Mod of the Month - June 2007

Extreme Air

By Zero_Limits
Worklog

The art of fiberglass and carbon fibre has always been a mystery to guys like myself. The sheer patience required to form proper styrofoam moulds should practically be a ticket to sainthood in and of itself. You can carve and carve, and carve and carve, and then sand, and sand some more...and it still won't look 'right.'

I guess that's why projects like Extreme Air! are so impressive to me. Zero_Limits is living up to his name with this mod, which is as much a race against the clock as it is a design challenge. But whatever the challenge, it seems Zero has no interest in letting this one go as anything less than a kick-ass mod.

And so with diagrams in hand and blocks of foam at the ready, it was time to begin...

Like many great mods, Zero_Limits started Extreme Air! with a plan. It's probably a good thing he did, too, as the initial design changed several times during this process. However, by the time he was finished, he had a clear idea of where he would be taking the case build.

And where was that, exactly? To the shop, for more planning in the form of templates. These templates were used to rough cut the styrofoam which forms another template for the fiberglass. Once rough cut, it was time to shape the mould more precicely through careful cutting and a whole lot of sanding.

As the sanding started to wind down, it was easy to see the moulds starting to take shape. All that was needed was to assemble the pieces and get laying on the fiberglass. There was only one problem - the raised mounts for the monitor would prove to be very difficult to work around. So...

Zero_Limits decided to skip moulding them from the fiberglass. Instead, he created moulds from more styrofoam and made carbon fibre versions of the monitor supports. Once made, the supports would have to be separated from their foam housing. A bit of acetyl solves that problem quickly, though - approximately 100mL melted away the entire mould.

The foam fiberglass mould was then re-fitted without the supports, and the fiberglass work could begin.

We haven't been able to see more just yet, but it's pretty clear that this case is definitely not going to suck through anything but its air intakes. I can only bet that the final result will be equally impressive as his never-ending patience during the moulding process. We'll be keeping a close eye on Zero_Limits' worklog to see how this mod is shaping up.