MasterCase5 MOD: Project TRON

[Megadeblow]

Started carefully placing the EL wire and some tapes, this was tricky, glued my fingers to the wire a couple of times lol

 

 

 

 

Put down some tape on the none flat parts for some protections and as a guideline. 

 

 

Top is done, sides and front still need some more work doing.

 

 

Hopefully you now have a better idea of the final look im going for with the build

[Ne1ld0]

Nice work!  Reminds me a bit of my Stryker. 

Here is a pic I took with an older camera. I'm not sure why it looks different, but using this old camera makes my EL wire and green LEDs appear a different color. 

 

Always glad to see others use EL wire and EL tape on their PCs. 

I like the grooves you cut out with a dremel tool for the EL wire to fit in. I would have done the same thing. I bet it took a while to get all those grooves cut out. It's worth it in the end. 

I can tell you have planned out your layout for EL wire quite well. Only a trained eye could really tell where one EL wire ends and another begins. 
Also, your holes you drilled for EL wire to fit through look good too. I've seen a few people drill EL wire holes straight through instead of at angles. This makes EL have to bend at 90 degrees to get through the hole which doesn't always look as clean. 

Just curious how many strands of EL wire do you plan on using and how many feet of it will you be powering in total?

I am currently using 6 strands of super-bright EL wire totaling 19 feet, a six-way splitter, and one power inverter. I'm sure you will be using more feet than I am. My power inverter has a sound controlled option which is pretty cool. Looks like the power inverters you are currently using are simply on / off. With those two inverters, you should have enough power to support as much feet of regular or super-bright EL wire as you need especially if you split up your total footage between your inverters the best you can. You could wire the on / off switches together from your two inverters to have one switch instead of two if you wanted, but keeping two switches would be cool to turn on different sections at a time like maybe one switch for exterior EL lighting and the other for interior EL lighting. 

Please let us know how loud the high-pitched constant noise is coming from 2 power inverters. I can only imagine. I have tried surrounding my power inverter with sound damping foam blocks and it didn't help. If I'm wearing headphones, I can't hear it. I am glad that they have off switches though because that noise gets annoying unless you drown it out with music or something. If you come up with a better solution to dampen that sound, please let me know.

 

Here's a tip for you in case you don't know this: Never  have power going to your power inverter unless you have your EL wire / splitter already connected. If you send power to your power inverter and the inverter is turned on without it being connected to your EL wire, you can easily burn up, fry, and melt your power inverter. Even though I knew about this, I have accidentally melted a power inverter before by doing this. 

I look forward to seeing your progress. Keep up the great work!  

[Megadeblow]

Thank you mate, That green and white loks really nice!
Im now starting a white version of this build as I wait for some bits to arrive.

Yeah, just been doing some more groves in the new case, mastercase3pro, its tricky to start with but once the grove is started it becomes more easy to follow the line.

Im using around 14 strands atm, took some planning as you mention, did lots on paper then stuck them all in place with tape to get a better idea, made some small changes

after that.
I have some cheap inverters from china that I was going to use until I got some better bigger ones from el-wire&tape, one of the sponsors, I already bought some bits from them via ebay, but after a phone call about the inverters they said they would help out with the other bits I was needing
So that was a win win, im using 2 inverters so far, if the lighting becomes too dim I will add another, but I dont want it too bright as that will kill the EL faster.

 

Im wanting to have two switches, once for the inside and other for the outer.
was going to have one for the wire and one for the tape also, but not fully decided yet.

 

I will let you know about the noise and maybe try make a quick vid as some others have also mentioned the same thing, thanks for the tip also

 

[Megadeblow]

Nice work!  Reminds me a bit of my Stryker. 

 

 

 

 

Sorry. the above reply was for you, forgot to Quote

[Megadeblow]

As im awaiting some more parts for the main Tron build I've been working on a couple of things 

and due to the time needed for the paint to dry im moving between the main build, Tron (black) and

my second mod, Tron 2.0 (white).

 

I wont be doing a full build log for the 2nd Tron case mod but I will add a couple of photos to this log.

 

 

 

As I mentioned before, not to happy with the original PSU cover I did with clear plexi so I ordered some more

white and did the cover again, much better now for the reflections im wanting to capture.

 

 

 

Like with the sound card, added some EL lightning to the RAD.

