Here are some pics of some UV glow testing that really show a hint of just how sweet this case is gonna look when it's done! I think part of the reason is, I'm trying some different things with UV instead of just buying LED-lighted UV-reactive components. Just look at that fan, you can't get an effect like that from a store-bought UV fan, as the plastic itself is colored and not clear, as in this fan. The fan was painted with ClearNeon UV-reactive paint that goes on and dries clear, so in the daylight, you only see the clear. But when you turn on the UV light, it really pops out. The second pic was a night-pic taken with flash, so I assume it will even have a bit of a visible glow in medium to low light...but it's not visible in bright light. Which is kind of how I wanted it in the first place, in light, I want people to notice the blue and chrome instead of the glowing fins.

I really love the ghostly pale blue light! It's much cooler than the overly-bright LED fans you buy at stores. I'm also very happily impressed that the ClearNeon paint picks up the UV light from the cathode placed all the way at the rear of the case!

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I didn't get a lot done today, just some minor test-fitting of various parts on the chassis, but I did clean up the blotchy UV-blue paint on the big 250mm fan with Windex and attempted to re-spray it. This time, it seemed to go on more consistently. Here are some shots with low lighting, and then with the room completely dark. The completely dark pic does intensify the blue a bit more than reality; I would estimate the UV brightness is about the same as the shot with a little light. I was going for a more subtle ghostly blue, that isn't visible unless the lights are dim and the cathodes turned on, and I think this accomplished that goal.

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Notice anything odd about the back side panel? It's kind of hard to see in the pic, but notice where the depression "handle" is, the place you put your hand to pull off the panel...

If you can't see it very well, you'll see it's oriented towards the front bezel, instead of the rear of the case! So why the hell would I do that, you're wondering? Um, these side panels are practically symmetrical with the exception of the handle depression and the little L-shaped tabs that slide into the slots in the chassis. Not giving my full attention to this particular mod, I actually cut the fish shape into the panel--upside-down!!!

Lucky for me, since the panel is practically symmetrical, I decided to get the rotary tool out and cut whatever was needed (holes for the front bezel mounting posts & barbs, extending the chassis tab slots, and cutting off some of the L-tabs) so that the panel would fit backwards. It resulted in an extra unnecessary 3 or 4 hours of work, but what can ya do? The pic shows that you won't really notice it unless you're paying attention to the handle depression orientation; which you probably wouldn't when that fish gets lighted up, anyway.

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If you go back to early pages in this worklog, you'll see my early design for a window. I kept looking at that design and not liking it, mainly because it concealed too much of the interior of the case, especially considering that the majority of that original window design would primarily only show the drive caddies.

Since I wanted to show off as much of the UV goodness as possible that I have planned for this project, I had to totally re-think the window. I scrapped the saw-tooth idea and went with a basic rectangular window with a twist...something that looks clean, follows the lines of the huge 250mm fan hole, and includes what I think is an eye-catching angle-slice. The upper-left to lower-right corners were lined up with a ruler.

If you notice the first pic showing my lines, you'll see the faint outer circle outline. That indicates the outline of the black outside fan mount "ring". Where I decided to cut was just inside of that, but outside of the inner square-pointed design, which indicates the position of the inner clear acrylic fan housing. Why did I do that? Well, although it took quite a bit more time and planning than just cutting the half-circle part outside of the black plastic fan mount ring, it means that the plastic ring will overlap the cut. That means I didn't have to be perfectly round when I did that half-circle, as it would be concealed by the black plastic ring.

I intend to clean up the 2 long horizontal cuts and the long vertical cut with some black door edge molding, even though several hours of filing gave me quite a nice, straight window. But that filing was a real b!tch, I must've put in 4 hours of filing, all told. There's one scratch I made along the top horizontal edge when the file slipped, but that should mostly be concealed by the edge molding.

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Now that the window was cut out of the panel, it was time to cut a piece of 5mm thick black acrylic to fit. The basic shape was easy to measure, as it can fit inside those 3 panel guide rails. The only difficult part would be the half-circle and the top rectangular area where the PCB for the 250mm fan switch gets mounted (in the first pic, the panel and the 250mm switch are shown upside-down).

