I've recently been getting interested in case modding and have been thinking up possible mods. I definitely want to design my own window so I'm looking into using the Lian Li PC-61 since it's a solid mid-tower case without any holes or ridges to get in the way of whatever design I wind up with.
A little background on my current design - I go by my last name amongst my friends which begins with an 'S'. For that reason I wanted to incorporate an S into the design. I came up with the following design using AutoCAD 2006 (the blue is what will be cut out):
Initially I was thinking of using the water jet cutter at my school to accurately cut out a window. However, my impatience led me to buy a Dremel tool (the XPR 400) and a couple files to test out a design on an old case to see how it looked off paper. After spending a few man hours on cutting it out and filing it down I'm pretty happy with the result. I had to scale down the design to fit inside of the ridges of this panel. By the way, since this design has point symmetry, some of the pictures are backwards due to me placing the side panel the wrong way. Oh well. The final pictures are of the correct orientation.
Laying out the printed out design on the case inside of the ridges.
I etched out the design onto the case and peeled off the tape. In hindsight that wasn't the best of ideas - I should have left the tape on to prevent the stray marks. Ignore the red cross hairs, I put them on in haste and they were off the mark. I ended up ignoring them and taping on the design by eye since this was a test piece, after all.
The four circles were cut out. Before resizing the design to fit this panel, these holes were 80mm across; I was playing around with the idea of putting fan grill over these holes. This idea is still be mulled over. I might affix them somehow to the piece of lexan on the inside as not to mar the side panel with unnecessary holes.
The larger rings were cut.
As with all rotary tool work, the edges are rough and sharp.
The edges are filed down a bit and the contour holes are roughly cut.
The contour holes are rounded out and all edges are filed down to be finger-smooth. Ignore the blue marks on the contour holes.
Keep in mind that this is my first experience with using a rotary tool on aluminum so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. My next step would be to take some bondo to fill in the stray marks and such. Afterwards I'd sand it down and prime/paint it. Since this is just a test piece I'm not going to go through all that just yet.
Let me know what you guys think of my design and workmanship. Also, if you have any suggestions as to what can be changed with the design as well as what can be done with the rest of the case, let me know. I'm more into physical alterations than playing with color schemes. I'm definitely going to stealth my drives and will probably play around with lipping some fan holes like Defyant did in this mod/guide.
A little background on my current design - I go by my last name amongst my friends which begins with an 'S'. For that reason I wanted to incorporate an S into the design. I came up with the following design using AutoCAD 2006 (the blue is what will be cut out):
Initially I was thinking of using the water jet cutter at my school to accurately cut out a window. However, my impatience led me to buy a Dremel tool (the XPR 400) and a couple files to test out a design on an old case to see how it looked off paper. After spending a few man hours on cutting it out and filing it down I'm pretty happy with the result. I had to scale down the design to fit inside of the ridges of this panel. By the way, since this design has point symmetry, some of the pictures are backwards due to me placing the side panel the wrong way. Oh well. The final pictures are of the correct orientation.
Laying out the printed out design on the case inside of the ridges.
I etched out the design onto the case and peeled off the tape. In hindsight that wasn't the best of ideas - I should have left the tape on to prevent the stray marks. Ignore the red cross hairs, I put them on in haste and they were off the mark. I ended up ignoring them and taping on the design by eye since this was a test piece, after all.
The four circles were cut out. Before resizing the design to fit this panel, these holes were 80mm across; I was playing around with the idea of putting fan grill over these holes. This idea is still be mulled over. I might affix them somehow to the piece of lexan on the inside as not to mar the side panel with unnecessary holes.
The larger rings were cut.
As with all rotary tool work, the edges are rough and sharp.
The edges are filed down a bit and the contour holes are roughly cut.
The contour holes are rounded out and all edges are filed down to be finger-smooth. Ignore the blue marks on the contour holes.
Keep in mind that this is my first experience with using a rotary tool on aluminum so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. My next step would be to take some bondo to fill in the stray marks and such. Afterwards I'd sand it down and prime/paint it. Since this is just a test piece I'm not going to go through all that just yet.
Let me know what you guys think of my design and workmanship. Also, if you have any suggestions as to what can be changed with the design as well as what can be done with the rest of the case, let me know. I'm more into physical alterations than playing with color schemes. I'm definitely going to stealth my drives and will probably play around with lipping some fan holes like Defyant did in this mod/guide.
! You did some good work there. It takes a good steady hand to work with the dremel on something like this. I'm glad hear you were able to debur it properly without leaving rough marks there. You won't too much trouble hearing favorable comments on this. 
Make sure you keep us all updated. I am thinking of investing into a Dremel myslef.
