Orac³ Part 1

The holes I drilled in my chrome junction boxes have 19mm holes (3/4" on the step-drill) which nicely allowed the grommets around the hoses to bite and seal the holes. I got a nice black rubber surround.



Being a fan of the saying waste not, want not, I took the handles and cut off the threaded ends. This gave me something which, when pushed through an appropriately sized panel-hole from behind, will enable the nice chrome fittings on the end of my conduit to screw onto said panel. Tasty!


The weakest link...

Since the final overall result will only look as good as the worst thing in it I knew from the outset there was no point having all this great steel cabling and ordinary looking plugs. I would have to do something about my SATA and the Molex connecters (the worst). Here's what I came up with:



I started with the SATA power plugs. In order to partially/fully 'stealth' the butt ugly connectors I firstly got a craft knife and trimmed off excess plug (making sure not to cut into/expose any wires). There turned out to be a lot of redundant plastic on these. Taking chrome shower hose fittings...



... I screwed the fittings over the trimmed SATA plugs - a perfect fit! The thread bit into the plastic so it attached very securely and sat nice and straight. Plugged into a SATA HD (stickers removed awaiting polishing), the plug vanishes! Oooo.



The same treatment was given to the Molex plugs - I trimmed off the excess plastic and encased the now-bared wire in heat shrink to prevent any short circuits on the metal hose. Then I screwed the chrome fitting on over the top. Once the plug has been given a coat of black vinyl dye and it is plugged in, it will practically disappear. With both the Molex and SATA plugs I ended up soldering extensions to all the wires that will be running back to my junction box.



A quick test fit with only 2 HDD plugged in. Happy so far.