Project: Antec 900 Revamp

[slaveofconvention]

I just noticed that the orange I have is pretty transparent. I'm either going to have to base it up with something else, or hope like hell it doesn't take too many coats to cover properly. It was originally a paint for a customer at work who wanted something semi-transparent but ended up deciding on something else.....

[SXRguyinMA]

use something like a metallic white as a base, it'll make the orange light up

[slaveofconvention]

27th July was the last post and today is 29th August. So much for doing something on this every day until it's finished. I really can't believe it's been over a month - it felt like a week or two, three at the absolute outside!!!!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAnyway....

Decided to get on with the internals first, mainly because I still need the practice and IF it goes wrong, it'll be less noticable (hopefully) although yeah, I know the pedant in me will do it over n over till it's right. As it happens I have a full litre of black basecoat sitting here which is more than enough to paint a dozen or more cases - the colours I have for the outside are in slightly lower quantities....

We start with this...

And a whole lot of rivet removal later we end up with...

...and...

...and...

All set up in the garden shed (it's a small shed but it was shelter from the wind - I was determined to get some of this case done today). Applying etch primer to the lightly scuffed bare metal...

...ditto...

... and we end up with this ...

Thirteen parts to this chassis, and that doesn't include the plastics. I have to get the black on tomorrow or all of the priming needs to be done again. I don't know if this is the case with all etch primers, but with this particular one, you have to recoat the primer with something (more primer, paint etc) after at least one hour and within 24 hours or it goes too hard to actually allow the next coat to take a grip properly and you end up back at the start. Hopefully, tomorrow will see, at the very least, all of the interior going black (probably matt or satin black - haven't 100% decided yet - definitely NOT gloss) and being riveted back together....

Again, my apologies for abjectly failing to maintain the "every day" progress but life, and all that eh....

[x88x]

Hahaha, yeah, I think we all start out thinking "I'll work on this every day". ...unfortunately, life all too often gets in the way.

It's good to see this back on its feet though! Make sure you don't put too many coats on the overlapping edges. I made that mistake with mightyMite and ended up ruining the paint job at a lot of the seams because several layers scraped off in the process of fitting them together.

[slaveofconvention]

So I got everything primed yesterday, and got it all painted today. No action shots of the painting unfortunately, but some results...

The first of the rivets going in. I was lucky to have black rivets lying around from a previous project so I went with those. First I connected the I/O and PCI bracket to the rear panel.

Then reassembled the drive bays..

And then connected the base and motherboard tray.

Looks pretty good I think. There are minor bits I'm going to rub down and hit again, but those little repairs will be done with the case intact. No way I'm taking it apart again for a couple of minor scratches.

The matt finish looks really good - exactly what I wanted, but it seems really easy to scratch. I might look into getting hold of some matt clearcoat to give it a little more protection before I throw my system back into this.

Finally for today - it's Pop Quiz time.... How many rivets are there in an Antec 900, not including the drive bays?

Loads!!!

[slaveofconvention]

First up, apologies for the sub-par photo quality. I was in a hurry as light was fading so the pics here are all taken with my phone. I will get some better ones tomorrow when hopefully, this'll all be nice and dry and ready for sanding and then colour.

Plastics time....

A little over a month ago, I got all the plastics removed and rubbed down to give the paint something to grip on to. Tonight I gave them a clean down with a tack-cloth but I skipped using a degreaser (we'll see tomorrow if I end up regretting this or not) and then masked off the parts which aren't going to be getting paint.

Here we have the main front frame...

The top of the front frame or front of the top plastic - whichever you prefer lol...

A couple of wires hung for the frame side parts - they're going to need paint on 3 of 4 sides plus the edges on the 4th side so hanging them up was the only way to get it all in one hit...

And a quick couple of coats of primer later we have...

The top of the case...

The frame...

One of the side sections...

And finally that front of top/top of sides part.

There were more pics but rushing and decent photographs don't seem to go hand in hand very well :s

With a little luck I will be able to get these sanded down and maybe re-primed tomorrow night, then it'll be time for some Orange!!

[slaveofconvention]

As promised, a couple of close-ups of the finished priming, this time with a better camera! I am REALLY happy with the way this looks. I expect to put a second coat on after I flat this down, but it depends on how high-build the primer turns out to be....

