In this video I pull off the top tempered glass, make a replacement acrylic top, cut a window in the top of the chassis, talk a little bit about the plan, and the hardware.

I started off by taking apart the old system, and getting back down to the bones of it.

This I/O cover is pretty nice. One mod I was looking at was standing it up and making the top the new front of the case. I would have to flip the power button for that, though, as the logo would have been upside down and annoying. Luckily if I were to do that, it’s fairly easy to do.

Since I’ll be cutting stuff up this time around, I’m taking everything off that I can. Always remember to photograph power connections if you need to remove anything like this. Putting them back incorrectly could be a little too much excitement 😁.

Next came the stressful part… I took the top glass panel off. I don’t have any pictures of the process, but it’s covered in the video (above). Essentially it was patience, a heat gun, and a couple of prying devices (screwdrivers). But eventually, I got it removed in one piece!

Essentially there is just a narrow, roughly 1/2″ wide, strip of double sided foam tape around the perimeter. I focused on heating up a decent area with the heat gun and then gently pried up with the screwdriver. I often used a gentle twisting of a large flat plate screwdriver with eased edges to avoid excessive force. Try not to heat up any particular area for too long. I think it took me around 7-8 minutes to get this removed. Of course, if you try this do so at your own discretion. There’s always the possibility you shatter this thing in to more little pieces than you’ll ever find.

After removing all the tape, there was this plastic film on the back under the paint. I removed it by just pulling it off, which was relatively easy.

I used mineral spirits to dissolve and clean up the adhesive left on the glass, and denatured alcohol to clean up the oily residue left over from that process.

And that’s how you de-lid an InWin A1.

My reason for going through all that effort was to get a window in the top of this thing. So the opaque white top wasn’t going to cut it. I covered the thing with Citristrip and let it sit for an hour. Didn’t do anything, so I covered it again and let it sit a couple more hours.

And… nothing. I took it outside and used Aircraft Remover (stronger paint stripper). That stuff is nasty, but some of the best stuff I could find. Directions say 10-15 minutes, I tried 15 minutes. Nothing. I tried an hour. Nothing. Alright then.

This was my desperate attempt with an 80 grit sanding block and a coarse steel wire wheel. Now we’re getting somewhere!

Yeah, no. That was almost an hour of sanding and wire wheel work. That’s obviously not going to happen on the whole thing! I’m assuming this stuff is baked on during manufacture of the glass, so it’s a lot more tough than I am.

So, there will have to be a Plan B on that one, but that’s alright; I’ll manage.

Using the original top panel, some carpet tape, and a specialized router I was able to make a couple top panel windows.

After routing the pattern, the replacement top panel looks to fit quite well.

This was one of the practice pieces in tinted acrylic, to get an idea for how it would look.

The plan at this point was to mask off the shape of the window, and paint the top panel to hide the metal underneath. Here I’m sampling a couple of paint color ideas.

Next up I planned and taped out where I wanted the top window.

Then I cut out the window with a rotary tool and cleaned it up with a hand file.

With the tape peeled off, this is about the view the top window will give us. The reason I only did the window in the back was because I don’t care about seeing the PSU up front. Plus, I’m eventually going to need somewhere to hide the rats nest of wires!

Fast forward a couple of months and I ended up getting a CNC. So I tried out a new idea with the windows.

This allowed me to make the panel and the window as separate pieces. This will make it easier to paint the panel and not screw up the window lines.