Anybody remember Turbo Tax's first SNESp case? Look at how awesome his cases are now.

Make sure you wear a dust mask if you use a dremel to sand that stuff down! We don't want you dying of lung cancer on us...

Epoxy putty is a lot easier to apply if you dip your fingers in a bowl of water before you apply it and shape it. You can cut a lot of work later by doing it that way.

Not sure what the whole facepalm thing is, I assume it's like fail.

I appreciate the concern and have a mask handy, I figured inhaling epoxy dust would be bad for me.

I'll definitely try this out next time I'm messing with the epoxy and apologize for being uninformed about such things. As I said, this is all a learning process for me but it's been pretty fun so far.

The first round of sanding is completed!!! It looks much better now...

Take a look!

It still needs work but I consider it a vast improvement.

I think I'm going to measure the holes I need for the controller buttons and cut those out, epoxy, sand, repeat. I still have to find some paint too, so I can start a bit of painting to flush out the imperfections.

You get a facepalm because you pretty much built a case out of epoxy. WAAAAAYYY too much was used. All you need is enough to fill the gap, and a little on each side on the INSIDE to keep the parts together. Then you can fill in the rest with bondo, which is much simpler than all that sanding.

But that's just how I'd do it.

Apparently epoxy is to me what hotglue is to SS.

I wasn't sure what the differences between all the compounds were so I picked the epoxy and decided to run with it. Other than being kinda heavy, it's worked ok.

Small update: I have the button holes put into place on the case, more sanding and spotting tomorrow.

Significant improvement I would say.

I still need to do some more sanding to get it ready for primer and paint, then I'll be just about happy with the front.

Next, I plan to work on the controller pieces, since they'll be sitting in the front of the case along with the speakers. And from there my checklist looks like test fitting the rest of the guts (including potential mounting), planning and finishing rest of case, rewiring cartridge slot, wire guts together, be finished.

this is turning out quite nicely... cant wait to start mine

When you get to the point that you are working on the controller buttons can you please post some pictures of how you connected the wires to the controller board itself. Whether you used tact switches or cut and separated the board. That is about the only pics that I can’t find. I’m a visual learner and need to see actual pictured not drawings. Thanks for this thread. It s going to help me when I eventually start my first portable.

Hey welcome! First post is a biggie, huh? Glad you posted Here we go!

Is this what you're asking? You can do it either way.

I've seen that picture, and it really helps thanks, but I would like to see a picture of an actual board that someone has soldered wires to. I'm having a hard time visualizing what you connect the wires to on either of the 2 ways. On the tact switch do you solder strait onto the black contacts or do you need to take the black off to expose metal underneath? Kind of the same thing if you cut the board. Is there enough contact exposed from cutting the board or do you have to take some of the green surfacing off to expose the copper underneath? Thanks for the welcome maybe I’ll get my numbers up soon without offending too many people with noob questions or stupid noob comments.

with tact switches, there are metal tabs sticking off the back that you solder to. To solder to the board, you have to scrape some of the green coating off to solder.

That's pretty good. Your allowed to use as much epoxy/hotglue as you want, just as long as you make a substance abuse joke to yourself first. That's what I always did. Thank God I grew a brain.

SS

I have to say, with that much bondo, do NOT drop it, or it will crack and chip. Unless you plan on sanding it down right to the plastic again, which is what I would recommend.

Usually on a system controller, there are copper pads so you don't have to scrape any of the green stuff off. On a tact switch all that you need to do is wire one pin to the controller and the other to ground.