Scout - A Robopocalypse inspired ID Cooling T-60 SFX [Completed Feb 21, 2016]

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Jan 6 2016

 

Time to build the chassis to hole the legs, and maybe some other stuff, possibly.

 

The fun begins with some nice thick aluminum.  I need something that's going to hold up when there's some weight in the case.

 

Before I got to far, I had to countersink some case screws to keep them from interfering.

 

Cut and mounted the first plate to the case using the original holes for the case feet.

 

After figuring out the spacing on the legs and how to fit them in with the two fans I want to mount in this section, I started piecing it together.

 

And then I mounted it to the case.  The thing looks like a bug stuck on it's back.  And every time I turned around, it stabbed me!

 

The legs are adjustable as far as the angle is concerned.  Only being able to have one mount point made that possible, but bothers me a little.  I'd like to have an extra screw in there to make it more stout, but even with 92mm fans, there isn't much room left over for the legs.

 

I could have stopped here and it would look ok, but I want fans and all sorts of stuff down here, plus a bottom plate would clean it up a ton.  Soo...

 

I left the bit after the bend long because that aluminum is thick and the bending isn't always precise and I also thought about maybe having it run up the case a bit as sort of a bumper.  But after seeing it, not so much.  So I cut her down!

 

Much better.

 

That extra plate adds some robustness to the structure and gives me some(very little) extra room for components, plus, I think it fits in really well.  Next up is figuring how to shove 2 fans in there, which, btw, don't really fit , and getting the PSU plug down there somehow.

 

--End Build Log--

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Jan 8 2016

 

And this one goes out to all my fans!

 

So fan time for the bottom of the case!  Cut a nice little hole in the leg addition to the case.

 

I marked out the screw holes, but decided to wait on them til I got a little further along.  Two reasons for this, the screw holes in the fans are a bit squirrely and not exact corner to corner, and I'm not really sure how I'm going to mount them or what I'm going to mount them too.

 

Then I cut a passthrough in the bottom plate.  I hadn't really thought about them being thicker than the legs, but noticed it in test fitting.  Fans sticking out everywhere is starting to develop into a theme for this build, not that that is a totally bad thing.  I see it as an opportunity to do cool things.  

 

 

So now I'm mulling over my options.  Leave them open, which is my lazy idea.  Not horrible but it would be a bad design idea if this were a real robot designed to run through woods and rubble.  It also leaves an opportunity sitting on the table, unrealized.  Second option is a grill similar to the one on the top fans.  Not bad, but I'm not looking forward to cutting that pattern again.  It does carry on the visual elements of the case though, and I like to build that kind of thing in, so it's still an option.  The third option, and the one I like the best, is a scoop.  Something like the one on the side panel but facing forwards, like it's an air intake, which is actually what it would be.  My only concern with this route is that by pulling air through a small intake, this case is going to start sounding like a jet engine, which it might with or without a scoop anyways.  I haven't run the fans yet, but I don't expect them to be at Noctua sound levels.  But really, no matter what it does to the sound profile, I think I'm going with a scoop.  I'm not building this thing to sound cool. 

 

--End Build Log--

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Jan 14, 2016

 

I got to working on finishing the fabrication of Scout.  Let's start with the scoop on the bottom.  It came out ok, but I'm not totally sold on it yet.

 

Epoxying the parts together this time.  Not as strong as brazing them together, but it also doesn't tend to bow the panel either, so I'm giving it a go.

 

And mounted.

 

Something about it just hits me wrong.  I'm gonna have to mull this choice over while I'm prepping for paint.  Maybe I'll try a different intake angle, or shorten it's length, or just take it off completely.  This one is just in the air for now.

 

With the scoop done and panels made for the back of the case to cover the fan hole and relocate the power plug, it was time for final assembly for before tearing it down for paint.

 

With the PSU in, the cut out for the cable is perfect.

 

And that routes to the new back panel cover.

 

Top fans, side panel, and SSD's with their cover mock-ups.

 

This is exactly why I'm assembling this before paint.  Found a hole that needs to be cut.

 

Everything but the cooler installed.

 

Unfortunately the cooler blocks access to everything so it has to be last, which is fun because of the legs jutting out the side.  I rigged up some boxes to allow room for the legs, and luckily, Scythe included the perfect screwdriver for installing the cooler.

 

And with the cooler.

