Project : Halcyon in Black

Excalib12e · Nov 13, 2006

hi,let me begin my first project log ever..the name comes basically because the project will involve a lot of black acrylic. Halcyon was also the name of this rather this cool thing i saw on a wiki link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halcyon_(console). think it also means some sort of bird.

Credits due :

Hard drive meter by Dave Williams

http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2002/06/23/hdd_activity_meter/1

touch circuit by gongzero

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=100148&highlight=touch+circuit

and of course inspiration from Gnomes ORAC 3
for the motherboard covers

To start of I wanted to meet some objectives for this mod mainly :
1.Involve several electronic circuits (hard drive meter, touch circuitry)
2.Black acrylic plastic.lots of it.
3.Watercooling.
4.Stealthing of conventional parts.
5.use of jack plugs
6.Modified PSU

The casing im using will be the lian li PC 60+ Simple in design(which i intend to change),light,and very well built.I kinda dont have pics of the original casing as i only got my camera after I had cut it up.But im sure theres plenty on the net.

Lets begin with some sketches of planning and many ideas i came up with but dint necessary follow while building the mod.

Beginning the mod proper, the first step was to do something about the front of the case.I dint like the design much.So a acrylic panel was designed on coreldraw and laser cut to cover it.It had to be lasered as i wanted it dead accurate to align with the original bezel which will be kept as its the only way i can mount the acrylic panel.

Leaving the front panel aside for now, I moved on to do the top panel. Likewise it was cut with a laser. First a hole had to be cut in the top.
Time to break out the tools :dremel:

the trusty jigsaw

Some improvisation to get the cuts dead straight

The finshed hole.Not perfect but itll be masked when the top panels mounted on.

Top panel with bulgin switch and mesh x installed.

Now that the tops more or less done i went back to the front bezel.The bezel had to be cut to accomodate more mesh i wanted to install. The strange shaped cut you see is also meant for something else in the future

Mesh mounted on

(note the blue n orange acrylic circles, which i will cover later on)

Mounted on the casing along with the top panel

Excalib12e · Nov 13, 2006

I decided to place a small 20x4 LCD and a rheobus in the bays like in the last sketch. Thing is I did not want to use the original lian li faceplates. So I would need a piece of aluminium on which to mount them.And where better to get one than the side panel itself.So I set about cutting out a window first.

From this :

To this:

Nothing interesting about the cutting..did it in the same way as the top of the casing.Now i can get to work on the scrap aluminium piece.

Marking the holes..drew the LCD template on the wrong end so now theres 2.

After much cutting

Filed and mounted in the drive bay.

Excalib12e · Nov 13, 2006

LCD and rheobus were mounted on brass standoffs. These in turn were glued to the bay aluminium plate with araldite.Didnt wanna see too many screws on the external face so this was the way to go.

the rear of the panel.

araldite is strong stuff:

with power..no night shots at the moment though.

cool thing was that this rheobus was built with smt led lighting..

teaser video for whats to come..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVeK-buUTAE

Excalib12e · Nov 13, 2006

This time I worked on the harddrive meter.The schematics will come from the wonderful guide by Dave Williams
i dint simply want a row of leds lighting up to show me hdd activity.It needed to be special.So after some thinking, I set about to the laser cutting place:

Basically a black strip of acrylic had 10 slots cut into it.Using this as a template of sorts, 10 pieces of clear 6mm thick acrylic were cut out.

And the pieces were slotted in to form :

The reason i chose to use such thick acrylic was so that it would protrude out like so :

This pics will show you what i intend to do with this bar graph like thing.

I know sanding it will allow the light to diffuse better but i kinda liked this effect.

..

Excalib12e · Nov 14, 2006

heres the continuation of the hard drive meter :

The bar graph was mounted on the mobo tray, after cutting out a rectangular slot, so the acrylic bits would protrude out the back.

Behind is where most of the action is. Here 3mm LEds are slotted into a strip of acrylic with holes drilled into it.The strip was glued on such that the leds lined up with the protruding acrylic pieces.

Earlier in the planning the length of the bar graph was made to the dimensions of a plastic project box..That was so this could be done :

The circuit, excuse the lousy solder job :worried: but least it works

Nicely covered up, plus led wires sleeved.The ends will go to the hdd meter circuit, which will be housed in another plastic box just above it.This box houses a few other goodies which will follow in good time.

heres a shot of the meter with some random lit leds..

Excalib12e · Nov 14, 2006

Remember the blue n orange arcylic circles on the front panel? Originally these were to be the touch surfaces,

which would be backlit. Everything went well and I even managed to get a power on and eject logo in place.Strangely, once installed on the panel, the touch function failed to work.So after much experimentation I decided to scrap the idea (though damn it looked so good).and go with a new one.

