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Micro-Mod - Paint your fans
by llungster
WhiningDog.NET
12/16/2002
Up until recently, case fans were made from
boring black plastic. This was okay since no one ever saw them. The recent
popularity of case windows has led to transparent LED, and glow-in-the-dark
fans. But what if you have a fan that can be easily seen? An LED fan is
surely cool, but I wanted something a little different for my project.
In a recent mod to my tower case, I decided
to add air intake fans to help cool my SCSI drives. A rear exhaust fan pulls
this air out the rear. I relocated my four disks so that they now sat vertically
with 3/8 inches seperating each drive from the next. I opted to use two
60 mm fans instead of a single larger unit. The case is a traditional beige
unit so I decided to change the color of the fans I already had by painting
them silver. I used a can of metalic silver paint and completely covered
the fans in 2 passes; making sure to spray from all sides to reach any recesses
that might be harder to reach. I also spray painted the 1/2 inch MDF panel
that holds the fans. Covering the MDF and fans is a single sheet of plexiglass.
Holes drilled into the plexiglass allow air to reach the fan blades.
 The
results can be seen here. The fans are actually spinning but the flash
did a stop-action shot. The four green LEDs below the fans are activity
lights for each of the four disks. A single 47 ohm 1/2 watt resistor in
series with the fan's power leads reduces the 12V supply to about 8V to
reduced noise. This disk arrangement is much better than the old one layout
where each disk was mounted in its own 3-1/2 to 5-1/4 adapter and mounted
in a seperate device bay. Vertical mouting allows me to reduce the total
height from 4 bays (one per disk) to 3 bays, and packing the disks closer
together makes it easier to cool the drives all at once.
I could have used an LED fan but the paint job made
for a more subtle look. Most fans are never seen, but for those instances
when they are visible, why not dress them up? Next time, I may try some
orange glow paint.
If you have any comments or questions, please post
them up in our forums.
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