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removing fan grills

C

Calis

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
407
yo everyone

i just bought some biohazard fan grills.. but i need to cut out the built in ones on my antec plusview before i can install the new ones

can anyone give me a few pointers.. or a guide.. of how i should go about doing this?

peace out, Calis
 
The ones that are punched into the case? Two ways. 1.) waste a lot of dremel cutoff disks trying to cut steel (follow the edges of the circle) followed by sanding the edges with a drum sanding bit or 2.) Tin snips....some are really easy to get out just by cutting then sanding the spots where it was connected.

I dunno what the case looks like so I can't offer any specific advice.
 
this kinda thing..

plusview10007xb.jpg
 
Even after you cut the grills off how do you intend to mount the new grills? I assume they are designed to mount to the holes in the fan.
 
A nibbler gives you a cleaner cut. Then just drill 4 holes for the screws. I'm late for work. i'll post a link tonite.
 
Make sure you remove the fans before you do it! when I was 17 (Young and stupid :D) I was dremelling away at my server's fan grilles and nicked the fan wires without noticing it... fired the server up and POOF, current arched across the wires and turned my server into a smokebox. Bye bye power supply.
 
With that kind of a case, you won't be able to mount your grills.
You're fortunate that it is the thin bar type. You can do a cheap mod with tin snips, wire cutter, or nibbler to just cut off those bars. But your problem is that your fans are mounted in plastic cages that have square tabs that hold it onto the back.

You won't be able to have both the cages and the new grills anyway, so if you do get rid of them, you'll need to drill new holes for the fan screws to go into, that is, if there's enough room and open metal left afterwards...and since you have mounting cages, I doubt you have fan screws unless they came with your new grills.

I did my own mod with a hole saw (and you can see, I scratched a case a bit by accident) but it turned out okay.
fanholes.jpg

You can see you need mounting holes.
 
Spare-Flair said:
With that kind of a case, you won't be able to mount your grills.
You're fortunate that it is the thin bar type. You can do a cheap mod with tin snips, wire cutter, or nibbler to just cut off those bars. But your problem is that your fans are mounted in plastic cages that have square tabs that hold it onto the back.

You won't be able to have both the cages and the new grills anyway, so if you do get rid of them, you'll need to drill new holes for the fan screws to go into, that is, if there's enough room and open metal left afterwards...and since you have mounting cages, I doubt you have fan screws unless they came with your new grills.

I did my own mod with a hole saw (and you can see, I scratched a case a bit by accident) but it turned out okay.
fanholes.jpg

You can see you need mounting holes.
Click to expand...

LMao, you said you scratched it by accident "a little" haha ur a funny guy :) I like you
 
I used a nibbler like the one Copper0 linked to. I forgot to put down some masking tape ... so I got some darn scratches too.

Don't forget to put some tape around the sides!
 
Nibbler, dremel, hole saw... they'll all work probably. Nibbler should be the cleanest cut, but it takes forever, and you may not have one (although there cheap). If it was up to me i'd just Dremel and sand it (whoever said it takes a ton of blades is crazy, probably only 1 or 2). Hole saw is another alternative, any of them will work fine.
 
Spare-Flair said:
You can see you need mounting holes.
Click to expand...
Actually he wont need mounting holes. All he needs is like a buck and a trip to the hardware store. Just get 4 long bolts 4 nuts that fit them and 4 or 8 washers if needed to mount them. ive seen it done before.
 
As long as you can see the fan screw holes, you can mount a grill. Possibly still use the fan cage. I can't tell from the picture if they clip-in or clip-out, if that makes sense. If they "clip-out" then just make the clip holes larger until you can see the screw holes on the fan body the attach the grill. Dremmel or nibbler recomennded for that to shape the holes cleanly.
 
i just got a nibbler to cut my grill out this weekend.

originally i was going to cut out my fan grills and stuff using a drill. effective, but ugly/messy. with the nibbler, it was much easier and cleaner cuts. i got it at frys for $10 so maybe u can look into a nibbler?
 
guys i really dunno how nibbler works... Can i cut with it on flat surfaces too?
i want to make a 120mm exhaust on the top of the case.. how will it look?
 
Nibblers are quite slow as mentioned, and they got their name nibblers for a reason... They nibble small bits of metal at a time to get the end result... Be wary of thick steel cases though. Nibblers are best use on Aluminum based cases for ease and speed. Steel cases with large cuts will take you a long time and a lot of hand soreness...

Essentially a nibbler is a lever system that converts exherted hand grip pressure into a up and down motion where a metal bit basically bites a chunk of about 1cm by .5cm piece of metal off. It always bites off the same amount. Depending on metal thickness and metal density, the pressure exherted can be mild to great... Slow turns in radius on the cuts is easily accomplished, but you wouldnt want to cut words in cursive for instance... The degrees of turning would be too great to complete... 80mm fan holes are pretty easily accomplished. Windows in side panels can be accomplished, but at great length... Again I would reccomend aluminun cases for window cutouts... Hope that helps....
 
Dremeling would probably be the easiest way to remove them. When I removed mine, I used a little off of one disc. So long as you take a little of the metal off at a time instead of trying to cut through the steel in one pass, you should be fine.
 
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