whats the worst hit you took on a modding project?

W

wayne

2[H]4U
Joined
Aug 4, 2003
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i've noticed that all the cases are like best works of the owner...but then if theres good, then there must be bad

i m sure that many people have had "bad" or unsuccessful mods

can you describe or tell about it or even better, post pictures

its not something to be laughed at, just something to teach us how to never make the same mistakes that were done

i think this should help some of the other newbie modders to show that you wont always be successful so you have to actually plan your process (ex- my friend wanted to "be a modder", and ordered like 20 LEDs off eBay, and when i asked him what hes going to do with it, he said he didnt know...then i realized it and asked if he knew what an LED is, and he confessed...lol)

i m not sure if this kinda thread is supposed to be posted in the cool cases since its supposed to be like "bad mods" but since its cases, i thought it was the best place to post this

if this turns out to be something good that really helps us learn mistakes to NOT do with pics of results, can the mods consider this for a sticky?

thanks

by the way, when (and IF) i get a digi cam, i ll post pics of all the mods ive failed at...(ex- modding my cd player <bad paint, not enough power, not enough determinations>, keyboard painting mod <with art paint and laminated afterwards, mouse mod, etc)
 
I was cutting a hole in my case window(which I'd custom drawn and etched out a pattern in, by the way). I had it propped up between two paint cans, and I'd draped cloths over the paint cans to keep them from scratching up the case panel. Well, lucky me, when I got the holesaw through, it caught one of the rags, quickly wrapped the rag around itself, wrenched the drill from my hand, and snapped my case window in half. What did I do? Broke out the crazy glue until I can get off my lazy butt and go buy another piece of plexi-glass :p Hey, I can mount a fan in it still, so it's functional lol, my video card is nice and cool, but my case window has a couple big cracks and is somewhat foggy from the crazy glue :(

Other than that, haven't had any bad experiences.
 
Drilled out all the rivets on the frame, took everything apart, hung them up with fishing line, paint them....

Hit #1: Come back next day, wind knocked them all down.

Retouch paint, rivet back together. Reassemble.

Hit #2: The case panels don't fit on anymore. :( :( :(
 
For my recent mod, I was super afraid of cracking my plexi when cutting the 92mm fan holes....so I took ~2 hours to cut the holes all nice and neat with fancy discs on dremel, made them look good and such....nd when to drill out my screw holes on the first fan hole, and my drill bit snapped while drilling and my plexi cracked lengthwise:mad:
 
couldnt tell you how many times i've cut my finger on sharp metal in my case
 
this is really newb but several years ago before I knew anything about heatsink lapping, I tried to lap it with a dremel sanding bit, which uhh basically created an extremely uneven surface on my sink, I didn't even know i did anything wrong until my athlon was getting very hot, after doing some real research I figured out what to do and sanded the thing down for a few hours and got it smooth as silk.. hehe it pays to do your research before trying anything new!
 
meh, ive had a few, most of it is not measuring or planning out correctly... i usually just go at it... which works sometimes, but other times your not so lucky... have a clean enviornment, and the right tools... holesaws, dremel bits, drill, jigsaw and such... a dremel is great, it can do everything really.. but realistically it cant do everything perfectly because its designed to do everything good, instead of one thing perfect...

also, eye and ear protection, just use it! seriously ive had pieces of dremel bits fly at my face, had a jigsaw blade fly out of the jigsaw and if it had been an inch in any direction probably would have flown through my foot...

my biggest personal issue is that i never finish any of my modding projects :(

i have a new case every few months and start modding it to hell... some of them i get pretty close and then just get bored... others things didnt work out like i wanted and i just give up...

i dont believe i have ever truly completed a case mod in my life :(

maybe if i can get some money together i will mod a G5 case... its so sexy, but i dont have $200...

so anyone who wants to donate to the buy FLECOM a G5 case please send paypal to... [email protected]
 
prepare for a noobie post...