[slaveofconvention]

I got a text message when I was at work the other day. It was from my wife and the entire message was "Sorry...". Needless to say I was curious so I called her and she told me she had accidentally managed to scratch one of the drive bay boxes for this project...

Scratched Drive Bay Cage

Nothing a little sanding and repainting won't fix though so nothing major...

Yesterday I got the plastic parts of the case in primer, and I'm really happy with the way they turned out.

Bottom of the front frame - Antec still nice and sharp

The Front/Top corner part

The two side strips for the front panel

So today I decided to try to get the metal parts, specifically the two side panels, to the same stage. Time for some power tools I think (well air-powered anyway...

Cranked up the compressor to 120psi

Attached a sponge interface pad and a 320 grit sanding disk to my mini sander/polisher

And set to work - before....

And after a pretty short sanding session. The case (like most cases) had a bit of a texture to it so I figured a light sanding will give the primer a little less to cover. And after...

Used a blow gun to clean off the heavy dust, the gave both panels a good clean down with a cloth soaked in Panel Wipe (degreaser). Glad I did too - look at the state of the cloth afterwards!!!

Then I set the panels up in the shed, using a couple snapped off table legs to make sure none of the edges touched the masking paper in the background.

And gave them both several light coats of 5:1 high build primer...

If the weather and the light holds out, I might try to get some colour on these today but chances are, it'll be tomorrow. I'd prefer to give the panels a little extra time for the primer to fully cure anyway. The stuff I'm using is usually good to go within an hour, but longer is usually better so chances are, that's about it for today...

[slaveofconvention]

Onwards and upwards we go!!!

So I got those panels into primer yesterday - it's a hi-build automotive primer which is designed to go on really thick so you can sand it down a LOT to get a really smooth finish...

First step in doing that is to lay down a guidecoat for sanding....

Basically you just dust some black (or any colour really) paint over the surface, then start wet sanding. When all the black is gone, in theory you have a smooth surface as the black goes into the dips and valleys - once it's all gone, you should have sanded off enough primer to end up with a smooth finish. Et voila!

I actually had a really hard time taking this pic - the camera just didn't want to focus on the panel - I guess that says something about how smooth it is

Next I set about making something to hold up the panels for the colour. I wanted to be able to get the whole panel done in one go to save on the hassles of cleaning the gun between uses, so I needed some way to hold all of the edges in the air, without using wires or anything which might catch on the sides. Carboard boxes and kebab skewers to the rescue!!

They work really well, holding everything up nice and high...

Well almost anyway. The one on the left, with the heavier panel. Two of the skewers snapped, dropping the panel onto the concrete, right on the corner and put a nasty dent in it. I did a quick repair which is a LONG way from perfect and justified it to myself with "It's the bottom, rear corner, on the side of the case which goes against the side of my desk - cmon - be reasonable - don't put hours and hours into trying (and probably failing) to get it perfect....

After that little annoyance (and lots and lots of loud swearing) I started to hit the panels with some colour... The basecoat I'm using dries really quickly so over the space of less than an hour, I managed to get 6 or 7 nice thin coats on.

And here you can see that corner which caused so much colourful language...

This basecoat needs to be clearcoated pretty quickly or it over-dries and goes cloudy, so to end the day I hit both panels with a (too) heavy coat of Hi-Solids 2k Lacquer.

I have a couple of pretty nasty runs in the side panel with the vents and windows, but I'm hoping they'll sand out ok before I put another coat or two of clear on. If you look closely in the final pic, right on the right hand side, in line with the top of the paper cup, you can see the bottom of one run. There's also a nasty edge at the bottom of the panel where the clear has gathered - both of these will need attending to as this is the visible panel where my PC sits....

There may not be a lot of progress before next weekend, work and that other boring stuff getting in the way, but a huge shout-out goes to the wife who acted all upset and sad when I dropped the panel, and for putting up with me smelling of paint all day and effectively ignoring from about 1pm until she went to work at 7 :S I think I may have used up whatever credit I got from her scratching the drive bay so it's time to be the good husband again lol

The grey is seriously sparkly - it's almost wasted on a case which is going to be inside but I'll try to get some in-the-sun pics of the panels so you all can see just how strong the effect is - the in-the-shed pics just don't get close to doing it justice...

EDIT: those runs I mentioned....

[x88x]

Nice work with the paint, it looks awesome! Too bad about that corner though.

...also, should we be worried about the gas can right next to your grill?