Adeptus Mechanicus Techno-Reliquary

OK I'm back after way too long of a hiatus. Thanks for waiting!

First off, I've got my hands on some 'new' junk to cannibalize. These things have some awesome heavy switches that make a nice 'clunk' sound, as well as some slider rheostat type things that I'm going to try to use as fan controllers.

An old tape deck:


And some kind of amps or equalizers:




World's first PCI cards? heh.


More potentially useful junk:






Anyway here's the case, basically stripped down. I don't think you're going to see a single inch of the case on the finished product, but I'm still using it because I have no desire to fabricate all the drive mounts etc. from scratch.


As you may have noticed in the concept, the optical drives are going to be on the bottom of the case. My ingenious solution is to turn the whole thing upside down. I should be getting paid for this. :D


This part that the optical drives mount to is detachable, so with some very minor changes I flipped it over (so that part remains rightside up, while the rest of the case is upside down).


The whole case is going to be widened. This is to allow room for the 'false' window mod, as well as to make it a little more bulky and give it the front silhouette I want. I'm using 1x1 wood here because it's cheap and easy to work with, especially given that I do not have a lot of power tools.


The wood is attached by screwing 1" wood screws from the inside of the case, into the wood. It is quite sturdy now, even without any side panels attached.


I cut out notches in a few places so that the PCI cards and optical drives can be screwed into place without the wood frame getting in the way (since it overhangs the areas you need to screw into). To do this kind of notch, you make a bunch of parallell cuts at an equal depth (marked by tape), and then knock the cut parts out.






Basically framed out:




Not too exciting yet.. but keep watching!
 
Alright, time to start hacking! This is the area where the skull will be housed.


Here it is all cleaned up. Doing this with tin snips SUCKS. But I don't think a rotary saw is a good tool to use in an apartment, haha.


Here I am attaching some more wood framework. These small pieces are attached exactly like the larger ones were. The top pieces will have the top half-cylinder part attached to them. The front pieces are there to extend the front (to make more room for the skull), and also to form the 'inset' channel behind the front face panel.




I'm building a little box here to house the skull.
As a side note, I bought this huge piece of black sheet plastic at TAP, and after I got it home I realized it scratches too easily to be used on outside parts.. dammit. So I will be using it on structural stuff that won't be seen (the box will be covered up with detailing parts later). This stuff is probably great for making model buildings and the like but it isn't going to work for the exterior panels on this case as I had hoped. If anyone wants to buy it cheap, PM me.






Floor installed..




Here I am VERY roughly fitting the skull, I just wanted to see it in place. The brown half-circle behind the skull roughly approximates the profile of the top half-cylinder. I can tell already that I am probably going to mount both the skull and the half-cylinder about 2" higher. This will allow room for wires and junk going into the underside of the skull, and the sides of the skull will be more visible as well.






Comments appreciated.
Thanks
 
Nice to see you haven't died or given up. ;) Keep at it as time and money allow.

 
is the skull going to sit back that far? I thought it was going to be sitting with about about half of it in front of the case?
 
The skull isn't going to actually protrude out of the case, if that's what you mean. There is going to be a screen or window in front of it (haven't decided yet). However keep in mind that the eyepiece sticks out at least an inch from the skull, so I guess you could say the skull itself does have to sit farther back to allow clearance for the eyepiece.
 
I'm not sure why you would want to put anything in front of it. I think it looks good like it is. Or maybe throw in a good number of cables coming from it to get a techy look to it.
 
Hm, well if you look at actual medieval reliquaries, the sacred object is almost always behind glass. Though I might use a wire mesh or something like that here for a more industrial look.
 
Awesome stuff.. I like how youre doing something with such a unique theme... it looks great so far.

KEEP IT UP!

:D
 
Great work man. That skull you made is freaky yet cool.

You make the Emperor proud.
 
Sorry I'm way too tired to make comments right now, but I'll edit them in tomorrow. Basically I'm finishing with detailing the skull before I move on with the case itself, because I want to be sure the skull and everything on it will have enough clearance in its little chamber. Detailing, puttying, dremeling, sanding, etc.

EDIT: Comments added.

Rough-cutting out the hole for the cortical plug:




The cortical plug is held in with a bunch of hot glue. It's made from the dial for an electrical outlet timer, an electric motor housing, and some CD-ROM drive parts (added later on).


The skull is kinda asymmetrical in the back (see above picture) so I had to fill in with epoxy putty to make it look right. By the way I'm leaving that seam in the putty for now because I still need to be able to open up the skull to put in lighting. I will putty it over later.




The baseplate of the bionic ear is only epoxied onto the side of the skull; the first step to make it look more integrated into the skull is to fill in the gaps with plastic card. Also some more small details are added here.






I replaced that dumb looking white plastic thing on the eye with part of a CD-ROM drive that has a nice little ribbon cable coming out of it, and detailed it with some other junk.














This part is the mount for the bionic jaw (however the skull will not have the lower jaw attached). Another CD-ROM part (they are full of great stuff!).






I'm making a slightly raised area of epoxy putty around all the bionics now and then tapering it back into the skull. This is to make it appear that the bionic parts are set into the skull instead of just sitting on it. Also while the epoxy was still soft I poked a bunch of little holes into it with a punch, in the area right at the edge of the bionic parts. This is to give the 'cut' in the bone material the spongy appearance that real bone has. I'll try to get a better picture of this effect in my next post.


Last two pictures I am grinding a lot of the epoxy back down because it was a little uneven. I also sanded it smooth so it blends into the skull model very nicely, but I did not take pictures of it sanded yet.


 
Excelent work! And I love WH40k... brings back such good memories of a few years ago. Dark Angles rocked my world!
 
][nquisitor said:
Close, it's from a portable CD player, I think it was a Kenwood?
Click to expand...

5502tnrq1.jpg

Looks pretty much the same though doesn't it?

I just happened to have modded a few Playstations, and remembered what it looked like.
 
nice mod, but I am a little sad to see such a nice tape deck cannabalized... I hope it was broken to begin with.

Those old pioneers were the best!
 
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