It's been far too long since I did anything towards this project, so I made some time to work a little more on it.
As per my mockup (in my last picture update), I decided to go with this design for the case window, it looked alright drawn on, and so I decided to go with it.
And here we have a nice cut out window
![Very Happy :)](./images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif)
Test fitted on my current P180 (sorry didn't stop to take a pic), it works quite well I think.
This next bit was a pain in the backside, I had to separate the outer metal from the plastic inside of the sidepanel. It took forever, I cut myself a bunch of times, and I fear I've bent the outer layer a bit too much (it's still masked up on the other side, and I daren't look too see if I've sprained it >_> ). Hopefully it'll sit flat again when it's glued back to the plastic/window when it's all finished.
I went to all that effort separating the panels so that I could get the jigsaw to the middle plastic (and inner metal layer) to cut this nice big square hole.
Once re-assembled, it will look like this.
I've done this so I can recess the perspex for the case window as flush as possible with the outside of the case. If I'd have left it as it was and stuck the perspex on the inside of the sidepanel, there'd have been about a 4mm gap between the outside of the case and the window, which wouldn't have looked great. So this way, there's just the 1mm of the outside layer. (Fingers crossed it is worth the hassle).
I also made a blanking plate to cover all the stock holes in the mid-chamber divider in the P182. The hole in it is to let the water-pipes through, and I'm claiming it only looks that rough because of the plastic curling up (Granted it's not perfect underneath the plastic, but I'll probably be putting some trim on it anyway so it doesn't cut the pipes, in which case it doesn't matter :p ).
And this is where the blanking plate will live.
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I actually think that's all my cuts done and dusted with now. :D
I've ordered some adhesive remover to get rid of the sticky stuff on the side panel (it's painfully slow to get off even with IPA and elbow-grease!). So when that gets here I'll clean it all up, and then I think I can arrange to get it all powdercoated
Dan