After working on the case mod for nearly a week, I’ve been feeling the first onset of boredom. Not much to do. At all.
I’m trying my best to come up with mini-projects to tackle, mostly DIY stuff. I finally found a buyer for my spoiler (that I took off in mid-April) and made $100 cash that way. That inspired me to sell a measly sunroof wind deflector that I had in my garage. For the past few days I’ve been going crazy about mods for my car and whatnot. I started cleaning and dolling up under the hood. I painted a few trim pieces gloss black, and I refinished the exhaust heat shield. Next Friday I’m planning on taking off the valve cover and giving it a super makeover. That alone will really set off the engine bay.
Other than that, not much is going on… Trying to find a pop charger intake for my car for under $100. I think I’m supposed to reformat the office computer for my parents soon. Hurray for Windows.
I think I’ve advanced from just being bored to being boring.
Now it’s definitely done. I stayed up late last night playing with superglue, a substance I greatly detest. My fingers are all roughed and scuffed up, but the acrylic is finally sturdy. Add another $1.00 to my grand total for Walmart brand superglue.
Update: It’s not done. The case is now in six pieces on my floor. I guess once it started getting warmed up along with the pressure of the power supply being pushed into the back plate, the glue was just not holding up at all. Now I have something to do tomorrow. I’m thinking aquarium glue?
Well, it’s officially done.
I don’t know how I feel about this. It was definitely a good and fun experience. I whittled away 5 days of my summer, and I definitely accomplished something. The downside is that this wasn’t exactly the most useful thing in the world to spend my time building, since I’m never really going to see it, and there was nothing wrong with the previous case.
But it’s finally over, and to the untrained eye, it probably looks awesome. As I’ve spent so many hours staring at it, measuring it, and test-fitting it, I can see all the defects. The lid doesn’t sit flush (but it did earlier…), there’s cracks in the faux “etching” on top, the glue on some of the seams is not holding very well. Blah, blah, blah.
A pictures worth a thousand words. Here’s a photo timeline from empty to case to finished computer.
The case is now ready. The only thing I need is rubber feet to elevate the case and a switch from RadioShack to use as a power button. Once I mount the button and status LEDs, I can glue on the front of the case and it will be fully assembled.
Today’s work with the front plate (which ended up being more acrylic rather than aluminum due to price) was sort of sloppy. I can mostly blame the fact that I didn’t get the front plate earlier, so I couldn’t really line up my cuts. And the cuts I made were a little rushed…
So basically just some lines along the edges aren’t going to line (or in some cases meet) perfectly. And the lid is sitting up to a 1/16″ of an inch too high at some points. I guess you can’t tell unless you feel the edges, and once the mobo is in there it’ll be less visible.
I would post pictures of the finished box, but it’s so close to being finished I’ll just wait until tomorrow.