 

It's actually kind of spacious with a ton of room under the cooler, so there's plenty of room for the wiring, just no room for hands.

 

And everything but the side panel together before it goes into paint.

 

Now for body filler and paint fumes!

 

--End Build Log--

[Tearass]

Oo what colour are you painting this beast?

[InsolentGnome]

Oo what colour are you painting this beast?

 

Original thought was to use some hot-rod black I have sitting around.  I really liked the look of the paint on another case I did.  But after staring at it I'm leaning towards a black base with a prismatic flake over it.  Trying to imitate some beetles that have a prismatic coloring.

[Tearass]

Original thought was to use some hot-rod black I have sitting around.  I really liked the look of the paint on another case I did.  But after staring at it I'm leaning towards a black base with a prismatic flake over it.  Trying

to imitate some beetles that have a prismatic coloring.

 

I'm wondering how difficult it would be to pull off the flake without it looking tacky. Definitely got my attention though!

[zombiepixel]

it looks like a spider! its kinda cool! especially cause its built from scratch! respect. 

[IPickle]

Looks awesome :0

[InsolentGnome]

I'm wondering how difficult it would be to pull off the flake without it looking tacky. Definitely got my attention though!

 

It's gonna be a challenge for sure!

 

it looks like a spider! its kinda cool! especially cause its built from scratch! respect. 

 

Thanks!  But it's not a scratch.  At it's heart is an ID Cooling T 60-SFX.

 

Looks awesome :0

 

Thanks!

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Jan 18, 2016

 

SCIENCE TIME!!!  Well sort of.  While I'm playing the waiting game with primer and body filler, let's play around with some plastics or plastic resin to be specific.  Actually, I've been playing around with them for a few months now trying to get enough experience with them to really use them effectively.  They're one of those things that have a thousand possibilities, but no real instructions beyond "Mix part A with part B".  After playing around with a few types and figuring out which ones give me chemical burns and which ones allow me to do what I want, I'm starting to get a grip on them.  Now it's time to put it to use!

 

First step in every great science project...get a lab coat.  Totally worth it.  Great for catching that coffee spill AND looking like you know what you're supposed to be doing!

 

Next step...Crazy flashing goggles.

They don't help at all, but really add to the "Mad Scientist" vibe.

 

Third step...Mix part A with part B. 

 

I can't give you all my secrets, right?  I mean the lab coat and goggles are like 85% of the process and I told you that for free.   But I can show you some of my results for the Scout build.

 

SSD Covers-I've been working on these for a while, trying to get a perfect mold for production.  I'm close.  Close enough that they're going to work for Scout.

 

And in their intended role, covering a SSD.

 

Clear really isn't the best choice for these since they're meant to dress up the SSD by hiding it, but for what I'm planning I need clear this time.  So there's still a bit more work to do on these for Scout, but that will be later.

 

The second experiment for Scout has been the side panel.  I wanted something different.  Something crazy.  Something like...

 

A black side panel???  Ok I admit it.  I screwed this part up a bit in my experimenting.  I made it too black because it's actually tinted...a whole lot.

 

That's my super bright LED shop light shining through it.  Or rather trying to shine through it.  The dots are the individual LEDs.  Whoops, guess I need to start measuring things a bit more.  The cool part of this panel is a bit hard to see since I made it so dark this time.  It's barely visible in the next pic.

 

If you look real close, there's a faint green line that the arrows are pointing to.  I can barely pick them out and I know what I'm looking for.  That is actually...dum-dum-duuuuum...

 

A strand of EL wire embedded in the panel.  Or one of three to be more exact.

 

A previous version had some issues with design (it sucked) and execution (it sucked too), but it gives you an idea of the end product better than my patent pending, supernova-level, light shield

.

 

Next try, I'll make the panel thinner (it's 5/8" thick and needs to be 1/2" or less) with a little less tint and I'll have 'light stripes'...meh.  EL stripes...nah, looks like someone murdering Spanish.  Electroluminescent pinstripes...bit of a mouthful.  Brite Stripes...hmmm, I like it. 

 

Til next update!

 

--End Build Log--   

[Tearass]

Mad scientist doing mad science.

