Posts Tagged ‘cool’

New vacuum former slowly coming into existence

Posted: 07/07/2012 in Current Project, General News
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It’s probably been about 7 or 8 months of off-and-on planning, but the first part of my new vacuum former is now built!

Working with John Seik of Complex Mold & Machine of Holderness, NH we have the outer portion of the “Clamping Frame” completed. This frame has been precision cut and welded and now just in need of another length of aluminum tubing so we can make the cross mounts. The cross mounts will allow for up to 4 sizes of plastic to be used, reducing waste and allowing for short runs of multiple casings or projects at once.

It’s been very cool to see this take shape and more details can be found HERE at the MBB Forums.

I’ll be meeting with John again on Thursday and hopefully finishing off this clamp frame.  More updates as they get built!

Small side project underway

Posted: 06/29/2012 in Current Project, General News
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Now that the SNES-001 Advance’s fire is slowly burning down, it was time to start up a new project. Well this isn’t it, in fact this wasn’t even really meant to be a project in itself, but of course once I get an idea in my head, I have a nasty habit of letting it take me over.

With that said, this project was supposed to just be replacing the main screens protection cover as this Game Boy Advance was a bit roughed up. Bought from a friend of mine in a bulk deal, this unit was one of the first portable gaming units I owned outside of the original 1989 DMG version of the Game Boy. As it was first released in 2000, the technology was far superior to the Game Boy on it’s own, including having more power than the SNES which came out in 1992.

There was just one thing I did not care for with this unit though and that’s the fact that even after 11 years, Nintendo did not see the need to install a back light for the screen, a problem they hastily corrected with the Game Boy Advance SP. This of course led to the idea of adding a light to the screen of this unit to help with the issue.

Deciding to take the system a part and find out how much room I actually had to work with in the case seemed like the next logical step after deciding that 4 – 3mm bright white LED’s could light the screen up a bit. But of course this led to another problem as these units were powered only by 2 AA batteries. The addition of 4 LED’s at 3V and 20mAh each would greatly decrease the life of the batteries, so a new battery source would be required. And when a new source is added, a new method on how to replenish that source is needed. So taking apart an old Black Berry for the Mini-USB jack was quite fun and provided that medium for getting power from the charger to the battery.

So everything is now cut, spaced, painted and ready to get put into place, but I’m waiting on the right size resistors to arrive as for the 5V/3mm LED’s I did not have the correct rating on hand. Now I only hope that once all the wiring is in place, I’ll have enough room to close up the unit. It’s looking good so far, but I’ll keep you up to date and as always, check the MBB forums for more info!

The final solutions to this project include:
4- 3mm Bright White LED’s
1- 7.4v 2000mAh Li-Ion Camcorder battery with a 7805 linear regulator
1- Custom Red, White and Black paint job
1- New Screen Protector
1- Mini USB jack for battery recharge.

My thanks and looking forward

Posted: 06/27/2012 in General News
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The SNES-001 Advance was a huge success! I’d like to thank all who took a look and helped tip off the main sites like Engadget, Hack-A-Day and PC World! All three of these major news sites ran some pretty good press about the unit and I’m quite happy with the end result! Though the unit is still on eBay and no bids as of yet, it still has a day and there have been over 1600 views on the page and that in it’s own right has been amazing! So I’ll keep you up to date with that as more info become available.

But, no good triumph comes without consequence. Over the past three weeks I’ve managed to loose my job of nearly 5 years and have had one of my dogs (a Boston Terrier) fall ill with an eye ulcer which ended up costing my wife and I a cool $2500 to fix…yeah, ouch and a “WTF!!!” kind of ouch. So needless to say, the penny pinching is now upon us as our savings have been drained and I won’t be bringing in the same cash as I used to. But with that said, I do have a new job lined up to start on the 16th of July. So I’ve got some free time in between, but still won’t be taking the vacations we thought we would be.

But enough of that, this is a modding blog, real life is for the day time! I’ve got a couple more projects going that hopefully will hopefully add to the list of completed mods shortly, including a GameBoy Advance mod and finally going to finish up my computer desk with a few major adjustments from what it was supposed to be initially. I’ll be making posts about these in the future, but of course, the work logs can be found over at made-by-bacteria.com.

Again, I thank everyone who helped make the SNES-001 Advance such a success and we’ll see where these next projects go.

 

Case Comission for Bud

Posted: 06/08/2012 in Current Project, General News
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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!

New Sega Genesis Portable! The GeneBoy

Posted: 02/16/2012 in Current Project, General News
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That’s right, a new project! Since all the upgrade to our home’s electrical system has been completed, I now have an adequate power supply to my work shop and Vacuum Former! This is going to cut down greatly on set up time and will really make the whole experience more enjoyable.

With that said, he’s the front half case shell of the new portable. This is probably one of the smallest and sleekest that I’ve made and it uses that same mold that my Mario/Zelda portable used. I don’t have the back formed yet as I’m not sure how thick it’s going to need to be but the front half looks like most will be able to fit in it as it is. So I may be able to make this overall thickness a little more than an 1″! But the foot print of the Sega 3 is very small.

But in any case, here’s the pic and I’ll be updating you as I go along!

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