i succesfully stealthed my cds. but how can you go wrong doing that? i also drilled a hole in the front of my case for the switch for my cathodes. i slipped and its kinda rough around the edges, but it isn't bad. this weekend i plan to add in a couple fan holes and a window. i bet ill have a nice horror story after it.
 
well, i dont have pictures right now...but my latest project was to put leds as spotlights over the keyboard to use it at night

so its 2 3v blue leds...i hooked it up and it was fine, then i put a switch in it and i saw that it was a switch that can be off, on for circuit one, on for circuit two... so i thought about hooking an orange led to the bottom of the keyboard so it glows...but i forgot to put a resistor... i wired it in and turned it to the orange led, that burnt out, i panicked and switched it the blue one and somehow those two burnt out too

so i lost 3 expensive leds in like 2 minutes
 
Originally posted by wayne
so i lost 3 expensive leds in like 2 minutes [/B]
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I know all about stupid things like that. I burn't out one LED that way when I started trying to figure out why the one's I soldered to a board were'nt working. Took me 3 LED's to figure out my soldering Iron was to hot and was trashing them =(

Luckily they were only 25 cents a piece.
 
mine are mainly related to bad measurements.... number one, window on the side of my case, placed a little too low, so the acrylic panel actually hits the frame of the case when i close the side panel (which I had hinged at the back), so it prevented the side from closing properly...
similarly, I cut a 80mm blowhole on the front of my old desktop, to match with the fan that is screwed into the frame behind it... miscalculated the position by a centimeter, so it didn't match...

so in short,

measure twice, cut once!
 
pictures pictures!!

they're important cus pictures tell a thousand words
 
Originally posted by wayne
pictures pictures!!

they're important cus pictures tell a thousand words
Click to expand...

They may be worth a thousand words but I am sure no one here screws up and then says to themselves, "Self, I am going to take a picture of this so I can show everyone how I screwed up".
 
*sigh*
if only the search worked for the old "Stupid Dremel accidents" thread.
 
Originally posted by Ike
They may be worth a thousand words but I am sure no one here fucks up and then says to themselves, "Self, I am going to take a picture of this so I can show everyone how I fucked up".
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well, i m saying pictures of something that was messed up currently or messed up a while ago but still there

by the way, its not f*cked up, its just a piece of elegant art...all about the mistakes

one more thing, watch your language, there may be kids looking at these threads
 
ive burnt out like 5 red LED's trying to wire them up to the fan port on my 9000Pro to light the duct i made for it (which can't be used anymore because i had the cooler i was using ziptied on when i made it, then tried to drill holes in it and snapped a drillbit in it. so i gave up and hacked up a p2 heatsink to replace it)

i also started modding a fulltower case to AT so i could use it for my computer. didn't do ANY measurements whatsoever, so needless to say it didn't fit. i gave up on that too. noticing a trend? :D

i also lost my motherboard just recently because my custom waterblock leaked on it. worked for a few more days, then died completely. the waterblock works great now, but i need a new mobo. :( though it may be the cpu, and i don't have a way to check that (my brother has a p4, and the only athlon boards i have access to don't support xp's. though i may be able to get a 1.2 duron to test the mobo... hmm)

other than that, i've screwed up the standard amount (or a few more) of my cuts in cases. maybe i should start planning my projects ahead of time:eek:
 
i dont think i have ever not made a mistake on a mod...but thats what modding is a learning experience. if it wasnt we would just settle for what we know and we can do easily and never push ourselves and achieve greatness. most of my mistakes have benifited my mods....when i screw something up i have to find a creative way to fix it....hence making it better and then i get more ideas for that project....which always makes me spend more money and have the project take way longer than i thought it would...
 
I took apart the PSU and was hacking an extra hole so that the ATX cable would come out the bottom instead of the front. Put everything back together, stick in paper clip....the fans would 'kick' for a very brief second, then it would shut down. Somewhere in my soldering I managed to short something. Still have the PSU....can't for the life of me figure out what I shorted. If I had a multimeter, maybe I could figure out....
 