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Jan 25 2016

 

Feels like I'm falling behind on updates even though it's only been a week.  Currently everything for Scout is under primer and ready, but I'm waiting for some special coatings to come in before I start spraying.  So in the interim, I've been working on the side panel.  Everything is the same as before, except this time I actually calculated for the panel I wanted.  1/4" of tinted and back fill the lighting with 1/4" clear.  I figured clear on the back because with tint in the back fill, you could see a change in brightness due to the depth of the wire.  And this EL definitely didn't want to lay flat.  I stuck with superglue(hahaha, get it?) for sticking the EL to the panel.  I figured if I could do a decent job of gluing, it wouldn't show too bad.  

 

And the results:

 

Back side

 

Front unlit

 

Front lit up

 

It's not super bright, but it shows up.  I'm hoping that's partly because my batteries are weak in my transformer.  In the case, the transformer will be wired to the PSU, so power shouldn't be a problem.

 

Shot a little video of it blinking to show the effect better.

 

I won't really know how well it works til I get the case painted and the panel on, but for now, I think this is the panel I'm going with. 

 

--End Build Log--

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Jan 27, 2016

 

Small update.  Knocked out the paint on Scout.  7 coats of paint.  2 black, 2 mystic chameleon, 1 prizmacoat flake, and 2 clearcoat.

 

 

Pictures don't really do it justice.  And they make it look VERY purple. This video tells the whole story. 

 

 

I can't wait to see this thing in some daylight!

 

--End Build Log--

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Jan 29, 2016

 

So, I have to be honest, I was very scared after getting the paint laid down.  It looks good, but man that's purple!

 

 

Before I put a lot of effort into sanding, re-clearing, sanding again, and buffing, I wanted to get an idea of what the case would look like put together.  If it was going to be that purple, I was going to go back to the drawing board.  But...

 

 

The black and the greens really come back when the case is together.  The idea was to get a color shift similar to some beetles, and this is exactly what I was hoping for!

 

I shot a little vid doing a walkaround so you can see the shift in action.  

 

 

So happy with how it turned out!  Now it's time to really bring the shine out!

 

--End Build Log--

[InsolentGnome]

-Research Log-

Feb 7, 2016

 

So we made a really interesting discovery today while studying the cases of some of the Scouts.  Well, OK, we accidentally ground out a wire on one of the cases, but the results are crazy.  We knew that they bodies had a special coating, sort of a chameleon effect.  Very similar to what you would see on used on a car.  The coating shifts between green, purple and black just sitting there.  These photos give you sort of an idea.

 

 

The crazy thing is that once you apply power, the coating becomes active.  Meaning that it doesn't just rely on light angles to produce a color change, but the Scouts can alter the color using different power levels to achieve different effects on demand.  I knew Big Rob was sneaky, but this is a whole new level.  Hopefully we can reverse engineer this coating.  It would totally change the notion of camouflage.

 

--End Log--

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Feb 7, 2016

 

I'm finally done with paint...mostly.  Four coats of clear with a sanding in between and then a good sanding and buff.  Unfortunately, I kind of burned through in a couple of spots, which is why I'm not done.  Plus, the legs...I'm not sure how far I want to take them considering they're basically 4 edges with some extra edges thrown in for good measure.  I might just hit a few bad runs and call it good.  They're just too easy for me to mess up trying to sand and buff them.  Since the paint is out of the way, time to start assembly and wiring.  

 

Luckily I can work around the two pieces I still have to buff.  Mobo and PSU mounted.

 

 

And then putting the fans together.  I thought about sleeving the wires since they were black red and blue, but decided since they were totally apart, that I'd just switch over to some black wire that I had.  I want a more industrial look and going sans sleeving really fits the build well.

 

 

And the four fans ready to install.

 

 

Top pair mounted.  You might notice that the fans don't have a 100% paint job.  There's still some aluminum showing between the fins.  I noticed this after the first coat and decided that I kind of like it.  Gives them a little detail instead of being just black hunks of aluminum and it gives more definition to the fins.

 

 

 

And bottom mounted fans.

 

 

Since the motherboard only has two fan headers, one system and one CPU, I went with a little Silverstone fan hub to run the fans.  I'm also going to use it for the lighting hub.  There's some decent room around the PSU, so I just mounted it to the PSU's side with some double sided tape.  Did the same thing with my EL wire transformer except on the bottom of the PSU.

 

 

And then the wires!  Like I said, no sleeving for a more industrial look.  My thumb and index finger are loving that decision.  My standard tape for wire measurement and pinouts.

 

 

And a mostly completed.

