Project: Evolutionary

[AlumaxX]

Time to work on some parts inside the case. The pump will be placed near to the motherboard. The area around the pump is covered with an black aluminium sheet from AC Ryan.

The aluminium cover around the pump also comes in handy when I have to hide some cables.

The pump itself will be covered by its own housing. I used some acrylic piping and cut it in half. This is just the base of the pumphousing, now I can add some more housing parts by glueing it onto this pipe.

I can finish the construction of the hddbox now, this because of some great help from a company nearby in Eindhoven
called Nebo http://www.nebobv.nl/

Now it fits into the pipe.

I drilled two big holes in the hdd box.

These holes are there for the acrylic pipe that will go through there. I glued some black acrylic around the pipe. This is needed to attach it to the hdd box with some bolts.
Couldn't glue it because I will need some space to adjust the construction when needed.

A quick look underneath the hdd box.

The two pieces of acrylic that fit into the pipes underneath the hdd box will be mounted on the bottom of the case. To prevent any movement I will use some aluminium profiles underneath the bottom of the case, but this will not be visible. This construction will prevent the box hanging in the rc shocks from flipping to one side.

 

[skyline889]

Beautiful build! The amount of fabrication required is simply staggering...to think I was getting impatient with just drilling and painting the inside of my case.

 

[indokyne]

man. you are friggin nuts.

wow.

 

[AlumaxX]

Have been working on, what must be one of the last polyester parts, dust filter holders.

Getting the fibreglass of the mold.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqVnyG_G5KI

Marked the part so I know where to cut it.

Smoothened the edges with some sandingpaper.

Made an opening in the filter holder.

Ready to mount it on the aluminium. Used some bolts to do this.

And from another angle.

The acrylic part that will hold the filtermaterial can slide in now.

Made two of these parts, one for the left side and one for the right side of the case. These holders will be mounted underneath the case, so you can't see them.

The case is almost ready for the paintjob, but that will have to wait till after my 6 week vacation. The ducts will have to be sealed with a rubber strip to prevent air escaping to the wrong compartments.

The holes in the bottom of the case, drilled for the dustfilter, will also be used to keep the duct in place. Don't have bolts that are long enough so I can't finish it right now. I want to drill some holes in the aluminium profile and when I tighten these bolts the profile will pull the duct onto the rubber strips.

Started working on some details. Because I don't like the side of a normal fan I decided to make some sort of hosing for the fan that will be placed in the back of the case. I started with a small strip of acrylic. This acrylic needs to be bend. Used some mdf and some copper pipes to bend the piece.

The piece of acrylic just needs to be shortened a bit and then it can be glued.

Time to glue the frosted acrylic lid onto the black acrylic.

Will have to wait till the glue has hardened, before I can start cuttin a hole in the frosted acrylic for the fan.

The combination of black and white will be used quite often in this case.

After a few hours of filing, the fan with black acrylic ring around it, fits in the fanbox.

I think this wil be one of my last updates before my 6 week vacation. Hope to get some information from a company that is specialized in painting polyester before I leave the Netherlands for a warmer place, because the case is almost ready for a paintjob.

 

[AlumaxX]

I've done a lot of things since I'm back from my vacation, but the thing is it just was not interesting for an update. Just because I had to make three or four of the same parts, parts that I already showed in previous posts.

But now I can show some new stuff, not much, but it is something new. First of all I almost finished two dustfilters, only need to clean, sand and polish them.
Drilled two holes in the acrylic and tapped the hole. Cut of the heads of some bolts and placed those in the holes. These metal pins that stick out need to keep the acrylic piece, that comes on top, in place.

The top, filter material and bottom.

And this is where the filters will be placed, I can slide them in there. This is the bottom of the case, underneath.

Working on some more dustfilters. I don't want the dust to reach the radiators or even get into the ducts. So I will need dustfilters for the intakes on the sidepanels. I'm talking about these guys.

This is what I came up with.

I integrated the frosted white intake grill. Used some pieces of acrylic to raise it a bit. Glued it onto the grill and mounted it from behind with some bolts, not visible in when mounted.

All parts joint.

This part will be mounted in here, so from the back of the intake.

Not ready yet, still need to make something that keeps this thing in place.

From these intakes the air will be guided through airducts. On the left you can see the holes without the airduct and on the right you can see the airduct in place.

This is how I mounted the airduct, just tighten the bolts and the aluminium profile pulls the airduct onto the rubber seal.

Also did some detailwork. Something that will be mounted on the backside of the case.

This will be the airoutlet on the back of the case. The frosted acrylic will give a pretty cool effect when the light from the orange fan is on. Used I torch to give you a bit of an impression.

I had to mount the fanhousings and didn't want the bolts to be visible. This is what I came up with. I glued two pieces of acrylic (5mm.) together and cut a triangle from this piece. To make it fit I rounded one corner, so I could glue it in the corner, on the inside, of the fanhousing.

