Dragon for MSI

Order

Back in 2006, I took my first steps in modding, in no less distant 2009, I went to the professional level. Behind, thousands of cutting discs erased into dust, liters of spent paint, a lot of completed projects. One wonders what's next?

What are the prospects in modding, what to do when the most interesting work gradually turns into a routine?

It was with such thoughts that I mechanically clicked on the inscription "Inbox" in Google Mail.

1 new letter.

The title of the letter “ MSI Dragon PC ” eloquently hinted that in the near future it will not be boring for sure.

Project

It seems to be working, modd every day. Someone has a phone, someone has a laptop, someone has a case and seems to have already seen everything and there is nothing surprising.

When you receive an order from a large company, you become a yellow-faced youth again and you cannot fall asleep for at least one night with excitement. Damn nice feeling when you stand on the threshold of something complicated, new, but so desirable.

When the euphoria has passed, the understanding of what needs to be done that will surpass everything that I have done earlier has returned.

On October 28, 2013, the countdown of work on a project codenamed “MSI Dragon PC” was started. The body must be made in the theme of their series of game components and be made with the expectation of participating in various events. For the next three weeks we tried to agree on a design.

I usually spend 1 night on developing a single hull design. Worked - showed, threw it away, went ahead and so on in a circle. MSI wanted the body in the style of their new series of game components, but, frankly, it seemed to me that it was banal to embed all the components in the dragon, and in fact they asked me to do just that. Soon a compromise was found - I decided to embed in addition to the dragon their signature shield and, in addition to the shield, a sword. Unfortunately, when I invented it, I was already morally squeezed out and, in truth, I was ready to abandon the project, since I did not see ways to solve the dilemma - how to do it is not trite and effective. In addition, I can not stand to work on images of living beings, I am more to the technique and various mechanisms ...

I spent exactly as long as the average person managed to eat a standard hot dog to work out my last sentence for MSI.

I called MSI and literally on my fingers described what I plan to do. I had absolutely no hope of anything, I didn’t care.

MSI gave the go-ahead.

In my workshop there is a mass of tools and machines necessary for the operation, the absence of some expensive units is compensated by ingenuity and contacts in the right places. We don’t have one thing - a 3D modeler who understands at least something in modding.

I see all the projects in my head, but the customer doesn’t see what I see. And MSI needs to show something.

We went a simple old-fashioned way - made a cardboard layout.

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The layout was also approved, and we started to work. Well, how to get started ...

Not having an exact case model in 3D, not having the original drawings, and not having a fully developed concept, we realized that we could not meet the deadlines.

Under the terms of the agreement with MSI, we had to publish the progress of work in the form of a detailed worklog on one of the Ukrainian Internet resources. I called the terms of work, relying only on my subjective feelings. I was wrong. As it turns out, not so slightly wrong.

It was originally planned to finish the body in two weeks + -. So much time we spent only on thinking through the smallest details that will make the project interesting, memorable and just awesome. During the first two weeks, of course, we did something, but not very much, because it was not clear from what it was better to do this or that detail.

The fact is that two years earlier, MSI had already ordered a case from a single Kiev modder in the context of their products, but were disappointed with the result. Since The body, to put it mildly, was not transportable - its weight was about 180 kg and weakly reflected the very essence of the concept.

Our task was not to screw up with weight and design. All that is possible is to be made from lightweight materials. Well, the design should just shout about the company that ordered it. Memorized, imprinted in memory.

The result of thinking through was the following concept of design and functionality:

The case will be made in the form of an open stand. The basis of the body is a shield (one of the symbols of the game line of accessories), a sword is vertically thrust into the shield. The dragon is hovering over the shield, holding in its paws a motherboard with a video card.
The highlight of the case is its inclusion system. To put a simple button in such a case is just silly and boring. I thought that in any exhibition building there should be a “trick” that will simply attract people at the exhibition, thanks to which everyone will want to take a picture with the case. There must be some kind of “dialogue”, some kind of relationship between iron and man. I came up with a ring. The usual ring. For the subject of swords, dragons and shields - the most it. The user, putting on a ring, as if is allocated with magic power to "revive" the computer.

