[Build Log] -Aurora Cubes- A RGB 3D Printed Case by 8-Bit Builder

[thorkon]

Hello and welcome to my newest build 🙂

I've been modding for 10 years now and usually my themes are of a pixelated design. This mod is named Aurora Cubes as the case will be built to look like it's made out of hundreds of cubes that each have a LED and will pattened lighting effects. It will be quite a light show (I hope!). I will be 3D printing this case and expect to use about 6 lbs of plastic to make. Here are a few designs so you can visualize the project.







My sponsors for this mod



Components
ASUS ROG MAXIMUS X HERO WI-FI
ASUS GTX 1070 STRIX
TEAMGROUP T-FORCE Delta RGB 16gb DDR4 RAM
TEAMGROUP T-FORCE Delta RGB 250gb SSD
Raidmax NV-R120B RGB FANS (5)
CPU undecided
Heatsink undecided


Heres a few photos of my previous work:



I'll be back soon with some progress of printing and programming!

[thorkon]

Back with some new progress now that I've printed a few sections out. Having some stringing issue due to a mod I put on the printer so I've been troubleshooting it but still giiving some issues.

THE STRINGINGGGGG



Fix'd after some easy cleanup




Next issue was the this tall section having a weak stability




Nothing a little 3d pen cant fix. This section will be strengthened once the whole frame comes together.




And heres the base being clamped together. Its a bit bigger than I expected honestly but not an issue. I'll be back with the rest of the frame coming together.

[thorkon]

Going to be some rapid updates as I move into finising printing most of pieces now. I've ran into a few issues...

Spaghetti monster, colorized
What happened: I was printing 3 pieces but the 3rd piece dislodged from the printbed and began printing in the air. Luckily the 2 pieces were easily salvageable and cleaned up for use.


This is the top in sections. Will house a 120mm fan, a usb hub and a power button.
















This is the window section of the case. I'll be adding plexiglass to it last. Still brainstorming ideas on how to have the glass removable while still looking nice.

[xeromist]

Well, a bit late now but you could have printed a slot for the panel to slide into. Alternatively you could use some white U channel to hold the window.

[thorkon]

xeromist wrote:
Well, a bit late now but you could have printed a slot for the panel to slide into. Alternatively you could use some white U channel to hold the window.

Its not too late :D. I can alway print/add to make something work. The window is really large so I can sacrifice some of that space if means getting a good door/mechanism on moving the window. I see what your saying on white u channel but would be a little hard to slide it out if I'm imagining the same setup as you with it.

[xeromist]

thorkon wrote:
Its not too late :D. I can alway print/add to make something work. The window is really large so I can sacrifice some of that space if means getting a good door/mechanism on moving the window. I see what your saying on white u channel but would be a little hard to slide it out if I'm imagining the same setup as you with it.

Correct. Typically u channel is used as a soft mount all the way around. But how often would you need to slide the whole window out?

Another way I've seen done is to use u channel just to finish the window frame and then to stick an oversized window to the inside of the panel. From the outside it looks clean. I don't think that would work in this case where everything is translucent but perhaps that might give you ideas.

[thorkon]

Just about the whole body done.

These are the MoBo mounts:












The front with the fan placements about to go in:





Top fan:

[thorkon]

The equipment!

ASUS MAXIMUS X HERO (WI-FI AC)





ASUS ROG GeForce GTX 1070 STRIX





TEAM GROUP T-FORCE DELTA RGB DDR4 GAMING MEMORY 16 GB


TEAM GROUP T-FORCE DELTA SSD

[thorkon]

I got caught up with Halloween costumes and waiting on a few pc components for the build. This is going to be a big post to catch up!

After doing some testing, I ran into an issue where the light wasn't being diffused as great as I wanted. I ended up sanding the case to rough up the texture to help even out the leds.

Hard to see sanding on transparent plastic so just this one photo of it outside


Light test (gif embedding doesn't work, so heres a link of the lights)
https://imgur.com/asG3hsw


My work area for all the wiring and soldering


Did this about 100 times. Pre-tinned the wires



Installing the LED strips

I was using this setup to test the lights as I went to make sure my solder skills were working





Sparkly test


Wiring so each can be removed individually if needed]


Wires before cleanup



Baby approved lighting test


I'm onto installing the pc components and cleaning up wiring. Shouldn't be long until I'm finished with a nice setup. Still need to program a few different things on the lighting though so that will be an interesting challenge.

[thorkon]

After doing some math I decided to get the lights their own PSU. Here it is:



And after some handy dandy hiding magic...



The power button is going to be installed in the top near the usb hub




All the components!







All the wires!





Starting to hide the wires behind the mobo





From here its going to be the finished photos!