Painting Interior of Case
 

Hi all!
I looked at the painting article by Beav and it looks great for painting the outside of a case, but would it work for painting the inside of the case?

I dont know why traditional methods of painting the exterior would not work on the interior.

I ordered a YY cube in black and I am going to probably paint the interior black as well. I'm sort of undecided on the interior color though. I'm thinking a flat black, nothing glossy in the interior. I planned to sand the interior with a medium grit followed by a finer grit and then wiping the residue away with a cloth before the paint job.

My last case job was painted with Rustoleum Metallic Black. It was great looking when it was all said and done. I never did the interior because I got too lazy. On my new cube system, I plan to do a meticulous job and I'm not cutting corners.

Maybe this is irrelevant, because I suck at case painting, but... black case that have yellow or red or blue insides look friggin great :) :).
-Kev

If you can spot $50 or so and you want just a friggen KILLER
interior finish. Then strip your case of all plastic and screws
and find yourself a shop that does "Powder Coating". Hell, if you
have the cash and you find a shop with some time, you can even
have it Chrome or Gold Plated.

Honestly, if you wanted a Truely Pimp Rig....get your Lian Li
24k gold plated!

Can't plate aluminum they say? Then your talking to the wrong
shop!

I used to custom design aluminum yo-yo's for pro's working on
breaking world records for longest spin and fastest spin and
stuff. One of my tricks was to have the aluminum yo-yo polished,
then "flashed", then Chrome Plated. Flashing is where they first
plate the aluminum with Brass or Copper, then the Chrome or
Gold sticks all nice and happy to that! And looks really really
glassy smoth!

But um...yeah...back to what you were saying. You can have
almost any color they can mix (no metal flakes I've found out)
powder coated onto your case chassy. Then you can paint or
powder coat the exterior as you please!

I personally find painting (properly) the inside of a case difficult,
because if you want that true "showroom" car paint job, you have
a HELL of a LOT of sanding to do. And sanding inside a little box
like that rather sucks. I sanded the inside of my YY Cube just so
my paint and primer have something uniform to stick to. So far
it looks OK, but I purposefully went with a flat paint rather then a
gloss so as not to flaunt any imperfections in the finish...

Yep, that is the way to go Raven. I am going with a flat color in the interior. After Kevin was talking about how pimp red and blue and yellow looked for the interior, I began to reconsider a black interior with a black case.... Maybe some kind of blue inside might work, BUT with a neon inside, I'm not sure if it will make it look funny.

I really wanted to see the coolant in water lines lit up. Its kind of hard for me to imagine what it might look like, but hmmmm.....

haha, your a smart man Ice.

I *was* going to do the inside of my YY Cube case in
Zink Chromate. It's an odd green that they use in painting
the inside of bombers and stuff. Something to do with the
way it helps you see better in low light or something. I thought
that would be great for this stealth like YY case I'm working on.
But I was concerned with the CCFLs making it look really bad.

What I did was take a cardboard box that just happened to be
about the same size as the inside of my cube case, prime half
of it in black, and half of it in grey, then paint different sections
of the inside of it the various colors that I was *considering*
using inside my case...then I just powered up the blue, red,
and UV CCFL individually, and in groups to see what kind of
colors I would get out of the paint/CCFL mix.

Needless to say, my interior is flat black. LOL

I also went with flat black to help highlight the florescent stuff
that's going to be going on in there (dye-lite and such).
The drawback to black, let alone FLAT black is that the ambient
light in the case is diminished considerably. But it does give the
illusion of making the interior look much much smaller...which in
turn makes my case mod look much more intricate...like "how the
hell did he fit all that crap in that lil case?

Ummm... how many coats of primer/paint should I put on? Also I'm concerned about the paint filling up the small holes for the standoffs for the mobo, and etc. But if I used masking tape to cover it up, the paint job would be inconsistent. SO should I mask the holes or would the standoffs and screws fit fine even with a couple of layers of paint on it?

Crap, I just spent 15 minutes writing up a "brief" description of
how I painted the exterior of my case, and I was about to
start writing about the interior, and IE friggen crashed on me.
I'm sorry, I'm too tired to retype it.

In short, don't worry about paint blocking up the holes.
If you have spare brass standoffs, install them, paint over
them, then pull them out and use clean ones.

speaking of power coating............... anyone have a CLUE what kinda shops do it? I have yet to find in San Diego a place that advertises powder coating.




and i know this is sad, but where in the user options can we change the 'Air Cooled' or 'Watercooled' Tags next to our name......... cause im H20 all the way

post more than 50 posts

heh thanks, im a moron

What i do usualy, is type the post in Eudora, then cut/paste into IE. An added benafit to this is the spell check. You can tell when i used Eudora and when i used IE since the tough words like I, a, and me will be mispelled;)

And select all, coppy before hitting the Submit button is a good idea too

I have painted both of the interiors of the cases I own. (the modded cases that is) One of them is done in black to match everything else in the case. I used the Hard Hat stuff from red devil. I would suggest wet sandpaper and a primer coat first if you want it to stick where you are screwing stuff in though. On the second case I used bumper crome. It worked fairly well. Not quite as strong as the black. If you don't sand it down somehow (sandblaster should work also) you will just have to be extra carefull where you put stuff.

For powder coating, try looking under machine shops, gun shops, and in the San Diego (or is it in San Fran) there is a really big custom bathtub factory, they might be willing to do colored porcelin. that would make for an interesting H2O mod. maybe even a handle you can jiggle for a power button...

hehe... but be careful what you post.. :cool:

Heh, any idea if powdercoating works on aluminum as well as steel? I was told it doesnt work on plastic(damnit!) but I guess I can do that myself... neways, my friends dad owns a company that makes computer shelving for corporations and they powdercoat it>:) Should be free for me, lol

I just used 4 mini cans of Saphire Blue spray paint, and then covered it with 2 coats of sprap clear gloss lacquer. I've used this method before, and the laquer pretty much makes it scratch free. Unless you try to scratch it obviously.

I just used Testors Model paint, it works great. Pictures will be coming when I finish my case next week.