Originally posted by wayne
well, i dont have pictures right now...but my latest project was to put leds as spotlights over the keyboard to use it at night

so its 2 3v blue leds...i hooked it up and it was fine, then i put a switch in it and i saw that it was a switch that can be off, on for circuit one, on for circuit two... so i thought about hooking an orange led to the bottom of the keyboard so it glows...but i forgot to put a resistor... i wired it in and turned it to the orange led, that burnt out, i panicked and switched it the blue one and somehow those two burnt out too

so i lost 3 expensive leds in like 2 minutes
Click to expand...

So no resistors is bad right... :D
 
For my first paint job I used the one coat method, it ships off realy easy now. The first fan hole I cut was with a dull drill bit and some tin snips and then I cleaned it up with a dremel sanding drum, for my second fan hole I used a tungsten-carbide cutter so it came out a little better but the edges are not by any means smooth on either fan hole. Since then I havn't attempted any mods that have failed. I currently have a Chieftec Dragon that I'm going to cut into over spring break. We'll see how that goes.:D

Edit: I sleeved the cables to my new power supply (that didn't go so bad) and then decided to paint the molex connectors black so I went and picked up some Rustoleum Vynil at Home Despot. FYI that stuff sucks @$$. I literally wound up peeling the vynil crap off and then repainting using some flat black model master paint I had lying arround. Came out much better this time.
 
Since pictures are worth a thousand words, here ya go:
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What happend here is a bad misjudgement. I was interested in trying a holesaw for some 80mm fans. So, homedepot I went. They had a 79mm and a 81mm, no 80mm. So I bought the 81 thinking 1mm would not make much of a dif. That was before I found that a holesaw on a hand drill wobbles a bit and widens the holes. Needless to say I have a gap around both fans *did both holes at once*. They are not that noticable until you look at them closely.
 
the reason it was too big is becuase 80mm fans are measured diagonally... which includes the part of the fan for mounting it...

the right bit was in fact 76mm bit... there is no 79 AFAIK
 
1st mods (I had to do some digging to find em)… Their faults as a moded case were my faults as there moder :( …
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#2. Hmm, can’t really find a good pic of this one online. (It would be the one in the back of pic #2)
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#3. My new case :), And now I am a proud moder, every day I watch this one grow into a good and strong Mod!
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o wow, nice case

btw, Tanis143: the fan hole doesnt look that bad, i didnt notice when i first saw it
 
I don't have a horror mod per se, but a bad modding experience.

In the span of 1 hours time I manged to do the following to myself:

Burnt my fingers on a soldering iron.
Set my hair on fire.
Electrocuted myself with my PSU.
My finger ended up bleeding. (Still haven't figured out what it was from)

It was at that point that I decided to stop for the night and get some sleep. ;) Luckily none of the above resulted in any damage to the mod itself, just me.
 
My worst experience wasn't so much modding, just putting my first computer together. So there I was, ordered a 550 P3, 128mb ram, 20GB hd, etc. and finally everything arrived. I spent about a week getting a spot ready in my basement for me to put it together in the storage room. The only problem was there wasn't a power outlet, so I just ran an extension cord to the room. I put everything together and everything starts to run perfect, then the shit hit the fan.

I went upstairs to get a soda, and when I came back downstairs, my comp had rebooted. I'm like ... ok, probably just win2kpro rebooting for something. So it starts going again then BOOM, reboots again. I tried for another two hours or so trying to get it to keep running, but then I decided I probably had a bad part. I sent everything (I mean everything, case, mobo, ram, everything.) back.

About two weeks later I get my next shipment! I set it all up, and everything runs smooth. I sit there and watch to make sure it runs alright when, again, it reboots. After another four or five hours of testing everything, I sent it all back again.

About another week and a half later everything finally arrived. I put it all together thinking "third times a charm right?" Nope, not for me at least. Same thing happened so I shipped everything back yet again.

This time, I did it right. I put it together and it rebooted again. As soon as it rebooted I took it to a local computer store and had them look at it. They said it was a bad mobo and put a different one in.