The computer will turn on only at the touch of a hand with a ring to the hilt of the sword!

Everyone at the exhibition will want to take a picture, clutching the handle of the sword. And this in turn is thousands of likes on Instagram, Facebook and in general everywhere. Advertising, in general, will be good.

Initially, we wanted to make a shield and a dragon from aluminum. Some parts of 3mm, and others of 6mm.

The material prices were simply impressive, but the quality of aluminum was “below the baseboard”, the number of deep scratches simply could not be counted. We also refused to work with aluminum because the company with which we usually cooperate in the field of waterjet cutting was closed, and a number of competing companies could not fulfill our order for cutting for various reasons.

And the weight of aluminum needed for the body would be impressive. Therefore, we have shifted to a more affordable, better and lighter material - sheet acrylic.

Made drawings, laser cut acrylic. Another problem came out; for a case of this size, acrylic is too flexible, even two parts of 3 mm folded together were bent.

Elements of structural reinforcement in key locations — aluminum plates — were quickly invented; they would fit into the design and solve the rigidity problems of some parts.

The story about the body will not be complete, if you do not mention the main file - money.

The amount that I called MSI for completing this order was not large, and in truth, it was calculated for 14 working days + materials. At the beginning of the project I received an advance payment for materials.

As a result, I was wrong with the terms and materials.

The prices for materials were not pleasing, especially given the fact that we reworked a number of key and not very cheap parts for 2-3 reasons for various reasons. Constantly needed to buy something. There was an option to simplify the design and construction to save money, but I did not consider it. If you do, then so as not to regret what has been done!

The money did not become very fast, which led to delaying the deadlines, because the money for the project needed to be earned by doing other projects, and in the original plan this was not taken into account ...

Therefore, the scheme of work on the MSI Dragon PC project looked like this - we take another project, we do, we get money, we deduct money from them, taxes, rent, everything that remains, goes to MSI Dragon PC.

Sad was - not the word.

I couldn’t ask the rest of the money right away or change the amount agreed upon initially. These were their conditions.

Modding

Work on the hull was going slowly but surely.

Each decision was considered twice.

Shield work

Making the shield of acrylic was given to us is not easy. It was extremely difficult to make racks that should support the upper part of the shield. Acrylic tends to bend, so what seems to be very simple and obvious in practice just does not work. All racks were made and fitted to the geometry of the shield manually.

Inside the shield we installed a modified Seasonic and ssd kingston power supply. With seemingly giant dimensions of the shield, it is very difficult to place in it something other than a sword, ssd and power supply.

However, there was another 120mm fan, it captures the cold air from under the bottom and blows the entire shield through. In the back of the shield we have located the blinds.

Polished and fitted in place by hand. The sidewalls of the shield were made of 1mm acrylic, which was curved in the shape of a shield and glued in this position; on the outside of the sidewall, they were covered with vinyl film for brushed aluminum of black color.

Overlay on the upper part of the shield, on which the inscription Gaming G Series is located, was also covered with a film under brushed aluminum.

On the bottom of the shield are legs of black brushed aluminum.

It is also worth mentioning the heat dissipation plate inside the shield, it is necessary to protect the acrylic from excessive heating by the power supply, which will stand inside the shield. It is made of brushed aluminum, the ends are tinted red.

An image of a dragon was also painted on the shield. Details were cut from 0.5mm stainless steel, but did not fit the design, they did not look on the red shield. Therefore, the details of the dragon were tightened in a black film under the skin of a reptile. The thinnest transparent double-sided tape 3M was applied to the reverse side and was alternately glued to the shield.

Work on the sword

We decided to make a sword out of two aluminum profiles of square section fastened together. But the two profiles are not very similar to the sword.

