Posts Tagged ‘case mold’

Case #2 for [Gman] is almost done. Unlike the last case, this one was done up from scratch. Though I love vacuum forming and making these from nothing more than a block of wood, the whole process is a great deal more time consuming. With that said, this is probably one of the best vacuum formed casings I’ve made to date and I’m quite proud with not only the form but the quality of the cuts and general layout.

Most will notice right away that this resembles the [Wii U] controller. That was the point, however now a Game Cube portable is going to be stuffed into it! And I say stuffed because apparently the commissioner is going to be putting the whole original disc drive into it as opposed to the now standard [WiiKey Fusion] mod chips that allow people to play ROMs of their games via SD card. But it should be interesting to see the progress on in the near future!

Got a few more jobs to finish up and then in the next couple of weeks the meet-up so things are about to get crazy busy! Loving every second of it though and can’t wait!

My new best customer, Evil Nod from the Made-by-Bacteria Forums, last week commissioned me to to make two cases for his two new portable gaming system commissions he just took on. These again were just case shells that I made up from wooden molds. Though this was a simple design for both of them, the thicknesses were a bit of an issue and when trying to form both at once, I ran into issues and had to redo them a couple of times. But it’s still a learning process.

These cases are not fully finished in the sense that they are cut to their final thickness. Evil Nod likes to cut them down after the fact so he is sure he has enough room to make it work. Can’t say I blame him and it saves me a step, but that’s why they don’t look like they line up properly. They will when he cuts them down.

You can view his progress on both builds at the links below. Looking forward to seeing the progress when they get across the pond!

Evil Nod’s SNES Commission

Evil Nod’s N64 Commission

Also if you’re new to my work, you can see other successful portable systems that I did case shells for!

Just shy of 12 weeks in the making, the SNES-001 Advance is complete and ready to find it’s new home! This has been one of the most fun projects that I’ve completed, mainly because it was a concept that solved an over 20 year old problem. Though of course these days, playing consoles this old on a TV via original hardware is a rarity, but I think back to the times I was 11 or 12 years old and always having to fight for TV time because someone else with more influence than I had was using it! So enter the SNES-001 Advance, which has two custom controllers that allow for up to two players sharing the same point of view in the palm of their hands!

This was a rather simple mod by design and theory, but took a great deal of time to get correct. Honestly the wiring was the easiest part of this, but getting the controllers to function correctly via the tact switches or the D-pad was the most frustrating part of the whole build! But these issue were over come, leaving a solid and fun system to play with. The wooden, LED encasement of the system I think adds a nice touch as a collectors item, combining rustic with a modern flair which I guess pretty much sums up the reason for a lot of console based mods.

This will also be for sale on eBay and when I have that up and listed, I’ll make another post! Should be interesting to see where this goes!

But as always, check out the video below as well as the links to the forums for more info on the build! Thanks for watching!

Made By Bacteria Work Log Link

And Here is the Link to Ebay! Happy Bidding!  Current Starting Bid of $499.99

 

The SNES-001 Advance has a new crib to crash at! Build details can be found over on my thread at MBB, but basically we have pine box, lined with black acrylic felt, a clear sheet of LEXAN plastic, brass hinges, 4 blue LEDs and 2 White, running from an external 12V power supply. This box took probably about 8 hours or so from start to finish, but I still need to find some kind of clasp to keep the cover closed so it will hold tight. Pretty happy with this though and if you’d like to see more pics, again the build log on MBB, as well as ModRetro, Ben Heck and Racket Boy all have them for your viewing pleasure!

The system is all but complete. Just a few more touch-ups on the system and controller and a few more hours of “testing” and this thing should be good to go to market! Well, ebay anyway. I’ve got many updates in my worklog over at MBB so be sure to see where it’s at. But for now, enjoy the short video and more updates will be happening soon!

Last weekend I did a small case commission for ModRetro user [Bud] who has been an old trading partner for awhile now. The speakers that are in the two controllers for the SNES-001 Advance project were from him as well the Li-P0 batteries that are in my GeneBoy came from [Bud] as well.

Two weeks ago I got a request from him to take the case he had in store for another (and incredibly small) N64 portable he’ll be working on over the summer. However he was having trouble getting the button holes to have the nice finished look as he lacked a Step-Bit and countersink. I took this on as a favor to him as after the summer, he will be joining the men and women of our Air National Guard and will be serving our country in the years to come, so I applaud you!

With that said, [Bud] also sent the buttons and the pre-drilled case halves for me to clean up. Simple enough, however I still managed to find a way to screw it up… Not noticing that the back half of the case had two holes in it for Z and R, I assumed that the A & B buttons he had sent were going on the left side (I have no idea why I thought that) and then the two actual A&B buttons for the controller were the matching NES buttons. Long story short, I made an oops, however when he got them, he found a solution that would work out just fine and all way good! Much to my relief as I really don’t like screwing up!

But good luck to you [Bud] and I can’t wait to see your progress with this. Keep in touch!