Hangar 101 by SleepStreamer

Introduction by Wil Harris

Max Erlandsson, aka SleepStreamer, is another talented modder to hail from Sweden. Whilst most people were busy enjoying the Christmas festivities, Max was busily toiling away with the various powertools at his disposal, coming up with what has turned out to be an awesome new mod.

If you recognise the name, you should - his first case mod, Cold Fusion, was one of the contestants in our Mod of the Year competition.

With his latest mod now done, we are very happy to present his latest work, Hangar 101, here on the site. Enjoy!

Hangar 101 by SleepStreamer

Welcome to my second article here on bit-tech. Like many of you, I am a technology junkie, and I also get a lot of inspiration from sci-fi movies and TV shows. For this project in particular, I took inspiration from a famous sci-fi set, the engine room of the NX-01 Enterprise, from the Star Trek: Enterprise series. I wanted to make a mod that looked like a warp core!

This central structure would be the basis of my mod.

I started with modeling everything up in Rhinoceros 3D, which I find to be a lot more versatile and powerful software than it's Sketchup counterpart. Others might disagree, but it's all about personal preference.

Before we dive into the log, here's a sneak peek of what's to come:

Let's break out the dremel!

Internals

The frame for the case is made from 20x10mm square-edged tubing, which has been welded together. I hadn't done much welding before, but I think this came out really nice. The motherboard tray is made of 3mm opaque black acrylic, which has a black 'mirror' finish.

The primary HDD cage is made of 3mm polycarbonate. The great thing with this plastic is that you don't need to apply heat to bend it, which makes it slightly safer and easier to work with. I also added a second piece of smoked acrylic to make it a bit more sturdy.

I added a piece of orange flourescent acrylic to the back of the cage just to add some flair to it. I also made a similar holder for the DVD Drive.