Micke's DreamHack Modding Mania

Dragon head case

This mod was was kind of fun and rather different at the same time. My brother-in-law and I were having a bit of a two-man couch/beer party, and we started discussing 'handmade' things and shaping custom projects. Once I'd got the idea in my head I couldn't let it go, and so that's how my Dragon Head project came about. I love fantasy movies, and so that's why I chose to make a case based on the head of a Dragon.

I rounded up some hardware for it. The component list included an Abit NFM2 motherboard, an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 2GB of Crucial DDR2 memory, a Point of View GeForce 7950 GX2 and a 320GB Western Digital hard disk (RAID edition). Given the 'unconventional' housing I was about to create, I wanted a hard disk designed to operate 24/7 in intense environments!

I needed something that was going to be easy to shape - I chose 10cm thick Styrofoam sheets thinking that they'd be nice and easy to work with. Come the end of the project, little did I know that I would be substantially changing my opinion of how easy Styrofoam is to work with! This is a shorter version of the full worklog that you can find in the forums. It's definitely worth checking out if you find this teaser interesting!

Using a carpet knife and a chef's knife I cut the rough shapes then used some sandpaper to shape it as I went along.

Building up the various layers took a decent amount of time, but with the right cutting and sanding, I could see my project coming together. At this point, the result looks good, but you can't build a computer out of Styrofoam - I needed to make the case a bit more solid.

The answer is to use the Styrofoam as a mould for a polyester glue and fibreglass shell.

However, the problem is that the glue will melt the foam, so I needed something to cover the Styrofoam before applying the glue. I used fast-hardening putty to cover it and then sanded it smooth before I started applying the fibreglass over the top to a thickness of about 1cm.

Once I had finished applying the fibreglass, I could really start to see how the Dragon head was shaping up.