Posts Tagged ‘custom’

Case #2 for Gman

Posted: 03/22/2013 in General News
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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!

Controller #2 cut and looking beautiful

Posted: 12/10/2012 in Current Project, General News
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Not sure why I didn’t think of this method before as its simplicity is only over shadowed by its brilliance! By simply painting the casing a different solid color from the base material and then engraving it, the effects really just “POP” out at you! Though this was slightly misaligned, the effects still came out acceptable and I’m quite happy to move on to the next stage with this. This is also the first time I’ve ever used Blue as a color and I’m quite pleased with the turnout.

Case making to a new level!

Posted: 09/16/2012 in General News
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In a time span of less than a week, my knowledge of CNC work has grown over 100% and I still don’t feel like I’ve scratched the surface. As you can see by the video, I did my first test cut on a vacuum-formed casing. The results were nothing less than perfect in terms of how the machine performed. I had a few errors in my design which resulted in the cutting of right buttons twice making them far too big, but that was not the machines fault.

This was cut in about a 6 or 7 minute span and would have been only 5 had I had my drawing done correctly. But the cuts and the placement came out beautifully! This really is an exciting step for me as it gives me the confidence that I can take my work to the next level. Time alone will tell how far this goes, but I have to say that I’m more excited by today’s results than I’ve been with anything for awhile! (Modding wise of course).

I’ll have more projects coming up shortly (like today) that further shows the capabilities of this machine, software and user! Stay tuned!

Emulator Controller & an identity crisis

Posted: 09/10/2012 in General News
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So I did a commission for a forum member called [FarmerDwight] who was looking for a unique controller used for his emulated NES games on his PC. Though I’ve never been a fan of emulation for many reasons, after finding out his wants I really couldn’t pass up the chance to make this for him. Basically he wanted a controller for his emulated NES games with a USB input. Thats really not that difficult to find as the vast majority of PC controllers are USB anyway. The trick was to get that controller to work while using the original buttons in the Game Boy itself.

Now this really wasn’t much different in theory to many of the other controllers that I’ve built. You have two contacts, one signal, one ground and a tact switch (or PCB pad) that once pressed completes the circuit and registers as a button press for the duration you hold it down. However there was one key difference to what I’ve done in the past and that was the fact that the PCB pads in this case were already integrated with the mother board of the Game Boy.

To make a long story short, that doesn’t work so hot when you have two separate devices trying to function off of the same ground lines. I was getting all kinds of screwy actions when I first powered it on, not to mention the Emulator controller provided went against everything I knew about how PCB pads worked.  This project took me over 10 hours. 2 of which were basic labor and putting together and 8 hours of “WTF is wrong with this thing” troubleshooting.

In the end though, all came out well and though the Game Boy will never work again as a Game Boy, he can still play all the NES, Atari and whatever other emulated consoles out there with 8 buttons or less, including Game Boy.

More info and pics on the MBB forums. But I’m happy with it, and so is the customer which is all that matters! Now I just have to figure out how I’m going to sleep tonight knowing that my router will be arriving in the afternoon tomorrow! Expect a few more cool updates when I break that package open!

Phase II Complete, will now know exactly how much juice is set loose

Posted: 08/19/2012 in Current Project, General News
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Though I finished this off a week or so ago, I finally got around to making a video of it. It’s really just a quick demo to show how the addition of variable regulators, volt meters and an LED tester make this unit a very handy one indeed. I hope to be putting this to work before too long with some future projects.

Not much else can be said that hasn’t already been said in the previous video, but here is a pic of the working unit as well as links to the Made-by-Bacteria forum work log. Stay tuned for some even more exciting projects!

Testing of the test box is so far successful!

Posted: 07/25/2012 in Current Project, General News
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So far I have to say that I’m quite pleased that this worked on the first shot and didn’t turn my evening into a lesson on fire safety! In terms of the audio/video, everything worked exactly like it was meant to, a trend I intend to keep up once the regulators arrive in the mail.  Though of course I did once again wire the audio tact switches backwards…so down is up and up is down…and on the SNES-001 Advance I had the left switch as volume up and the right a volume down…I’ll get that right one day.

But as you see, I’ve made a quick demo video of the test and how it works, so please have a look! More info with more progress. Hopefully I’ll have this complete within the week and then I can start the testing of my controller for the computer desk. Until then, just wait!

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