After this I drilled a hole in these pieces of acrylic and tapped it. Attached it with two bolts to the aluminium panel. You can see the two bolts above the airducts.

A view from the side.

and from another angle. The compartment with the airduct will not be visible when this case is finished, only the side with the fanhousing will.

Working on some more dustfilters. I don't want the dust to reach the radiators or even get into the ducts. So I will need dustfilters for the intakes on the sidepanels. I'm talking about these guys.

This is what I came up with.

I integrated the frosted white intake grill. Used some pieces of acrylic to raise it a bit. Glued it onto the grill and mounted it from behind with some bolts, not visible in when mounted.

All parts joint.

This part will be mounted in here, so from the back of the intake.

Not ready yet, still need to make something that keeps this thing in place.

 

[AlumaxX]

The four dustfilters for the sidepanels are in place now.
From the back (inside from the case)

and with the acrylic duct mounted.

The sidepanel from the other side.

 

[NukeULater]

Very shagadelic!

 

[AlumaxX]

I started to work on some more detailwork. I received some sheets of orange acrylic. Frosted orange, fluor orange and just normal orange and that's what I started to work with on the windows of the sidepanels. I cut some rings that follow the outline of the windows.

This is just the start. I just can't keep things simple. I will use some frosted white acrylic as well. Hope to show you guys some more coming weekend.

 

[kaiweiler]

Sick project!
This is going to be incredible once it's finished!

 

[AlumaxX]

The window is starting to shape up now. Made two pieces of frosted acrylic. These are slightly wider on the inside of the window then the orange acrylic. Drilled 6 holes and tapped them.

The orange acrylic is mounted on the outside and the frosted white ones on the inside of the sidepanel.

WIll have to wait for some transparant acrylic from my sponsor AC Ryan to finish the windows.

I added the frosted white acrylic with a reason ofcourse. The reason is that it will use some leds to make it stand out.

 

[itsukisama]

looks sick.. keep up the good work..

 

[AlumaxX]

Haven't had much time to work on the case the last couple of weeks.
I know many people like to see coloured lights in a casemod, so I bought 250 orange leds. Don't think I will use all of them, but they were cheap and will always come in handy.
I like to see the case without any colour, just with "warm" white light. So I bought another 300 white leds. So white light for me and orange for the people that like colour. With some switches I can turn on and off different groups of leds. The switches will be mounted on the backside of the case, but I wanted to keep it in the same style. I used the outtake on the back of the case as a reference. Talking about this outtake.

And this is what I came up with.

 

[itsukisama]

that is sick so far aluma keep it up bro

 

[AlumaxX]

Today I just want to post some pictures without tellling you guys what it is.

All these pieces are parts of a bigger piece.

It is starting to shape up now, but I still need to do much work on this thing. Maybe I'm just starting to go crazy, to put in so much hours in this part, because it will only be one very small detail in the case.

 

[silent-circuit]

Watching.

 

[aingeal]

keep up the good work

 

[Simpleness]

Holy Freakin Crap!,... nice,.. verry nice,...

 

[AlumaxX]

Received some materials from AC Ryan, thanks :up: Dennis from AC Ryan.
So it was time to finish the windows. Still needed to close them with transparant acrylic. It was quite a job to get these things to fit into the orange rings. Here you can seen the transparant window.

And this is the window from the backside of the sidepanel.

Also did some work on the reservoirs. I wanted to keep them in the same style as the windows. So I made some parts from orange and frosted acrylic.

The white frosted acrylic ring will be glued into the reservoir itself.

The orange ring will be mounted onto the polyester lid.

Made some holes for the reservoirs in the lid.

and with the reservoirs in place.

 

[cheezeit]

Your work looks amazing. Glad to see you still working on it.

 

[itsukisama]

lol for some reason right now.. it looks like something for quake 4 lol

 

[AlumaxX]

I will use some tubes to get some wires for the LEDs, from the bottom of the case to the back.

As you can see the part I was working on a while ago isn't a fangrill. I filled the gaps with some frosted acrylic and it these spots will spread some light into the case.

 

[GigantoR]

The design may not be to my tastes, but I can't knock the work that is going into this beastie. Keep it up man!

 

[connec]

I came, just a little.

 

[AlumaxX]

Applied the first layer of primer and now it's easy to see where I need to add some more bondo. I'm still not satisfied with the result.

Most of the flat parts are finished now and ready for paint, but the parts like the intakes still need some more bondo and sanding.

 

[MattQC]

Amazing!

 

[AlumaxX]

I made a simple housing to mount the harddisks. Just two plates of aluminium and acrylic.

Now it's time to place the harddisks into the harddisk box, the box with the RC shocks. To prevent the harddisk from sliding in the box I glued some acrylic onto the bottom and to, some sort of rail.

The harddisks slide in between the acrylic rail and are being stopped at the end by another piece of acrylic.

From the backside of the case I can slide the harddisk into the box.

To prevent the harddisk from sliding out again I made something else. Just two acrylic blocks glued onto the acrylic that will cover the backside of the box.