Old buttons (made by placing laser cut acrylic circles onto the backlit acrylic)

Sighhh.Wish they couldve worked..But anyway

here is how i designed the new "button".Small metal squares were cut from a scrap alu panel, as well as 2 acrylic "rings".

The wires would be glued to the metal square which will in turn glue to the acrylic rings (sanded).The resulting button once mounted :

Now comes the interesting task of lighting the rings, and soldering the touch circuit.I decided to integrate the lighting LEDs and the touch circuit itself, so the whole thing could be mounted just behind the buttons.

Messy soldering aside again, heres the touch circuit.Because I didnt have the foresight to order more than one QT110 touch sensor the last time (earlier intending to only have one touch button) Farnell kinda ran out of the chips.Solution? Order the SMT type..This was a real pain to solder, and I was afraid id fry the chip.But it went well, and it works.

Here you can see the rather tiny smt chip in comparison to its DIP equivalent.(not yet put in socket)

Now for the other side of the board :Orange and blue LEDs mounted and bent.(burnt my 3 mm blue so a 5mm replaced it)

After more testing to see that everything was well (including touch function)
I used araldite and the same brass standoff method used for rheobus to mount the circuit board behind the buttons.It fit just so that the LEds would line up with the edges of the acrylic rings :

Now the eye candy :

Here are the buttons with the lighting turned on :

thats all for now, hope you guys liked it

Arcygenical · Nov 14, 2006

That is reeeeeally beautiful!

McDethWivFries · Nov 14, 2006

man, that looks pretty sweet sofar

MonoDestro · Nov 14, 2006

Very professional work!

Did you just get the stuff laser cut locally?

Keep us posted!

baballin328 · Nov 14, 2006

nice.....lol

Excalib12e · Nov 14, 2006

thanks to all who've replied

yes it was cut locally by someone whos family runs a business using the laser machine, first i have to measure and design what i want, then simply send the design there.machine does the rest. These particular areas I chose to laser cut because they needed to fit perfect.

Everfalling · Nov 14, 2006

lookin awsome man. love the HAL databank thing you got goin on with the acrylic.

Adidas4275 · Nov 14, 2006

it looks great man... I really like thr 1 piece Al bay with the LCD and fan controller.. it is really clean.

Conano · Nov 14, 2006

el rolio · Nov 14, 2006

subbed

filthysanchez · Nov 14, 2006

/subscribed

skunkmunkey · Nov 14, 2006

really nice work there subbed too

Ozone77 · Nov 14, 2006

Nice electrical mods, if you add links to your sources as you work the log, we may get more people try some of these out, maybe even come up with new stuff.

Keep it up.

scrawnypaleguy · Nov 15, 2006

Holy crap this is professional-looking work. I wish I could do that!

Excalib12e · Nov 15, 2006

thanks people, well for the hdd meter and touch switch info they can all be found on bit-tech

scrawnypaleguy : if you mean for the acrylic work I cant take credit for it can I ?

because I design them and the machine basically does the rest

meinzorn · Nov 15, 2006

This is a pretty cool idea, and really well executed so far. I love the touch sensitive. maybe i'll have to try that out sometime myself.. keep us updated!

Adidas4275 · Nov 16, 2006

i really like this... do you have any other pics or can you expain how this is mounted ... the faceplate... is the LCD on the silver Al or on the removable front pannel that is on the case...

tisb0b · Nov 16, 2006

very nice work so far can't wait to see the finished product

FlimFlam · Nov 16, 2006

Yeah, so far, I simply dig it.

Your work area is so clean too!

Excalib12e · Nov 16, 2006

Adidas4275 : The LCD unit is mounted onto the silver alumium plate itself, together with the rheobus. Brass standoffs were glued to the plate, and the LCD screwed onto them.

This plate in turn was glued to the Lian Li case bezel.hope that answers it

Excalib12e · Nov 16, 2006

anyways here a small update for you guys.. : the area above the hard drive meter. I decided to get another
piece of acrylic laser cut to form a plate for this, and on this will be the
1.Rear intake fan 2.temperature display with led indicators.So here are the
pics :

The plate :

the 4 holes you see in the plate are for led indicators to show what temperature
(cpu, hdd etc..) is being measured.

Rear side with temp LED display circuitry. This was scrounged from a old
5.25 bay hard drive cooler.Im going to use a rotary switch to make it
display multiple temperatures.More on this detail later on.

Heres with chrome led holders installed.Ive yet to wire all this up but it will all be housed in the same box as the hard drive meter circuitry.

Be back with a bigger update in a few days time..

digital_exhaust · Nov 16, 2006

Very nice, love the innovative ideas!!
Waiting for more!!

brasherman · Nov 20, 2006

Very smooth. I like it a lot. GL and keep working!