 

 

The top fans and the 4 pin CPU run go under the motherboard, just to make working on it later that much more difficult.  LOL!  But it does really clean it up, which is going to be important when I put that giant cooler on.  I'm waiting on some short SSD cables before I can start working on getting them wired.  Same with the lights.  And the GPU will be the last of the wiring, since it's so much easier working in the case without it being in the way.

 

--End Log--

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Feb 15, 2016

 

Welp, you know the one step forward two steps back saying?  That's how this project has felt the last few weeks.  I finally got all my exterior pieces smoothed up and buffed, and then it turns out that the bottom and the back panels were powdercoated and the paint flaked right off even though I scuffed them up.  Notice I say were.  They've been sanded down and the last coat of paint is drying on them right now.  I also stripped the motherboard tray just in case.  Turns out it was painted steel so it didn't need it, but better safe than sorry.  But what have I done while huffing paint?  I've managed to get a lot of little details worked out for the final assembly.

 

Front panel is put together.

 

 

Green Darkside strips looking down over the grills I swapped the blue LED of the power indicator for the red LED of the HDD indicator.  I'm hoping it works cause it didn't come apart very cleanly.  But if not, it just won't have a lit power button.  Oh well.

 

Also got the SSD's installed in the side panel.

 

 

The SSD covers are clear with the tops painted black(originally they were the chameleon color, but they didn't contrast well).  Then I drilled a little hole in the of the cover to mount a green LED in each.  The plan is that when it's up an running, the edges of the covers will glow green.  Fingers crossed.

 

 

The silver paint on the LED isn't pretty but it's hidden.  The idea is to cut down on light bleed. 

 

The covers are meant to fit snug without tape, but I went ahead and used some double sided tape.  No chance of them moving around now.

 

 

Everything ready to be put in.  Wires have to go on before you put them in because there is no way to access the plugs later.

 

 

Slipping the wires through and getting the first one mounted.

 

 

 

And number two mounted.

 

 

 

Finished up by splicing the power wires together.

 

 

--End Log--

[ObeseWalrus]

Looks cool af fam. good job

[InsolentGnome]

-Build Log-

Feb 20, 2016

 

The home stretch...finally.  Pulling it all together.

 

The bad thing about mITX cases...wiring with no space.  That USB 3.0 cable was a pain, but a little clip helped.

 

 

Putting the last piece of the body together.  Looks like a turtle on it's back.

 

 

Now to fit the cooler in once all the wiring to the mb is done.

 

 

It's interesting trying to work on something that has legs.

 

 

 

 

It definitely fills up the case!  Now it's time for the custom side panel with the EL wire in it.  

 

 

Since the cooler is a bit tall, I need to knock a hole in this panel to fit.  And even if the cooler did manage to squeeze below it, it would still need to an intake to breath.  The nice thing about using 1/8" acrylic for the bottom of my mold is that it leaves me a nice piece to work with as a template once it's pulled apart.

 

 

Originally I traced the fan to the acrylic.

 

 

This would work, but I had doubts as to how perfect I could get it.  I wound up finding the center of the fan using the mounting screws and used a 6" hole saw instead, and then notched for the mounts with a scroll saw. Once I got the template worked out, I transferred that to the side panel and...

 

 

 

Still have a little cleaning to do on the hole, but works perfect, just how I wanted it.  I was debating on what to do for screws for the panel since the originals are too short.  I flipped the original feet and used them for nice and chunky washers for some standard M3 screws.  Little black paint and they'll blend right in.  All that's left now is a little touch up paint and cleaning up the side panel edges, but I'll give you all some teasers of the finished product.

 

 

 

 

 

 

--End Build Log--

[SoloTurkey]

That looks amazing!

[Tobleh]

Wow, that is probably one of the most rad things I have ever seen. Amazing work.

[InsolentGnome]

18 hours ago, Hungryturkey12 said:

That looks amazing!

 

16 hours ago, TobiMay said:

Wow, that is probably one of the most rad things I have ever seen. Amazing work.

 

Thanks!

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

Really nice.  When I saw that case in the first post, I immediately thought of giving it legs too.  However I would have gone for a slightly different look.

 

[InsolentGnome]

33 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

Really nice.  When I saw that case in the first post, I immediately thought of giving it legs too.  However I would have gone for a slightly different look.

 

Thanks!  It is the perfect shape for that.  Makes you wonder if there wasn't some inspiration there.

[InsolentGnome]

Working on final pics.  Or maybe playing around.  Who knows?