Hey guys sorry I haven't updated the blogs in a week or two. Things with the main job got super busy and then I had to make sure orders kept going out but I do have amazing news for those waiting on the MKII Lazarus Edition cases.
So one of the biggest hold ups has been the film strip that goes in front of the lines of the case. I have ordered from a few vendors but each time they were always too dark and light would not pass through them. Well I think that was caused by the vendor not using the right material. The material is called "Duratrans" which is similar to photography film.
"Duratrans is a brand name for a large-format photographic backlit transparency film invented by Eastman Kodak in the late 1970s."
I spoke with a new vendor and showed them exactly what it was needed for and they knew right away what I needed. I sent in the design and they produced around 150 of the strips which are on their way to us now. Fingers crossed this is what we need and they look like the originals. Some of y'all might be wondering why are they monochrome and not the color of the stripes? Well initially they were just a gradient of those primary colors but the down side was you were stuck with just that color. Charles found out using a white to black gradient in combination with an RGB LED you could pick your own color for the drips. We did get 100 RGB modules made which will ship with the cases and will have some additional ones available if you have an existing MKII in the wild but either weren't able to get an RGB module or didn't know they existed.
Photo provided from Tapplastics
The other part we have been struggling to get our hands on is the special black to white acrylic for the luminous panels. We could find resellers but they would reject us because "we were not resell shops" whatever that means. Luckily we were finally able to find a solution for this and the material works like the original acrylite material that was used! I ordered a few test sheets to double check and they work just like the originals! This has been a major headache to acquire these because everyone that has inquired about the luminous panels has specifically asked for the special blacked out edition version but we just could not get our hands on this material.
Front Fan Assembly
So as I spoke on before the front fan assembly used a crossflow style fan but was retired by Silverstone shortly after the launch of the original MKII. We do not have the original inserts for these but I have been able to replicate them out of 10mm thick aluminum. The other options for the front panel were an Aquacomputer Aquareo line fan controller which could be mounted to face externally or internally. We are focusing on the fan assembly aspect first to give the case some additional airflow. Turns out dual 40mm fans work perfectly for this and with the thicker versions such as the Noctua NF-A4X20 help push fresh air into the case. We are trying to see if we can get some better pricing on these since each fan alone is around $18 dollars and in total we will need 80-100 of them, if not we will look at just having the brackets produced for this modification.