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Plexiglass door window

Circa 2002

After doing the HD LED & Front USB mods, and not quite ready for cutting the metal, I had an idea for my next slice & dice operation. I wanted to work with some plexiglass, and didn't like that I could not see the drive lights behind the door on the front of the case. Thus I had this brilliant idea to put a window in the door!

Just look at that boring door, definitely needs some style work. So obviously, the first thing to do here is to remove the door from the front panel, which is easy enough...

Now to get rid of some plastic to make way for the window, a snip here, a slice there, and voila! It was nice that the door was only connected every inch or two, with gaps between them. And here's an innocent looking piece of plexiglass that used to be part of a bird cage. It begged to be my crash test dummy for this experiment.

Ouch, without that part of the door, this nasty corner was created, and that might cause a fatal injury someday. And with that comes a moment of artistic filing and buffing, which results in this nicely smoothed out curve. Same thing on the other side, too.

So I did some good & bad cutting on the test piece, which let me at least test the overall fitment. Pretty good for my first attack on some acrylic. It fits nicely! Then I started cutting on the real stuff, the long straight sides being relatively easy to snap. Then on to some filing & buffing for a nice smooth curve that fit along the top of the door cutout.

Now moving down to the bottom it's a bit more tricky because it's concave. Here it is, after much grinding, filing, re-grinding, re- filing, and some buffing. Despite the fact that I was starting to melt the stuff due to the heat from grinding & filing, I was able to put a really nice finish on the edges.

This shows the smoothness after sculpting & buffing the sheet of acrylic. And here it is proped up in the door to get an idea of how it's going to look.

Not being able to find a definitive answer about how to attach this to the door properly, I tried what I had on hand...some superglue. This appeared to have worked, but later it all kind of fell apart in transit to a LAN party. But, before that happened, I did get some nice pictures of the finished product, like this one...

Another, closer shot of the window. And when the lights are out, the LEDs make a cool glow.

Later on, after the LAN party tragedy, I discovered JB Weld #16, an acrylic solvent that causes cancer in the state of California. Sounds like fun, and it worked like a charm! The acrylic and plastic are now actually one piece, bonded at the molecular level.