The Pentagram HTPC

The actual pentagram

For a pentagram PC, this story has been surprisingly pentagram free up until now - but all that is about to change. After all, it's not much of a pentagram HTPC if it doesn't have a pentagram, right?

The pentagram itself would be made from 36 pieces of acrylic. Why so many? Well, it would be a pretty boring mod if all I used were five simple pieces, right? The modder in me screamed to try something as elaborate as possible and all I could do was obey.

I chose a detailed, intricate design that could make good use of my recently acquired Dremel Scrollstation. To accomplish this, I decided to use many small pieces of UV green plexi over a black plexi base.

To start off, the acrylic was masked off much like I had done with the circular pieces before. Once each piece was taped, I began to sketch the designs. Then, each individual triangle was cut and sanded to create the final result.


With the pieces masked off and the design planned out, it was time to start cutting.


I first cut the black base parts of the pentagram, and then cut paper templates of the other parts to be able to get a feel for the finished product and to give me a chance to play around with different layouts and designs. After a few hours of trying stuff out (I'm easily entertained), I finally decided on the design I wanted and started cutting.


Here we can see how the pieces are starting to come together more and more to form a UV-glowing green pentagram. The effect with the UV lights turned on was quite simply stunning and made my "modder's nerve" tingle like crazy. It took a whole lot of very boring work to get all of the pieces cut and sanded, but it was sure worth it.

Creating the flat front

In order to attach the pentagram pieces to the front, it needed to be a flat surface. However, this is trickier than it sounds - the nuts used to attach the front plate to the rest of the body are 5mm thick, and so is the acrylic!


In order to fix this little problem, I took a hacksaw to the nuts - translate that as you would like, ouch! I then cut them down to about a third of their original size and recessed them into the plexi. Problem solved!