Excalib12e · Nov 26, 2006

hi guys, finally an update..i know its been rather long so heres quite a big update.The hardware and all arrived, so I could start working on the motherboard covers. Very similar to what you see in the orac , ive made acrylic covers to stealth everything. Plus a few other misc things done along the way as well. Here goes..

I cut another small window in the side panel, its for mounting of USB and audio ports, plus something else

which il reveal as soon as its done. Will involve the last bit of laser cutting in the project.

Now on to the hardware.I went with the allendale e6300 , a DS3 and a X1900XT. Colourful, but not gonna be visible.

On to the covers, first a mock up with cardboard for the PCI cover.

I didnt make a cardboard mock up for the mobo cover though.

Here it is made from acrylic. All the bending was done with a heatgun.Its my first attempt at it, so its not perfect but good enough i guess.One end of the cover is not bent yet as i still have to do cutting on it. Note the L bracket that supports one end of the cover.

The other end of the cover is secured onto the screw holes in the backplate.This end of the cover had to conform to the shape of the backplate so it was cut to fit, and the edges tidied with rubber lining.

(thumbscrews used temporarily)

Heres a shot with the motherboard cover in place. Not much detail here since its basically a L shaped piece of acrylic. Again L pieces were used for the mounting to the motherboard tray

The PCI cover is just flush with the ram clips.

After cutting a slot into the pci cover, the other end was bent.

A clearer shot of how the pci cover is screwed to the backplate.

On the nxt update itll be more on the covers, as I put in the ventilation holes and show what i cut the slot in the pci cover for.(if you oserve the drawings you;ll see).Till then..

AaronP · Nov 27, 2006

Very nice, I'll be keeping an eye on this

.

Troney1169 · Nov 27, 2006

WOW I love it. You are doing some clean work. I miss seeing mods that are sleek like this.

khanable · Nov 27, 2006

Very cool!

tagging this

ERL857 · Nov 30, 2006

Whats the purpose behind covering the motherboard and such? I can't imaging thats good for cooling

Excalib12e · Nov 30, 2006

hi people thanks for the nice comments so far..

ERL857: Cooling wise yes il bet it does increase temps a little.But Ive taken that into account and am gonna put fans on some places..Its give and take between aesthetics and a little temperature difference.But temp rise or not, my sole purpose is to stealth the motherboard and cards.There are already several mods which have done so as well

Why you ask? I dunno really..just tired of looking at motherboards through casing windows.Besides, itll help with the overall look of the case.

Will have an update on the completed covers soon. Till then!

ERL857 · Nov 30, 2006

Excalib12e said:
hi people thanks for the nice comments so far..

ERL857: Cooling wise yes il bet it does increase temps a little.But Ive taken that into account and am gonna put fans on some places..Its give and take between aesthetics and a little temperature difference.But temp rise or not, my sole purpose is to stealth the motherboard and cards.There are already several mods which have done so as well Why you ask? I dunno really..just tired of looking at motherboards through casing windows.Besides, itll help with the overall look of the case.

Will have an update on the completed covers soon. Till then!

Well first concern was cooling, second (just my opinion anywa) I'm all for hiding wires and looking very minimal, but there is a part of me that likes to show off what I've got

I'm currently saving up for a good case to I can do some real wire control and such.My current one sucks.

Still, nonetheless, awesome project.

Excalib12e · Dec 1, 2006

thanks..yea to me wire control is really important.Thats why i wanna stealth everything, and the only wires you;ll see ( hopefully) are those that i choose to display..hope you can get your new case soon.

FLECOM · Dec 1, 2006

man its been a while since i said "cool!"

nice work!

Killermac · Dec 2, 2006

wow great work I wish that I could draw like that for your idea log. Keep up the great work.

KM

Excalib12e · Dec 13, 2006

And after 2 weeks of juggling work and the project, finally, the other half of the mobo cover is finished.

Here are the 2 "raw" pieces.Ive worked mainly on the top portion, as the bottom is more or less done and is waiting for the addition of other pieces.

You can just make out where I put the radiator. Air will come in through the front -- > radiator --> through the PCI cover and out the back through the pci slots.

After much filing, sandpapering etc, we have the finished top motherboard cover.The meshX will allow ventilation to the rams . A normal fangrill and 40mm fan will be in place over the chipset hole once the cover is properly mounted. (more pics on that when i get to mounting it )

Here it is being test fitted on the motherboard.No problems here

With the bottom piece mounted as well.

Looks like everything fits well, next up will be preparations for the electronics and cable concealment.This is the most tedious step, but I hope to have an update within the week or so. Cheers.

Everfalling · Dec 13, 2006

lookin slick

Project : Halcyon in Black

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