The acrylic will be mounted with 4 small bolts.

Need to mount the logo, at the moment it's being kept in place with some sticky tape and need to add some leds on the backside of the logo, so from inside the harddiskbox.

 

[xCrazySnowmanx]

That cage looks so clean and nice, very nice job.

 

[AlumaxX]

Before I start working on the watercooling I needed to test my hardware, but not before I mounted some leds in the harddisk box. I used 18 leds and these leds will shine on the back of the FJW logo. I used some acrylic to guide the wires a bit.

I needed enough clearance for the harddisk holder, because it needs to slide into the box. On the right side you can see there enough room between the wires/leds and the harddisks.

The top of the box is mounted with small hexheaded bolts and not glued, because I need to be able to reach the leds in case a led dies and needs to be replaced. The blue you see is from the Tagan powersupply, I need to replace those leds with white ones ofcourse.

To test the hardware I installed Windows on the Velociraptor harddisk. No problems at all, so I'm ready for the next step, the watercooling setup.

Because I changed my hardware plans, I needed to use a heavier powersupply. The problem was that the cables from the new Tagan PSU are somewhat differently situated on the psu, so I needed to make some new brackets for the cables. This time I used some black anodized aluminium from AC Ryan and transparant orange acrylic, instead of the white sheets I used for the old brackets.

The cables in the picture above are the standard sleeved Tagan cables, but that will change soon. I will use some tubing to cover them and this will also make it possible to pl;ace the cables in an almost perfect straight line.
On the left side of the picture you can see 4 cables going through an aluminium sheet. I needed to make holes in the sheet that were big enough to pull the cables through, but that was a problem because that would mean there was a gap between the cables and the holes. So I made an acrylic parts that fits tight around the cables and can be opened on the left and right side to pull the cables through.

Haven't had much time to work on this mod lately
But that doesn't mean there is no progress. Been working on the leds that will light up the windows. First I needed to make something to mount the leds. I took some acrylic sheets, one 5mm. and one 3mm. plate, glued these together and made small pieces of it. Drilled a 5mm. hole in every piece and glued all these pieces onto the frosted ring.This is the result.

I needed quite a lot of these acrylic pieces because I have got four windows.
One of the rings completed and ready for the leds.

A led in every acrylic piece and connecting the wires.

Time to test the leds.

The endresult will be very different of course. The glass fiber sidepanels will be painted black so you won't see the strange "dots" of light anymore.

I also received all my watercooling stuff. Again changed the original plans, will not watercool the harddisks, these are in a seperate compartment of the case anyway. I will watercool the CPU, GPU ( full cover block) the mosfets and the North and Southbridge. All EKwaterblocks except the CPU block, that's a D-tek Fuzion v2 block.

 

[formula409]

Pretty sweet...been watching this one from the begining.

 

[AlumaxX]

Thanks, it's always nice to here people like what you are doing. No big update today, but I wonna show you my new tool.

b.t.w. I will fix the pics on the first pages as soon as possible.

I'm still reading all the manuals that came with the machine but I couldn't wait to try and mill a text into acrylic. Made a couple of different test pieces, before I milled the name Evolutionary into one of the windows.
And this is the result.

I don't think I will use it much for this casebuild, because I will need to learn a lot before I can use it.
It's been a while since I've posted an update. Been playing with my new toy, the cnc mill.
The black Tygon hose isn't as flexible as the normal transparant one. Needed something for tight bends and that's where the mill comes in.

These two parts can easily be removed. Just unscrew the three hex bolts.

And with the part in place.

A also made a part that will guide two hoses, that pass through a aluminium panel. Nice to practice milling a pocket. Made a pocket in an orange sheet of acrylic, two millimeters deep. The black acrylic fits into this pocket.

 

[AlumaxX]

When I came up with the name for this case I also remembered an image from school. Darwin and his evolution theory, combined with the picture from a monkey that starts to walk upright and finishes with a man. Now it is possible to pick an image from the internet and engrave it into some plexi with the mill. It has to be something that fits into to theme and looks of the case, so I used the same color scheme as with the fanholders. Orange, black and white.

 

[AlumaxX]

I finished almost all the hoseclamps now.

I don't know whether you remember the thing I made for the pump, the acrylic housing. I needed to dress it up a bit.

It's not finished yet, still need to cut away some of the ribs for the pumpoutlet. Will have to wait for the glue to harden first.

At first I wanted only to glue on those black ribs. Made the transparant acrylic parts just to keep everything in place while glueing it onto the housing, but I like those transparant parts so much that I will leave them on.

 

[tong]

what is it, where did u get it and how much?

 

[AlumaxX]

It's a High-Z S-720/T cnc milling machine.
http://www.cnc-router-routers.com/html/high-z_t_cnc_router_routing_en.html
It was for sale on a Dutch cnc forum.
And it was a lot of money, but I think it was worth it.

 

[DexNFx]

I like your work with the harddiskbox.