Ok, time to start addding my case mods to the site. I’m still trying to dig up all the pics from the Mystery Machine, so I figured I would throw up my Project DragonSteel now since I have all the pics readily available.

Project DragonSteel started out as just something to do really, but then evolved into something else. The theme here is basically me, things I like etc. It took me about 6 months to do this mod, a lot of the time was spent on etching.

The case was originally a Raidmax Scorpio, funky yellow color, it was a nice case for its time actually. I ripped the entire case apart literally and re painted it from the inside out, the entire chassis was done in white with a reflective clear coat on it. Of course I had to remove a lot of rivets so I decided to replace all of them with black hex head style screws as well. I’m not going to reproduce the entire worklog again on this site, I’m just going to highlight it. There is 60 pictures here now for this ‘highlight’ and three times that for the complete worklog.

First up of course would be what the original case looked like, and a shot of it torn apart.

The following set of pics is for the fan set I created for the front bay. The three tiny fans were taken from old servers, repainted and fitted to a piece of blue plexi for the drive bay to pull air in through them. I did some light etching on the plexi as well for something other than plain.

These pictures would be of the bottom inside of the case, I used gold and silver mirrors and cut then to fit like a puzzle stlye. I etched them with an exacto knife, the lines were marked off and are basically the same distance apart.

The next part would be my Death Tarot Card etch for the top window of the case. The Death Tarot card is from the Crowley Thoth deck. This took me over a week to complete using a couple different Dremels and lots of different tips.

The next etch would be a dragon, the same I use for my sites logo. This one took me about a week to complete as well. Both the Dragons and Death were used for windows in the top of the case.

I decided to go with something a little different for the left side window, this is almost the full side etched. It is a picture of a Japanese fishing village, a section of a six foot banner/mural that I own. I only colored in the cherry trees/blossoms.

I did another etching ont he right window as well but it is only a tribal style semi border, so you can easily see inside the case.

I also replaced the window int eh power supply with mirror as well, I etched the backside of the mirror so light would shine through it.

I also repainted and etched some drive bay covers I had lying around as well.

Here it is finished. I used quite a bit of plexi in this mod, I removed the door and bondoed the bezel to make it look uniform. I moved the power, reset and audio/USB ports as well. I made custom plexi covers for them as well.

In the following set of pics you can see the rear of the case where I created a special fan housing from red plexi as well.

Moving around to the right side of the case.

Now moving to the front, I have four 80mm intake fans behind the front bezel, I drilled numeours holes into the bezel and covered it with metal screen, the screen is actually dark blue not black. At the top is a fan controller, one knob controls the two rear exhaust fans, another knob controls the front set of mini bay fans and the other two knobs each control two of the front four intake fans.

Now here would be a top shot and a shot of the cd/dvd drive opening.

Now here are various shots of the case mod in the dark with everything on. I used UV lights for everything, and UV reactive matereals when I could.

And finally here are some shots of the interior lit up, including the power supply.

That’s it.. it was fun and quite a learing experience.