Orac³ Part 1

The PSU rear exhaust fan needed some attention - a nice aluminium fan but with ugly off-white plastic struts and sticker with writing all over it on the back. I removed the sticker and fan blades, masked and vinyl dyed it silver which improved its appearance greatly



Something else that will be running throughout the case is the use of lit-up glowing, coloured Perspex panels. I wanted the first one to be on the top of the PSU, to help add to an otherwise featureless expanse of chrome. First I wired up two white 3mm LEDs (resistors for 12v using Linear's LED Calculator). I filed and sanded them to give a diffuse light (important for even light when lighting up panels) and so they would not go all the way through the coloured Perspex panel as it is only 3mm (1/8") thick. Then the LEDs were bent at right angles so they could fit in the narrow gap underneath the PSU circuit board.



Holes for LEDs, bolts and fan power cables and a LED poking through the top cover and being tested - they give a very even, bright and diffuse light all around.



The LEDs are held in place with hot-glue. The other larger patches of hot glue are holding cut-down 4mm bolts (to stop them falling back through once the PSU was re-assembled and before I attached the coloured Perspex). I tested all the LED sockets as well. The LED is actually white (looks blue thanks to the digi-cam's white-balance). The jack plug is just wired up and the bare wire ends stuck in my 9v battery LED tester - one of the more useful bits of kit as it turns out.


Getting jack of jack plugs...

While we are on the subject of Jack plugs:


These are the jack plugs I will be using throughout. I took them apart and removed the springs. I have rather a lot of them now. I wanted matching chrome 3.5 in-line socket plugs as well but they didn't exist - so I made them using some (unrelated) 3.5 plastic inline sockets, unscrewed the ends and...



...fitted a cover from a 3.5 jack plug. A match made in heaven! How do I intend on wiring these up?