Temple of the Machine God Printer Friendly Version   By CWAUGH - Dec. 31, 1969 Temple of the Machine God This is a PC case in the form of a 40K style cathedral, decorated with the iconography of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Inside the case is an Athalon 1530 MHz PC with two hard drives, DVD drive, and floppy drive. This was a crazy idea that popped into my head as a possible HADD2 entry, and that I initially dismissed as too hard. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew I wanted to give it a try...unfortunately, by that point I couldn't get it finished in time for HADD2. Construction Originally, I was going to make the construction 100% plaster, but I got worried about electrical issues (grounding, etc.), so I decided to build a plaster shell around the metal chassis of an existing desktop case. I sat down with the chassis and an old hard drive and CD drive, and played around with ideas on how to fit everything. I finally decided that I would use a design much like a standard cathedral, with one fan on the side and one on the top, under the cathedral dome. The pictures illustrate the design much better than I can describe it. Since I was trying to rush the construction for HADD2, I mostly flew by the seat of my pants from that point on. With hindsight, I would do a lot of things differently...nevertheless, it went together fairly smoothly, with no major hurdles to re-work. Note: although one of the photos shows a tube of wood glue, I mostly used "ZAP Goop", which is an automotive one-part epoxy. I was worried about strength but the 'goop' dries tougher than any plaster. And yes, I did use denstone dental plaster. Molds Used In roughly decreasing order of importance: #55 Bell Tower #56 Tomb #200 Wall #50 Wizard tower #100 Blocks #61 Turret #64 8" Tower #65 Ruined Tower #80 Dragon Teeth Acc #71 Fieldstone Acc #62 Roman Temple (And probably a few odd pieces from other molds as well...) Many of the main sub-assemblies were cast from custom molds - see below. This greatly sped up the casting process. I also used molds of various 40K insignia to decorate the case. Other parts Aside from the PC itself (motherboard & cards, floppy drive, two harddrives, DVD drive, two fans, switches), I also used a plastic bowl from a cheap salad tosser as the main dome, cold cathode lighting (green), plastic sheeting (tinted green) for the windows, foamboard for the main roof, and styrene sheet for the upper roof. The door is made from real wood, with brass hinges, and hides the power switch and floppy drive when closed. The statues on the towers are Foundry and GW figures of monks and 'servitors'. Finally, the main Mechanicus insignia in color is printed on paper and sprayed with protective varnish. Assorted pipes and mechanical details are mainly resin castings from Armorcast. (My only real design failure involved the Armorcast 'pipes' that hide the DVD drive - the resin casting is too heavy for the drive to open with it attached, so it has to be removed manually to use the drive.) Postscript The PC works fine, in fact I am using it to do this writeup. I later retrofitted a separate switch to turn the lighting off, because it was just too bright to have on all the time. The case is not going to any LAN parties, however - it is very heavy! Would I ever do this again? Not likely! (Hmmm...skematic molds...necron pyramid...green glowing stuff...must resist...)   4 Ratings     12345      Public Comments Please log in to post a comment    You must be a registered member to post comments. You may sign-in Here.

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