Project Little Devil: Shuttle Based Modding

[Gordy]

A quick update , I've not done a massive amount of work but I have sanded down some more of the discs. They are starting to look very nice indeed.

Also I recieved a new aluminium knob from maplins , the old one had a bit of glue on from a previous mod so i ordered a new one, maplins messed up and sent the wrong sized one to start off with , but they fixed the problem and sent out a new one telling me to keep the old one so thumbs up to maplins after sales support !

The piccies (Click on them for full sized shots):

[Gordy]

I've not updated this log in a while as I havent had the time to do anymore work on this log for a wee while.

What I have been doing is to plan exactly what I want to do and order some parts. One of the main changes from the stuff I've done to date is the whole theme of the mod, I have ditched the blue rings from the front and back of the case in favour of some much nicer looking rings

I need to change the name of the project as liquid bloo is no longer suitable.

Onto the grills:

The piccies (Click on them for full sized shots):









The grills are stunning , the pics dont even do them justice they rock!

Big shout out to bonzo who made these up for me.
www.bonzai-mods.com

I intend to get a few major tools over the next day or two to allow me to finish this mod to the standard I am looking for.

[Gordy]

I've been redoing the aluminium and perspex discs that I did at the start of this project. I was never happy with the finish on them and with my new sander I was able to do a far better job.

They arent finished yet , I need to drill two holes for leds. I've been doing a test on a spare one I have made before to check it will look ok first. As you can see they are slightly different sizes , two of them will be for the back of the case and be smaller with the two bigger ones for the front.

Piccies





They are hard to photograph so the pics dont do them justice.

[Gordy]

I've done some more work today on the project , and I have some cash at long last so I've ordered a few bits and bobs for the project, they should come in the next few days.

Today what I've been doing is more on the case feet. I drilled two new holes to allow me to mount LED's into the blue plexi. These leds will light up the feet and hopefully should should look ace.

First thing I did which took 20secs is to ripoff the old plastic feet and bin them.



Then it was onto the feet, first thing I did was to countersink the main bolt hole so the screw will sit flush and so the case rests on the feet not the bolt. In the piccy the one on the right is the countersunk version



I then drilled two holes that go into the top disc (5mm dia) and into the blue plexi (3mm dia) . This allows the LED's to pop out of the top of the disc and not short out on them.



I hooked up one of the led's to my led tester cable to give you an idea of the final look will be like. Unfortunatly my camera wont let me turn the flash off grrrrrrr so these pics are very hard to take , of the 20 I took these are the only vaguely usuable ones. So my apologise for the quality.





I'm going to wire up the LED's tonight which shouldnt take too long , I'm not sure yet just how I will be powering them. I may make a circuit which controls them.

Hope you like the case feet so far

[Gordy]

Today was supposed to be day of parts delivery but unfortunatly my door bell decided no it wasnt a good day for ringing so I missed the two couriers argggg!.

First off is a quick shot of the feet that have all now been drilled for the LED's



I tried to do some more of the feet bits I have left which started off with me wiring up 8x 3mm Blue leds for the feet. I wanted to use my favourite silver wire but its too thick for the feet so I found some very thing blue wiring for the feet leds. I will wire the rest of the way to the led circuit with the silver wire.

Heres the LEDs with the feet





Next up was to drill the mounting points for the feet into the case chassis. I did a quick test fit of the feet to show you what they will look like. I also removed the remains of the sticker on the bottom of the case.













Thats all for today I need some more aluminium sheet to get any further and I'm waiting for my bulk order to arrive.

[Gordy]

I've been too busy for the last few weeks to work on this project or any of my other ones. I have now pretty much finished the other stuff so I can get back on with this project..

What I have done over the last few days is to look at the wiring for the case feet. I've rigged up 8 LED's and made a small circuitboard to power them.

Click on the pictures for larger versions as normal:











The feet are hard to photograph due to the lights but you get the idea.

[Gordy]

Well I've spent the last few days , continuing with the work on the case feet.

I've finished the wiring and , glued the led's into place. The led wiring required 2 extra holes for each foot, so I drilled the holes into the case bottom. I then installed them into the case and tested them out.

The look amazing in the flesh , but are a complete and utter nightmare to photograph so apologise for the quality of some of the pics. (Click on them for full sized shots)












I took some shots with the case cover on to give you an idea of the final look.

[Gordy]

Ok first off a name , change as I've decided to go down a different route than I orginally intend I feel the name no longer suits the project so from now on it will be called Project Little Devil. You've seen the grills so you get the idea

Over the last few days I've mainly been killing leds on fans and doing some front panel modifications.





After that I built a fan control circuit which killed a couple of led fans in the process but I got it done in the end (new fans on order hehe)





Finally I took a few very dusty shots of the front panel in place to give you an idea of what the final layout will be







I hope to get a bit more done on this project this week.

