Downing's Basement

Where ya been Downing? That’s certainly something I hear more often than not, but with only a single post nearly every few months, it’s not hard to understand why. Granted I’m more active over on Twitter these days, if you don’t follow me there, then you’re right to think I fell into a black hole! Yet it’s not been all that dark and some very new projects have been in the works which have been leading me down a whole new rabbit hole which could hopefully lead to more exciting projects down the line.

The new (to me) “Tough Resin” curing under the UV lamps.

First off, I finally got a hold of some of Formlab’s “Tough Resin” for my Form 2 3D Printer. I’ve been eyeing this for quite a long time because the nature of most of the parts I print with it either will have to endure a lot of physical contact (buttons, dpads, etc…), or more importantly, have very thin-walled features which I found were very subject to warping using their standard resins. This is also a transparent material which has both cool advantages as far as aesthetics go, but can also present new challenges in the same respect.

I also sold off the N64p I brought with me to MGC. It had unfortunately taken a bit of a beating cosmetic wise from the many hands that played it there so it needed a bit of work. So though I attempted to re-finish the blemishes, the attempt didn’t work out too well. So I decided to make a bit of an edge guard with the N64 logo front and center. I think it came out decent and it did its job quite well. Though I will miss this portable for sure, it was time to send it on to someone who would get more enjoyment out of it in it’s finished state!

Lastly, for the past couple months I’ve been working on a new “ground up” project that I’ve not yet attempted. Though I don’t have much in the way of details to release, I can tell you it’s “not” a Nintendo 64! Until I get further than the case work I don’t have a lot of really want to share, other than from a design standpoint it’s been a lot fun to produce. And to add some perspective, the speaker covers on the pic below and above are the same size.

I’d like to say it won’t be another 3 months before the next post, but I can’t . These projects are being done as the time allows and posts being made with the time allowed after the projects so yeah… But for now, it’s past my bed time and work calls early tomorrow!

What seems like very slow progress on the two commissions I’ve been working on for about a month now really isn’t the case. Considering the fact that everything I would normally do to make one of these portables now has to be down twice, I’m pretty happy with where I’m standing. What I’ve noticed though is when you’re working on two projects at once there is a remarkable amount of time saved when it comes to set-up and production. Running parts in batches rather then 1 at a time also speeds up the process.

Anyway, this is just a quick update to show the progress on both systems. Case work is complete and all parts are mounted in both and are now just waiting to be wired which is something I can pick away at daily whereas casework had to be done mostly on the weekends due to the noise and smells associated with it…(I’d either wake the kids with the sander or fume up the whole house with the paints and bondo if I couldn’t do that work outside).

So I’ll hopefully be posting more updates in the near future and get this shipped off hopefully within the next 4 weeks or so!

Today I took on a new N64p commission for a fellow located in Belarus. Admittedly I had to look it up, but I found it’s sandwiched between the Ukraine and Lithuanian and is a first as far as geographic regions go. But I’m looking forward to this one as it goes back to a simpler version of the the N64p, but adds the benefits of the Form 2 printer for the finer details.

So this is a more basic system which does not include a breakout box which means this will be a strictly portable, single player system. It will include an expansion pak and built in memory card, but will be a much easier build on the whole not having to worry about the those additional features.

All the rough 3D printed parts are done, so the case work can begin as soon as I have a few free minutes. All the parts that I didn’t have in house have been ordered so this one is in full motion! There probably is not going to be a big build log with this one as its all been seen, but there will be a few posts about the new features and techniques that have been used on it so there will be a few updates down the road.

I would like to thank Max and his video though, as this project was a direct result of it! Anyway, more to come in the next few weeks and we’ll see what kind of issues pop up with this one! hehe