I get home and begin loading win2kpro again and BOOM, another fucking reboot. I had to ship everything back... again.

The fifth, and last time, I got everything back, I figured out the problem. My mom clipped the ground prong on the extension cord and current was building up in my case and would fry my mobo.

beat that tough guys :p
 
me and my brother both killed computers we were putting together for other people, and took long enough that they couldn't send it back under the 30day limit, so a manufacturer RMA was the only option. we didn't know about those at that point:eek: :( so they had to buy new stuff and then we set it up for them and it worked (two different people)
 
Boy i've had my share.......

1. Painted "Ice Chamber" to fast to get it done. Resulted in a very poor uniform finish when showned in the sunlight

2. Used jigsaw to fast on a piece of plexiglass and it split right down the middle. Got another sheet and did the exact same thing. $10 wasted on windows and $10 on gas. Fed up, went and got Lexan.

3. Didn't dust the interior of "Blue Fantasy" enough and ended up painting dust covered drive bays that looked like total shit.

4. Incorrectly measured the holes for my 120mm radiator fan and had to redrill them then slipped with the drill and shredded one into one gigantic hole. Tried to cover them up with edging but it didn't look to good. Was so pissed at myself for months. Measure ONCE, TWICE, THREE TIMES then cut!!!

5. Didn't align holes properly for drilling for a "Knight Rider" blue light kit on "Cold Fusion" Since it didn't have a drive bay door, everyone could see my piss ass job.

6. Dremel slipped out of my hands while edging a blowhole and put a nice permament marker right on top of my new case. Cussed so hard my throat hurt.

And you really don't feel like taking pictures when you fuck up a case mod, trust me.
 
Originally posted by IceWind
And you really don't feel like taking pictures when you fuck up a case mod, trust me.
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well, i would because me and my friends can always look back and laugh our butts off at my stupid mistakes
 
Just to add to the thread - it wasn't the case that was damaged, but dropped a running dremel in my lap - luckily it had the polishing attachment and did only minor damage to my leg.
 
Modding a 9800pro. I put on a copper hsf from an AMD. it worked flawlessly for a month, and then fell of while travelling to a lan party, taking part of the core with it.
 
Originally posted by Xeese
Just to add to the thread - it wasn't the case that was damaged, but dropped a running dremel in my lap - luckily it had the polishing attachment and did only minor damage to my leg.
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Ouch, that could have been real bad with a cut-off wheel :eek:

I made a really dumb mistake while modding an old Pentium 133 case. I had done a bunch of work on it, it was turning out really awesome, just how i wanted. It was the type of case that had all the side pannels as one piece, so i did a very stupid thing and tried to cut off the one side in order to make it into a separate door. Well, the section ended up worping and was never the same again, even after i tried bracing it and such. I basically ruined the whole project and never ended up finishing it out :(
 
Originally posted by Xeese
Just to add to the thread - it wasn't the case that was damaged, but dropped a running dremel in my lap - luckily it had the polishing attachment and did only minor damage to my leg.
Click to expand...
ouch!!!

i think the biggest drawback on a dremel is that it doesnt hav a power button that you gotta hold down to power it... if it did, the dremel woulda stopped spinning when u dropped it
 
My worst thing was i put in some new neon tubes and i didnt have any room on the front of my case so i decided to put the switch on the side above the window. it was cutting good and was looking perfect just how i thought. then stupid me stoped the bit and pulled it out (not done cutting) and looked at it. i put it back it (not putting power to it) then when it was in the hole i gave it power and the side flew about 2 feet in the air and cracked the window. it sucked. but hey it just gave me a new reason to get the case i wanted :D
 
update my losses to include a rev 1 asus a7n8x deluxe. water spilled on it, then i think i may have shorted it out putting it in my case (i think it was the case that killed it, as it worked for a while after the water got on it)

now i need a new one. grr:mad:
 
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my 3rd mod ever, first paint job, turned out really well....had it for about 2 years til I got hooked on diablo......





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:( im sux ok?
 
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