[Gordy]

Some more parts have arrived to allow me to do some more on this project.

First off my replacement fans arrived to allow me to redo the fans. I've used the same blue wiring as the leds in feet as it matches.



After that I attacked the switch setup. In the orginal case there was an optical in and out ports above the pci/agp slot , I dont use these so removed them. This left me with 2 square holes and two small round holes. I needed somewhere to put the power/reset switches and pwr/hdd leds this was perfect. I got some cheap but nice square looking switches from maplins. The squares needed to be enlarged slightly but they fit perfectly into place.




Lastly I added the led's in led holders in the two holes above the switches.



If you look in the second pic you can see a nasty looking hole where the hole for the inbuilt wireless ariel used to be . I was going to mount a bulgin led switch in there but decided it didnt look right. I have a solution to the hole in progress

[Gordy]

Well I've finished the little trick I had planned to cover the whole. What I did was to create two peices of perspex to allow me to mount and cover a rheostat which will control the two from fans.

The protective covers for the perspex are still in place but you should get the idea . The rheostat in the pics is dead as a dodo so I will be using a different one in the final setup. It will have blue wiring like all the other wires.

Two shots of the perspex:




Two shots of the perspex with the rheostat in place:





Three shots of the knob in place, I will probably use a black version of this knob in the final case though:







And a quick shot from the inside of the case:

[Gordy]

I've made some real progress today, first off my new rheostats arrived and I wired the single one up I require to control the front fans. The mounting is slightly larger than for the old one so I will have to re drill the mounting plate





After that I tried to mount up the fans onto the face plate and fix them into place. I quicklyt realised the fans hit the case in the bottom corners. I removed one of the mounting points on each fan and trimmed the chassis a bit more to make it fit. After that I thought about how to hold it all in place. I planned on using the existing screwing points but these were in some unknown imperial size. So I decided to drill through them and using a long bolt with a nut hidden behind. This meant I could do a proper test fit. Everything fits perfectly. These pics will give you an idea of the final look but there are some major changes to the look to come







Some more pics with the cover on.

[Gordy]

I've been working on the front panel today to get it ready for its trip

The spare test face plate got a black spray paint job to see how it would look. Even with a quick and rough spray job it looks ace .





Back to the orginal faceplate , I've been working on the cd bay cover , I have more work on this still to do later

[Gordy]

Another update, this time I've been working on the mounting for the LCD I am going to be using. It is made up of 3 plates , the first is the outer aluminium bay plate cover behind which is a perspex holder for the lcd itself. This means I only need to use two visible bolts in the whole lcd holder. The third plate is a back plate which will be bolted directly onto the drive itself.

The frontmost aluminium plate still needs to have its screen area cut out which will be one of my tasks for later.

First off heres some pictures of the plates being made











Here's the final structure of the mounting bracket





Heres a quick shot to show you the scale of it when it is attached to the optical drive



And finally two shots comparing it to an official Matrix orbital bracket. The lcd in the bracket is an MX2 lcd which I will be using in the project , the other lcd is a none working one from another project. It just stops me from killing a perfectly good lcd.

[Gordy]

Ok some more work on this project to give you lucky folks.

First off I had to cut out a slot for the lcd in the front bay plate.






After that I had played with the logo from a shuttle face plate , I cut off the end of a bolt and mounted the thread into a small hole in the back of the logo. I then glued it into place.



I did a test fit with my spare face plate and it works a treat.







I had a minor setup back on the face plate , the perspex piece has cracked near one of the holes for mounting my devil fan grills However its not the end of the world and the solution is quite simple and would have been necessary anyway. More on that later.

Here is a quick final shot of the face plate with all its holes drilled.

[Gordy]

Hi All,

Its been a while since I did and update, there are a few reasons for this, firstly I've been snowed under with real life/work stuff so haven't had a chance to do any modding. Add to this the fact I've lost my workshop area for a couple of months and I've only just got it back. As you can imagine I've been frustrated hehe.

Unfortunatly there is only bad news to report on this project, Royal mail have lost several items that I have made so far including the shuttle case cover, aluminium faceplates and plastic face plate. These will have to be re-sourced/remade which is a real pain in the backside.

I've got to put a claim into royal mail for them but I doubt I will get all that they are worth and they say it will be a few months till I see a penny

While I'm waiting on this problem to be over come I will be working on a different project which I will post shortly...

[Gordy]

Well things just got wierd!

Had a knock at the door earlier and I assumed it was the courier coming to deliver my bits ordered for my new project. It was a courier box he was carrying a box I recognised!

And lo it was the box I sent off to the usa many moons ago, the reason its been returned was stated as " Not deliverable as addressed, Unable to forward"

God knows what happened I will have to speak to the people at the other end and double check the address.

At least I dont have to redo everything!