Once that basic trapezoid was cut out, I placed it on the inside of the panel, then positioned the clear acrylic fan on top, which allowed me to trace its perimeter and let me know where the 2 corner notches would be. As long as I cut outside this circle, but inside the metal half-ring shape, I would have enough overlap for everything to fit nicely and look pimp. I then made the half-circle cut nice and slowly with my jigsaw, which was easy as pie with a fine-toothed metal-cutting jigsaw blade and slow speed.

The last attached pic shows where I'll have to do a bit of extra cutting. I cut out small triangular pieces for the 2 notches, then used a grinding accessory with my rotary tool to smooth out the notches.

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I got some of my new hardware late this week! I picked up an ABIT AW9D motherboard and Core 2 Duo E4300 on Friday after work from the Purolator depot.

I don't know about you guys, everyone has different favorite colors, but I gotta say this mobo is the most beautiful one I've ever seen. Black & blue & aluminum in color, there aren't any ridiculously-colored parts like pink parallel ports, lime green and bright orange memory slots, etc., so this has to be the sweetest and most consistent color scheme I've ever seen on a motherboard!

The 2 x 512M blue Super Talent memory chips complete the look quite nicely.

Oh, the piece of tin in the foreground is the "Silent OTES" piece that is normally stuck onto both black mobo heatsinks, that serves no functional purpose other than for branding. In fact, if you have a fan that's blowing air down upon those heatsinks, those tin pieces would actually obstruct the airflow. So I yanked them off. One of them exacted its revenge for this unceremonious treatment and sliced a small gash in my thumb. So be careful removing them if you get this mobo, maybe use a set of needlenose pliers instead of your thumb & fingers. That tin piece is thin and sharp!

I plan to put little fans on those heatsinks instead, for a little "active cooling" goodness. Heatpipes are all the rage now, but I don't have complete faith in that. I'll take active cooling over funky trends anyday. And this mobo has not 2...not 3...but SEVEN 3-pin fan headers! Now that's a nice touch for anyone planning to overclock! Nice job, ABIT!!

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I did a test-fit of the black acrylic on the steel panel, I knew I'd have to do a little extra detail-work in the area of the fan switch. There's a pair of plastic posts that will have to clear the acrylic. I marked their position, then cut 2 small triangular notches (same as I did for the fan corner posts earlier) and used a grinding head with the rotary tool to make nice rounded notches.

Because of enough overlap (which I'd intended from the start) of the panel's steel over the acrylic window, my half-circle cut didn't have to be geometrically perfect. It just had to be positioned inside the metal half-ring and it would be okay.

The last 2 pics are test-fits, showing the inside and outside of the new windowed panel, with almost all the hardware back in place. Excuse the fingerprints; don't worry, everything will get a spit 'n' polish before the final money-shots get taken.

The black acrylic looks awesome. At an angle or in normal light, it doesn't reveal much of what's inside. But later on you'll see some pretty cool eye-candy when the cathodes get turned on in the dark.

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As you can see from the first pic, the red UV "floor" didn't originally extend to the part beneath the front plastic bezel. Sure, it would've looked good enough leaving it as is, but that would be overlooking the details, it's the details that separate a good mod from a great one. I usually don't settle for "good enough".

So I cut out a piece of red acrylic and placed it on the bottom of the bezel, then marked off in black ink what I needed to cut to follow the contours of the bezel bottom.

A few hours after some dremeling, grinding, filing, sanding with 400 & 800 grit, and the final step of polishing the edges with a tiny butane torch, the final result was pretty nice. It'll help extend the glowing UV red floor right to the bottom of the front bezel.

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I glued the "lower lip" section of UV red acrylic onto the bottom of the front bezel with some 5-minute epoxy resin. Here's a test-fit of the bezel with the rest of the case. I'll have to use the same treatment as I did on the lower lip to polish 2 sides of the main chassis floor, you can see the rear side of the acrylic hasn't been cleaned up yet.

