Anyone ever polish their aluminum case?

C

cerebrex

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 29, 2004
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I've polished the front of my coolermaster ATC-200 - but I was thinking abou doing the sides as well.. it is a lot of work.. and I was wonder if anyone had done it, or has some pictures of the results.
 
I did the same to my ATC. I'd love to see a pic of how yours turned out. No matter what I use to polish it, there always seems to be scratches in it tho? Have you run into the same?
 
Rhentno said:
I did the same to my ATC. I'd love to see a pic of how yours turned out. No matter what I use to polish it, there always seems to be scratches in it tho? Have you run into the same?
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that is really where experience in polishing comes into play. I've probably spent several thousand hours polishing learning all the tricks. I assume you most likely went with a little too abrasive sand paper to start with. I suggest getting 800grit and sand down all the anodized grain to where it is completely gone, then wetsand with 2000 grit until you see no more visible grooves or scratches of considerable size.. then polish with magic blue (preferrably machine polish) and it should look like chrome.. I will take a pic for you tonight.
 
dear LORD, with a car polisher, dremil and cordless drill ! yikes,

someone buy that guy a benchgrinder with buffing wheels, jewlers rouge and an AC motor speed control.
 
BillParrish said:
dear LORD, with a car polisher, dremil and cordless drill ! yikes,

someone buy that guy a benchgrinder with buffing wheels, jewlers rouge and an AC motor speed control.
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Couldn't agree more! Give that guy a bar of Tripolli, a bar of blue rouge, a bench grinder, and two nice fluffy buffing wheels.
One for the Tripolli, and one for the blue. Get that nice deep mirror-like luster. :cool:

All that aside .... the results shown in that thread are not too bad. But he definitely wasn't making things easy. Then again
it was likely a one time job. Not everyone can afford to spend money on tooling in that situation.

And by the way, just so no one thinks I am nit picking .... I do have a fair amount of polishing experience. Everything from huge
classic car bumpers to platinum wedding bands.
 
Very impressive! exactly what I wanted to see. Unfortunately polished aluminum gets destroyed by the oil in your fingers and looks terrible if its a high traffic piece. He hid almost all the hard work he had done, and I couldn't understand why exactly... I was really interested in seeing a externally polished case, where his is almost all internal. His polishing job was decent.. some of it is very good, but it seems all the parts you can't see are polished fantastic, and all the visible spots have serious grain and pits. There is no question he really busted his ass bar none, but not really my taste. I like elegant simplicity.. busy high detailed things are confusing and gaudy in my opinion. Unfortunately my doors are not completely flat, they have some shallow dents from over the years.. and it would look terrible if I polished it without removing the dents first... and it would get destroyed after 1 quakecon. It might be a better idea to chrome an aluminum case, or buy a steel case and chrome that.. which would be even cheaper.
 
Here are the pics

case_01.jpg

case_02.jpg


and I threw in a picture of my cpu fan, pretty cool lookin... reminds me of the pentium 1 commercial, hehe
 
To the OP, thats about how mine looks as well. I've sanded, polished and buffed mine but it still shows scratches. Now that shuttle looks in-f'n-credible. That is what I want. Thanks for the pics man, looks nice.
 
I wonder if anyone here realizes that most plating shops also polish metals as well. It's cheap too.
 
cerebrex said:
Unfortunately polished aluminum gets destroyed by the oil in your fingers and looks terrible if its a high traffic piece.
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Does anyone know if clear coating polished parts do anything for them then? Or do you just carry a shammy everywhere you go?
 
warmace said:
Does anyone know if clear coating polished parts do anything for them then? Or do you just carry a shammy everywhere you go?
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Krylon makes a "triple thick" gloss that really brings out a mirror finish.

I polished the sides of my TDX waterblock (for great justice) and triple-thicked it. Man does it ever look deep.
 
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