Red/White and Metal/Wood CNC SNESp's

[hackmodford]

OK... In your opinion is the mdf better than using the acrylic for sidewalls?

By the way there case us awesome!

Sent from my HERO200 using Tapatalk

[Life of Brian]

Finally got around to mounting the cartridge connector and wiring up most of the controls. More to come, eventually.









Including a bridge rectifier in this one to prevent accidents with the power adapter. It's hiding under the LCD's ribbon cable next to my power regulator:

[Life of Brian]

It's mounted slightly crooked, and it's driving me nuts. However, there is nothing to be done about it now. You don't notice it when the cartridge is inserted so I guess I'm nit picking.


Westlake Ace Hardware - where would I be without you?


Spaghetti monster strikes again. The robot is slurping up my circuit boards!


Using Kynar wrapping wire because there isn't much room for bulkiness in this portable. I should have made the main body 1" instead of 3/4", but I'm going to see if I can get away with the small size. It will be a challenge but I'm up for it.

[Biased]

All your work seems amazing, nice job. It's given me some helpful ideas about the SNESp I'm working on too .
Anyway, I have a few questions to ask you if you don't mind:
What program did you use to design your cases/how did you modify the files to be cut by CNC?
What was the final cost of the less expensive case to cut?
The Kynar wrapping wire you mentioned and pictured in your last post - do you know what gauge of wire it is?

Again, awesome work here, keep it up, and thanks for your time!

Tony

[Life of Brian]

Reverse order answers!

3) I think it's 30 gauge wire. Just some stuff I picked up from RadioShack, although some random stores don't carry it and a couple of times I've been looked at like I'm some sort of fool who's speaking crazy talk when I've asked for it. I used to work for RadioShack. It's on their site. I KNOW YOU GUYS CARRY IT, OKAY? COULD YOU PLEASE CHECK WHICH STORES HAVE IT ALREADY AND STOP TELLING ME YOU DON'T HAVE IT!? Tell you what, helpful RadioShack lady employee - how about I politely push you to the side and just order some through your system myself and we'll call it a day, alright? I'm exaggerating what happened, but just flat out telling a customer "we don't have it" without even offering to find it for them WHEN YOU HAVE NO OTHER CUSTOMERS is pretty dumb. I always looked stuff up for customers when I worked there. It's the least you could do! Even if you don't have it, you at least tried.

2) The wood and metal one I had made by Ponoko during a half-price sale so it was $80 (would have been $160 otherwise), the red/white acrylic case was something like $120 from Pololu. Pricey, but worth it. You see why I've been taking my time with these portables - I've been saving up and moving on to the next step when I have the funds. The red/white one was originally for a buyer, but since it's been so long I just refunded him his money.

1) I originally used Inkscape but had some bad resizing issues when Pololu received my files and converted it to something they could use. I snagged a copy of Adobe Illustrator and have been using that ever since. Like Ben shows in his Ben Heck Show videos and in his book, it's just vector line art drawn to scale that I send to these laser cutting companies. Both Pololu and Ponoko have extensive documentation about what they need to make your stuff. I recommend that everyone who is interested in this sort of thing read up everything both sites have to say about the subject and also to review the information found about case-making in Ben's book. There's a treasure trove of information there. I'm not necessarily doing anything new, just trying to replicate something Ben came up with years ago. A great starting point in making your own designs is getting the support files Ben provides for his book and reusing stuff he drew to scale like screw holes and build your own design from there. Also, get a caliper. Use it. Love it.

[Biased]

Also, get a caliper. Use it. Love it.

This.

Even though I don't have one (sad I'm too broke to get a caliper!)
Thanks for the reply, man!

[Haunted360]

/// WOW, AMAZING, SPECTACULAR, INSANE, EPIC, AWESOME, COOL ///

Now THAT'S a portable...

[humakabula1]

very very very very (x9) nice!

are you going to countersink the battery cover screw?
i think it could add that little bid extra

[Life of Brian]

very very very very (x9) nice!

are you going to countersink the battery cover screw?
i think it could add that little bid extra

I will if I can find a good way to do it. I haven't come up with anything yet, though. Thank you for the compliments!

[the doctor]

this is going to be one good looking portable great work dude

[electromaster64]

@LoB I noticed that where you removed the power button you soldered in a U shaped piece of wire. I did the same however my SNES no longer works, hence my extended hiatus. On the underside of the board next to the holes where the U shaped wire goes through there are two globs of solder and it appears that I ripped off a lead in between one of these and where the U shaped wire went through. Do you have a pic of the underside of your SNES board and do you know of any way around my mistake?

[Life of Brian]

I'm not quite certain what the problem may be. There are other places nearby where you can bridge the connection to set the SNES into an always "on" position.

Here's an underside shot of my SNES. You could just bridge the spot where those traces go through the board to the other side nearby the reset switch. I circled it in red so you'll know where it is. Just scrape that area clear to get to the two traces and blob some solder on them.


I've been itching to get back to work on this portable but my "life" and "work" keep getting in the way Hopefully I'll snag some time for it tonight. We'll see.

[Chezwik]

It looks absolutely Amazing. I hope my portables can look like that (and i mean both inside and out)

[Life of Brian]

More work:





All capacitors hot glued in place with their negative side all facing right to avoid confusion.




I wrote down all the values of the caps on the SNES board itself next to where they originally sat so I wouldn't have to worry about mixing them up later. Made life a lot easier that way.

So, I tested all my connections and I know that I did the cart slot relocation correctly without any goof ups. And yet, the SNES is not booting up. I get a blank black screen, which is good in a way, but still nothing. I guess the next step is to go and redo the whole damn thing with the wires about half length this time around.

[Basement_Modder]