 

 

 

Sticking with the EL, time to get the Tron disc painted to better match the case and the original look of the disc.

I really enjoyed this part and im very happy with the result.

 

 

 

 

 

After some very careful and painfully slow masking the disc is almost completed, painted with water-based black so as not to damage the plastic coating.

 

 

 

 

here's some pics of the Tron 2.0 mod, all the paintwork is completed and im now working in the lighting.

 

[Zenator]

 Coming along nicely  

[knud]

This mod is already very sexy looking

[Ne1ld0]

Love the Tron disc! 
Smart move by using water-based paint.

EL modding definitely takes some time and planning. Took myself quite a while to figure out how long my top panel EL wire strand needed to be and the best way for me to install it. This one strand ended up being 9 feet long and here's my layout for it. 

 

 

1. Starts at the end of my EL wire strand

2. Through hole I drilled at an angle

3 / 19. Black Zip tied or black twist tied down to the mesh in the corner. Ties in the corners are visible but not much. Be sure to tie these 2 lines together using one tie.

4 / 16. Same thing here, both lines together, one tie.

5 / 15. Repeat

6. Tied by itself

7. You get it by now.

Keep following numbers.

20. Strand goes through 140mm fan hole next to the dust filter to enter the case. This 9 foot strand of EL wire had to be pulled through this hole in order to leave the connector inside the case. The connector was too big to fit through this hole. 

Looking forward to seeing the next update on your two Tron builds.
Keep up the great work!  

[Megadeblow]

 Coming along nicely

 

Thanks

White one complete, shown below.

 

This mod is already very sexy looking

 

Thanks. lets hope it stays that way.... maybe I should stop now lol

 

Love the Tron disc! 

Smart move by using water-based paint.

EL modding definitely takes some time and planning. Took myself quite a while to figure out how long my top panel EL wire strand needed to be and the best way for me to install it. This one strand ended up being 9 feet long and here's my layout for it. 

 

Looking forward to seeing the next update on your two Tron builds.

Keep up the great work!  

 

Thanks for the nice reply and tips, yeah definitely takes some planning and patience. 

For the main build Im using around 7 or 8 wires thats mostly cut to size, other parts I made new cuts and adjustments to the lengths.

for one of them I just threaded it like a dress, weaving from front to back then the front again.

The only other thing that im still changing as I go along is the power needed for the wire and tape, dont want to underpower causing them to be dim

but also not wanting them too bright causing them to have a shorter life.

For the side panel i'm going with one that's airbrushed and also doing a plain one painted the same as the rest of the case.

 

I'm doing the airbrushing in 3 stages, first the panel was painted the same as all the case but then sanded down ready 

for the shadows and base colours, protected again with some clear coat and then stage 2, now I have clear coated all 

the design and will be waiting for that to harden before doing the highlights and fine details followed by a final protective 

clear coat.

 

Some parts of the design will hopefully have a matte look where others will be a nice mirror/gloss finish 

to help him pop-out from the back background.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This might look a bit crap at the moment but should look great when completed, I like to try use as many skills as I can when 

doing my builds, this is something I've never attempted before so i'm learning as I go along

 

As promised, here are some pics of the smaller project I just completed "Tron 2.0" this was just a case mod for now, using the

CoolerMaster MasterCase 3 Pro.

No log for this one, it was a very quick job with only the paint dry times taking most of that time up.

 

Done in white with slightly thicker EL wires and the same Mirror finish paint but this time in white.

I wont post lots of photos on here but you can find all the other on my facebook page if you need.

 

Thanks to elpanelandtape.co.uk and CoolerMaster UK for providing most of the bits needed for this one. 

 

 

 

[Megadeblow]

Side panel completed, will get some daylight shots done once we get some sun here lol

 

 

 

Used some of the same style for my Mini mod, just for the fun of it, a quick build as im on a bit

of a break from the main build.

 

Fitted with a fully working Raspberry pi.

1.2GHz 64-bit quad-core ARMv8 CPU

802.11n Wireless LAN

Bluetooth 4.1

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)

1GB RAM

4 USB ports

40 GPIO pins

Full HDMI port

Ethernet port

Combined 3.5mm audio jack and composite video

Camera interface (CSI)

Display interface (DSI)

Micro SD card slot

VideoCore IV 3D graphics core

PSU - 5v 2a

 

Not bad for the size, fits well with my collection of 1:6 scale