The solution to this problem took more than one day and more than one week. We tried everything - aluminum profiles of a triangular cross-section, composite, and other crazy options were considered ... We stopped at not the moddersky itself, but quite affordable and convenient MDF processing.

Historically, my workshop is located surrounded by furniture factories. At one of them we were kindly rescued by making two side pads on the sword according to my drawings.

Pads had the only difficulty in manufacturing - the cutting angle, it should be exactly 39.5 degrees. Otherwise, the profile of the sword does not match the cut in acrylic. We were lucky - everything was made correctly and fit in place.

One admirer of my workshop and mine personally, from the city of Kiev, once brought us fifty kilograms of different pieces of iron, pipes, parts, parts from servers. It is nice and helpful. A number of these parts turned out to be not only useful, but also indispensable for the manufacture of this body. For which he thanks a lot! In particular, remarkable steel reinforced and welded corners were found in a pile of metal, which securely fixed the sword inside the shield, and the u-shaped profile was used for the rear control panel, as well as dragon fasteners to the sword.

The sword, as well as a number of other parts, was covered with vinyl film for brushed aluminum in black.

Of pine slats was made garda of the sword.

To complete the work on the sword, lacked only the handle. That was the problem.

Since to turn on the computer, the user must touch the handle of the sword in a certain place; the task before us was to force the handle to be taken from a certain side and in a certain place. It is not simple. And the handle should be strong, so that at the exhibition it would not be broken off by those who want to hold her hand.

In the process of searching for the handle, I started a real crisis.

When I can’t think of something or find something, I’m going to the building supermarket.

So I did this time.

I walked, wandered, found nothing. Already on the way to the exit, passing through the rows of garden tools, I ran into garden rakes. Juha! This is it.

The perfect sword handle.

The handle was fixed on the guard and secured with self-vulcanizing insulating tape, a lovely imitation of the skin on the handle!

A red ball was fastened on top of the handle, which will visually complement the sword and become the logical conclusion of the handle.

In the hilt of the sword we placed the reed switches. Approaching the magnetic ring closes them and the computer turns on.

Work on the frame

The skeleton of the dragon had to be voluminous, so that through it you could skip the occasion and at the same time powerful to withstand the weight of components and your own. From 3mm black acrylic we cut the frame parts - 4 identical plates, two for each half of the frame. After we reliably pulled down the frame halves with screws, and the halves were combined into one whole with the uprights - the frame found the desired look and enviable rigidity. The frame tightly connected to the sword with four screws. Inside the frame is equipped with rings through which the wires are passed.

Initially, there were thoughts to make a frame of aluminum, but mainly because of the large weight, we abandoned this idea.

Ring

Ring for such a project can not just go and buy. It needs to be done!

We have no casting in the workshop, so we had to turn "on the side." Rings, we cast in three different designs. Two dropped out, there was only one.

We cleaned the rings with acid, polished the metal flows after casting, and polished it with GOI paste.

Then they “boiled” the rings in avopaste and only after that they painted it with red powder and inserted “stone”. The “stone” of black color is a piece of acrylic, hand-fitted and processed “under brushed aluminum”.

Each type of rings was originally 4, to the final stage, we brought only 2 (one main, one spare).

Work on the decorative elements

On the frame on the sides should be screwed lining with scales. The making of this scale is a separate story. In total, about 1500 scales were made, of which we selected about 250 pieces, which we fixed on the sides of the dragon. 6 hours of labor on each side.

Scale design is also a non-trivial problem. What should the scale of a mythical living creature look like? There was no answer.

12 years ago I was fond of creating ornaments. I dug up my old sketches. Of them, and choose the scales. There were only three criteria - the ornament had to consist of only one repeating element, the distribution along the plane should not be boring, preferably with a shift and the element should resemble a scale.

Paws - one of the last, but at the same time the most difficult task.

