My brother and I finally finished the computer case.

The entire case was taken apart and then taped off, sawed into, and painted. To begin, the Aperture Laboratories logo was hand painted along the top of the case and then a Dremel was used to (carefully) cut out the logo. After this the top was sanded down to the metal casing, then primed and painted.

An oval window was cut out of one side panel for a portal to look into the hardware. The case was painted both white and black to give it an appropriate Aperture feel.

The really tedious part then came in. Every wire inside of the case was individually stripped and re-sleeved in UV Orange(red technically), UV Blue, and White. The connectors were all replaced with UV Blue and UV Orange. The heatshrink is also UV Blue and UV Orange, and was put together so the blue heatshrink matches up with the blue connectors and then go into an orange connector. (Kind of like going through portals!)

In addition to spiffy sleeving, a new 120mm LED blue fan was placed underneath the ‘aperture’ part of the logo and then a blue Cathode was placed underneath the rest of the words so that it would all glow blue. Three UV Cathodes are placed inside the case so that the UV Heatshrink, sleeving, and connectors all glow their brightest and prettiest.

Then a sleeved orange LED cable was placed along the inside of the portal(window) giving it a nice science-y glow. A valve was attached along the upper top of the panel to commemorate the company that created Portal.

On the other panel individual stickers were printed and cut out to resemble a test chamber wall. Complete with warnings and Aperture Science logo!

Whew. Maybe someday I’ll post a nice slideshow tutorial of the madness.