Downing's Basement

It’s been nearly 5 months since this project began, but finally my next generation portable Nintendo 64 has been completed and is ready to ship to my customer! That said, this project is a very special one for many reasons, but mainly for who this was built for. Max Mithzan is a Social Media personality and his presence is well felt in the gaming arenas like Minecraft and several others. He’s been a very cool guy to work with and very understanding as events in my personal life have drastically affected the time I’ve had to work on projects like this.

It’s also been the first project I’ve used my new Form Labs Form 2 SLA 3D Printer which has given me capabilities I never imagined I’d have.

Yes, it was a huge learning curve and my first attempt yielded many failures I will not repeat with future builds, but even then this has become the best system I’ve built to date.

I know the video above isn’t as descriptive as my video’s normally are as far as the technical side of the build, but in this case I really just wanted to show off the unit itself. I’m feeling pretty good about this one and am excited to see what Max has to say about it when it get’s to him next week!

But here are a few pics of the process as it went. I didn’t have the time I normally do to make a build log with full details, but I did take some pics of the case work.

The precision SLA provided made me think of case design in a whole new light. But its limitations soon made themselves apparent.

But the detail I was able to achieve is far beyond what I could have hoped for.

Combined with FDM 3D printing for the large front and back plates as well as the cart cover, I was able to make a very highly detailed and structural enclosure for this system.

It still required a lot of filling, sanding and priming to make it look like a single piece, so the time saving was marginal at best, but again, the detail was far above the standard.

Primed with the C-Button Decal

Painted and ready for the next step

But once the SLA decals were in place, it became clear how much of an asset this printer was going to be.

Things really got driven home though when the custom 3D printed buttons and D-Pad were put into the mix and functionality met with aesthetics on a new level for me.

and the Mithzan 64 was born!

So I hope you enjoy this video as it’s defiantly been a landmark project for me and it’ll be interesting in the next few weeks to see where this will go after he gets it! I love it so much I hate to see it ship out, but I’ll be just as happy to see it in its new owner’s hands!