Initially, I hoped to make paws that could actually hold the pallet with the motherboard and video card, but in the process of working on the paws, I was convinced that it was not feasible, more precisely, we would not get elegant paws - these would be fat legs!

An urgent search for a solution was started. I would like to say that we had many options to choose from, but no. There was only one option - hidden fasteners for the pallet, which will transfer the weight to the frame.

Option, put the dragon paws on the shield, was not even considered, because that would ruin the whole idea, our dragon must “float” over the shield at any cost!

The paws were eventually made of a copper conductor, the vein was dressed in a black braid, the braid was given an interesting, leathery form.

From the very beginning, I imagined the claws exactly as they turned out, I knew how to do them. But the unexpected problem was repeatability. You know, it is not easy to grind 12 identical claws with a grinder weighing under 3 kg.

To power the video card, we will need a wiring harness, its delivery to the destination from the very beginning was not a problem - after all, the dragon needs a tail. The tail will consist of stylized vertebrae through which we pass the wires.

The closest 15 centimeters of the tail to the video card were made mobile, so that if necessary the video card could be easily removed.

The head of the dragon seemed to me only in the form of a pseudo-volume. We bent it out of a flat acrylic blank, then covered it with vinyl film under the skin of a reptile outside, and painted it red inside.

Eyes for the dragon head were also made by hand. Only 4 hours of hard grinding and polishing and 1 eye ready.

The inscriptions on the shield are made of acrylic with stainless steel overlays. Thus, we were able to achieve the effect of the backlighting of the letters.

The MSI inscription on both sides of the sword logically complements the design and is not out of sight, the letters are made of acrylic and painted red by hand.

The power cable in the custom package must also be unique. For the manufacture of the power cable, we took a chrome chain and weaved into it 3 wires, which were previously braided into a red and black braid, so we were able to achieve the color unity of the 3 basic colors - red, black and chrome.

The power connector that connects to the case is a modified three-pin microphone connector. For this design to come up with something better is simply impossible!

I can not separately mention the processor cooler, which we modified specifically for the design of this case.

Initially, he was copper, red-red. He would ruin everything. We already have experience painting processor radiators, and this time we will use this method again. We will also replace the sticker on the fan with a one made by us specifically for this project.

Wires

There were a lot of them. Lots of. The first difficulty that faced us was to stretch the wires through the sword. Places in it, well, how to say, by calculation. A couple more extra lived did not fit. We amputated the wires of the power supply and increased something about 50 centimeters into the cut.

The harness turned out rather big.

Then all the wires tightened braid.

Pulling the wiring took quite a bit of time. For example - to stretch the wires through the tail takes about 5 hours of pure time.

Materials

The main material for the manufacture of the case is acrylic, a complex, fragile, but cool material. We also used aluminum and stainless steel to create some parts.

Painting of metal parts of the project was carried out by powder method. Painting colors - red (RAL 3000) and black smooth mat.

Painting acrylic parts to give them a less glossy (plastic) look was carried out using liquid rubber (PlastiDip).In my opinion, this paint is similar not only to rubber, but also to the skin, which is why we applied it in our work.

Separate details were hand painted with acrylic enamel.

A number of parts were covered with vinyl films of Dutch, Japanese and French production.

Results

Through all the work on our body was a fat streak of bad luck. At first I wondered if it was worth starting the work, then I doubted that we would be able to finish the job.

The result is 2.5 months of hard work. The fruit of my sick fantasies. Hard experience.

I didn't make the body alone. Therefore, it would be appropriate not only to mention, but also to express tremendous gratitude to colleagues and simply to voluntary assistants, without whom the corps would not have been completed.

Ilya Ilyin worked with me on the creation of this corps. Iilin

Provided all possible assistance to Marina Ponomarev, Dmitry Shevchenko, Alexey Nichvolovdov . Thanks you. Thank you so much!

Thanks to our photographer - Evgeny Naryshkin for patience and an individual approach!