some the ultra cheap LED strips and attach them directly to the bottom of your acrylic to get an even distribution of light.

20 degree LEDs just don't light area very well as I discovered after replacing square blue LEDs in my keyboard with 3mm standard round. Light is bright directly in the path of the LED but pants elsewhere.

I recently purchased some PLCC SMD LED which are slightly larger than the typical SMD ones and therefore easier to solder. Some even have multiple elements.

Cheers Tealc I tried sanding an LED flat & it made it dimmer, must be because the acrylic is polished so light doesn't spread well, I'm extremely close to giving up on getting the lighting perfect for these fan holders.

It's killing me at the moment, it's lying on it's side without it's base while I figure out what to do about lighting the stick bars.

But I had a close look at the led strips inside the enermax apollish fans & they are ultra thin & unlike any available led strips, I'd say including the led & pcb they are no more than 1mm thick (probably less) & can't seem to find led strips like them anywhere, my new idea is to try & get some of these & then I could wrap them around the outside rim of the fans & wire them to the fans which would do the lighting perfect & keep cables minimal, if anyone knows where to buy these strips it would really help this project move along .

 

[waynio]

Thank you very much Tealc they look exactly the same strips used on the fans & if I have trouble making them fit I can file notches out in the centres of the holders so they fit perfectly.

Could you send me a link for them, it'll probably take a while for them to arrive so the sooner I order the better or even the name of the low profile ones so I can go on a google hunt to see if I can find a place more local to buy some .

Cheers for the link mate, appreciated .

 

[waynio]

Already done it mate. I've picked out a couple of them of different colours so you can work out which type you need. They have a good sticky back as well.

Thanks mate & holy sheet they are cheap compared to over here but since I'm in a bit of a hurry to get this completed asap I ordered elsewhere for faster delivery & after thinking about the fact I'll probably have to file a bit out of the holders I thought why the heck not go for the brighter ones , another thing I held the RGB strip underneath the holders & I'd say the orange acyrlic is highly UV reactive so I ordered UV ones so with all this figured out now I've got the bottom bolted back on as I won't need to mod the hdd platform, phew , so can work on other things now while waiting .

 

[waynio]

any closer to finishing it ?

I want to see those LED's

Just got the UV LED strips & they do what I wanted them to for the orange sticks perfectly but the alternating tint doesn't seem to catch much of it but very close to how I wanted them & that might change to even better, still not tried the laminating sheet to spread the light but it's looking hopeful .

Beauty like this takes it's precious time, and it seems the LEDs are becoming rather a technical problem for the build which is a shame now, considering you were getting so close to the finish line!

Can't wait to see the build finally finished, when you get it there

Cheers fedexer I figured out the lighting, I just need to wait til tomorrow before I get back at this now, when you've been chomping at the bit to do something for a solid week & the time comes when you can actually start for some reason I don't want to, I'm a bit depressed & angry about the hissy fit riots that happened, the 1 week when I couldn't keep busy so didn't do my mind much good with all the disapointment & anger but I'll get back onto it tomorrow . So got all the lighting & molex pins, just need a fresh day now .

 

[waynio]

Been ages or so it seems since I done anything & got the needed bits to continue now hopefully to the end of this project.

So continuing with working on the fan holder lighting this is with a UV LED strip inside the acrylic with about 8 sheets of laminating sheet in front of the strip, the strip needs it's waterproof cover removing so they take up less space & the holders will need some of the center of the bars filing down a little so here is a rough idea of what it will look like & the outer alternating tint pieces will be white LED from the fans .

I intend to get stuck back into this properly tomorrow & make up for that long wait on the order .

 

[waynio]

Mesmerising colours . Though I have to admit I got no idea what's going on there: "LED strip inside the acrylic with about 8 sheets of laminating sheet in front of the strip". Sounds awesome...looking forwards to seeing the effect .

Thanks joxang I included in pictures what I done to get the effect .

I must agree with Joxang here, I too have no idea what's going on. As would you with me trying to explain some hair brained idea to you. Either way I am really anxious to see the lighting effects that you concoct!!!

Lol shown with pics on this update .

Maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick, but I'm reading it as:

"Thin strip with a lot of small LEDs (maybe SMDs) stuck around the inside of the circle inside the acrylic with the light shining directly into the acrylic. Then the laminating sheet over the top of this to either stick it to the acrylic or stop any light escaping from the back (or both)"

Close...?

Maybe my mind was clouded at the time lol been a bit stressed the past week but think I'm back to normal now .

Just spent the last hour and a half reading through this entire log!

It is simply a breathtaking work of art and cannot wait to see it finished!

Muchos stars added!

Cheers Vect0r .

Finally an update .

I finally got the modding feeling back, better late than never & actually grabbed my nice camera & tripod so I could get this back to being a log rather than what it was turning into as a show & tell .

So the fan holders & this different way of lighting them simply required the stick bars to be thinner there was no other way & thought I might get away with just filing a little bit out of the bars but nope lol I need them to be 5mm thinner so the 24 sheets of laminating material which comes in at 2mm needed & the 3mm LED strips, I only placed 3 tiny dots of the acrylic adhesive on to hold them together this time but even that really welds them together but a nice razor & hammer can carefully separate them, was a bit of a gamble but it was worth it to get these spot on.

Cut & peeled all the water proof material off the 3 LED strips.

Filed the corners down on the top of the fans.

A clear demonstration of how these stick pieces will be lit up, sticks, diffusion, LED strip.

24 layers of laminating sheet.

Creates this .

Measuring & works out at a needed slimming of 5mm so now I need to make all the 12mm stick bars become 7mm.

Lapped the lot so they are perfectly flat & even & I'll continue getting these to precise size tomorrow .