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I also had time today to get back to work on the axe-head intake ducting. My original ideas for fabricating the duct, using sections of a plastic ribbon spool and the plastic lid of a case for a spindle of blank CDs, had to be scrapped because I figured the plastic edge was too thin to make a good bond when I would glue it on with epoxy.

So I looked around for acrylic cylinders of various sizes lying around the house and garage. Long ago when I was working on Project μ-Blaze, I was out shopping for something to make a duct for that project, and I bought an acrylic straw-holder. Unfortunately I don't have a pic of it, but it cost about $15 and was an acrylic cylinder about a foot long, complete with about 100 straws, and with a chrome base and chrome lid that would unscrew and let you take out a soda drinking straw. I only bought it because it was a close size for a 92mm fan, and now it finally has a purpose. It was the perfect size to match the top and bottom sections of the axe-head duct.

Here are pics of some test-fits and cuts. After they were cut and filed down to the correct size, I masked off the outside surface and one edge. I'll be painting the inside surface. Since the acrylic is clear, the exposed, visible parts of the duct will be the unpainted side, so there'll be no worries about scratching the black paint. (Those of you who built R/C cars with those Lexan bodies that you painted from the inside will understand this technique.) The unpainted edge is the edge I'll be gluing onto the bezel.

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This turned out to be the *perfect* circumference for the left and right sections of the axe-head duct. It was so perfect, in fact, that it fit like a glove, like it was absolutely MEANT for this purpose! It was sitting in the garage and I doubt it'll be the end of the world if it doesn't have a lid anymore.

There's no need to worry about the threads; those are only on the outside. The inside surface is smooth, and that's what you'll see if you really wanted to stuff your face that close to the intake fan when everything is done. As with the top & bottom sections, I'll be painting these parts on the outside, too.

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Here's how I test-fitted the ducting to make sure it didn't extend too deep into the case and bump into the metal chassis or intake fan. It may seem ghetto, but all the measurements with a ruler aren't worth a hill 'o' beans if it doesn't actually fit. I taped the plastic piece in position where it would be glued to the inside of the front bezel, then reattached the bezel.

The second pic shows the vertical curves of the bezel glued in place after being painted gloss black on the outside surface, and the as-yet-unpainted horizontal curves in test-fit position after some cutting and filing, ready for paint.

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I bought 2 kinds of door edge molding to be used to clean up the window edges. The "typical" C-shaped variety that adheres to both inside and outside edge of the window, in gloss black, and a more one-sided kind that has a more dull, rubber-black finish. The second kind has a thin lip which you use to align it along the edge, and adhesive tape on the back side. Both kinds had two 27" strips per package, and one package was enough to do my window with over a foot to spare. I'll probably keep the gloss-black molding for some future project. They were $4.99 each.

I decided to go with the one-sided molding, for a few reasons. At first, I thought the shiny gloss black molding would look better, but after attaching one piece of the flat-black molding, it just seemed to work better with the satin black finish of the panel.

The other reason was that, in the past, I've used the C-type molding (chrome) with Project Pisces, and although it works fantastic, it extends to the back surface and therefore creates a bit of a gap between your future window and the metal cut-out. It's not much, maybe just over 1/8 of an inch, but I wanted this window to sit almost flush with the cut-out shape. Since the one-sided molding doesn't hardly extend beyond the thickness of the panel's metal, I should be able to glue the window in place with silicone or something instead of using velcro, rivets or bolts.

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Here are some pics of the molding being applied. Not much to see here, but I have a few tips for people planning to buy any kind of molding, and wanting to avoid gaps or a less-than-ideal appearance. Clean up the edge(s) of the surface(s) you'll be sticking the molding to, with rubbing alcohol.

First pic shows one side of the window with the molding applied along the right edge. Unfortunately the camera didn't light up that side of the pic very well. I also laid a strip of the gloss-black molding beside the flat-black one.

Tip: When joining 2 pieces of molding at a 90-degree corner, try to cut the edge of each opposing piece with 45-degree angles, so they make a nice fit. Don't just straight-cut them or it'll look like crap.

The second pic shows a close-up of the cut edge. In my opinion, this was the best choice for molding for this panel and color scheme.

Pic 3 shows the 5 pieces of molding applied to the window. The 2 small end-pieces on the left side were more challenging. With an angle less than 90 degrees (the top left piece), it's not possible to get a nice, clean fit between moldings, so I cut the angles differently...I guess the pic doesn't show it too well, I'll post a better pic tomorrow. The bottom left corner was much easier; corners greater than 90 degrees are easier to fit adjacent molding strips. For both small pieces of molding, I had to temporarily attach the black plastic fan ring, mark where it would lie on the panel, then cut the molding in the appropriate places for a nice, tight fit.

A few more tips. I applied the molding by first getting one end pressed and stuck nice and tight up against one corner, then slowly moved towards the other end (DON'T cut everything beforehand, even if you measure it, I almost guarantee it won't fit!), pressing it so it sticks on correctly as you move toward the next edge. Once you're at the end of the first piece, you'll get a much better idea where to cut the molding, and what angle to cut it at. If possible, give yourself a tiny bit extra and try to work it and finesse it in place. If it just won't fit, use an X-acto knife and slowly, gently saw away the excess section, being careful not to cut through to the metal of the panel. You can also use the X-acto knife to get the correct angle so that 2 pieces of molding fit nicely.

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Here I've glued the window to the inside of the panel after cleaning both surfaces up with some rubbing alcohol. Household Goop was a few bucks off, on sale for about $5.00, so I'm trying this for the first time. I've never glued a window on before, but the research I did turned up good results for Goop, and silicone-based adhesives in general seem to be the best for windows, as they allow for a little flex, they don't dry to a hard, inflexible interface that can crack.

This needs about 24 hours at least to cure, so you'll have to wait a day or two to see the finished panel (it's gonna look awesome!).

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The side panel & window are finally done. I'm really happy with the results, especially the dull black molding and black acrylic window, which looks like limo-tinted glass. I tried to take several pics to show the work but flat black isn't easy to photograph...

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You can always find good stuff at office supply stores...organizers and sign holders made of various colored acrylic & mesh, mostly. I was specifically looking for a non-transparent piece of either glossy black plastic or acrylic, and sticker paper that an inkjet printer can print on.

I got all this for under $17.00 CDN; the sticker paper was about $15 but on sale for $4.99; the black plastic organizer was $5.46, and I treated myself to a new game out of the bargain bin: King Kong, and it comes with a novel that's a prequel or something, together for $4.97. Can't go wrong with that purchase, eh?

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As I mentioned a few pages ago, I only wanted the blue UV-reactive fish's glowing outline to show on the reverse panel, not the whole fish. I considered various ideas, most of them wouldn't work. I considered painting over the acrylic fish with gloss black paint, but I knew that in time, it would fade or scratch and not look so nice--or worse, even begin to let the light shine through from behind. I considered cutting a piece of that 5mm black acrylic just a bit smaller than the original fish, but I knew that using the rotary tool on acrylic that thick would be a total pain in the ass, so I kept trying to think up other ideas. I considered cutting another piece of thinner clear acrylic and painting the underside, that way the paint wouldn't scratch from the outside--but I doubted the painted surface would bond to the unpainted surface with epoxy without making a mess or maybe not bonding very well.

I finally realized the only option was to look for a relatively thin piece of black acrylic or plastic and epoxy it onto the UV-reactive fish shape. That's where the cheap gloss black plastic organizer comes in.

First, I put masking tape on the surface that I'd be cutting, then traced the outline of the UV-blue fish. I then drew another outline inside the traced outline, just that much smaller so that all the outlines of the fish would be visible, for the detail and the glow effect I have in mind.

Then came an hour with the rotary tool, and a half-hour whittling everything carefully with an X-acto knife. (The eye cutout was probably the most tricky part of this mod!)

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Before:


Now, *this* is the look I was aiming for... People, your comments & feedback are appreciated, and may be posted here.

After:

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