Bacteria's project - PSone portable: IntoPlay finished: PICS

techknott · Post by **techknott** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 10:24 am

Dont usually check out these other forums, but great work as usual.

Just one question. Have you considered using mdf and ply wood in layers for your moulds?

Im just asking because thats what ive been doing and find it to be a pretty fast way of doing them. How are you finding the clay to use?

sonic4freedom · Post by **sonic4freedom** » Mon Nov 17, 2008 5:09 pm

Hey Bac! your doing great

by the way finally posted on your site! i put the link to your site in the news forum. catch ya on the flip side

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 2:33 am

I re-traced your scan, Bacteria. Now it's perfectly oriented, and symmetrical.

(Click on the image for full size printout)

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Tue Nov 18, 2008 4:22 am

Thanks khaag! Appreciated!

techknott - Yes, however MDF is hard to shape into curves and because it is compressed fiber and not wood, the result isn't perfectly smooth all over. Any imperfections in a mold shows up on the resultant plastic case. In contrast, working with clay is really easy, fast and once sanded you get a really smooth finish. Only downside is it takes about 3 days to dry enough to work on fully and about another 1-2 days to set completely solid. Costs a fit too to buy, but really good to work with.

There are many ways to make a mold, as long as the result is excellent, that is more important than what it was made from!

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 5:49 am

Update - working on the casing; gave it a good sanding with electric sander (base of case) and hand foam sanding block. The pic below was about half way through.

I knew the first attempt wasn't going to be remotely perfect, so I used a reject case I kept from a while back; you can re-heat the plasticard and try again. Using second hand plastic doesn't give perfect results (the reject one I had had a couple of knots in the plastic where I moved it on the block), hence why they also appear in the resultant case. It does however save money as I don't have to use a clean sheet for testing.

Making a mold enables me to see what needs touching up or sanding down, in order to get the right result. Got it fairly good, just needs more work as you see in the pic.

There was another purpose for this too. I had wondered how a casing 56mm thick felt to hold - I was really surprised by how natural this casing feels. It doesn't feel thick when held, the shape of the case is really natural to hold, fingers rest naturally over the button areas and the joysticks are very easy and comfortable to use. I can honestly say, it is excellent!

Taking these pics meant having the camera on the desk and putting hands in a slightly awkward angle to get the shots; however, as you see in the pic, rather good!

I need to now add more filler and resand to get the levels right, and sand other areas to make it look more seamless. More work to do, then I can make another case with the mold and see how that fares.

BTW - just took receipt of a Retro Duo from the USA, a SNES game (NTSC) of Super Mario RPG Legend of the Seven Stars (I already have Yoshi's Cookie (NTSC). I also got the decal transfer sheets khaag suggested. Good day!

sdh · Post by **sdh** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 7:41 am

That looks soo slick! Very impressive.
What color did <s>I</s> you plan for the finished design? (I'm hoping white!)

EDIT: haha, nice typo I did there. Wishful thinking, you know?

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:32 am

As mentioned before, tempting to keep it white, however going to keep to my original plan of metallic black.

There is no need to spray paint the plastic really, if you are really careful when cutting out the plastic; although I am going to.

Making the case backing is proving to be very time consuming. Making the front was a case of "that looks about right", the difficulty in making the backing case is that I can't just put the old mold back to back to the new one, as that isn't accurate enough (curves), so making the backing is a bit of experimentation, although I am nearly there...

It doesn't matter if when the two case halves are put together you need to sand up to about 1/2mm off to make it seemless, but more than that isn't acceptable. This has to be bang on.

sdh · Post by **sdh** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 9:44 am

How will you attach the two halves? If you will be selling these cases I hope you'll have some proper way to screw them together or such so they won't have to be 'frankenmolded' together

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 10:30 am

Indeed, not a good idea to make it so people have to bondo the sides, that is the sort of thing we do on our own projects, should be avoidable when selling kits to other people, absolutely, especially as this will be the last stage before assembling the system insides.

My thoughts are one of two methods - there are two parts to this quandary: firstly how to keep the two side pieces together without much, if any, flex; secondly screwing the two pieces together. Had I made the sides straight, like a box, it would be easy, however my system has curves all over, so is far more complex to get the mold right.

For the first part - connecting the two halves together on the sides: the idea is to put clear sticky tape around the sides, then take advantage of the nice big screen cutout to press some clay into the sides to cement the two halves, leave to dry hard (a day). The clay won't stick to the plastic, but doesn't have to; the curve of the casing will keep it firmly in place and the rigidity of the clay itself will keep the cases of the plastic in place. Basically, the casings will keep the clay in place and the clay will provide the casings with registration positioning and also strength. I thought this quite innovative!

It will then be a good idea to remove the clear sticky tape and give the sides a light sand, to make the edges on the sides as smooth as possible. The two case halves can then be separated and the casings spray painted and finished, in preparation for system assembly.

For the second part - making the system screw in place, plastic strips will provide a platform so the base can screw into place, using the screws from a PSone controller - everyone has them when making a PSone portable!

You will see these steps I refer to when I post the progress on this thread...

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:13 am

Why not take a thinner sheet of plastic (so it's more flexable and bendable) and cut it into a 2-3 cm wide strip the length of the inside perimeter of your bottom case, and then superglue it to the inside edge of the lower case so that the top case can slide down onto it.

This way will be much easier to reproduce than the clay method you suggested and you can include the strip in your kit. Then for screwing it down, you can you nylon spacers superglued to the inside of the case just like Ben does in many of his portables.

Here's an illustration showing what I mean for the strip:

collinE · Post by **collinE** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:29 am

That is exactly what I'm doing for mine! I think I'm going to steal your pic if I have to illustrate. Mind putting your signature on it or something? I'm kinda lazy and don't want to have to myself.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 11:36 am

khaag - This method works if one half is consistently slightly smaller than the other half. Not hard to do; and thinking about it more, is probably the better method!

Wish I put that in the posting now, I had thought of it a few pages back and nearly put it into my last thread but changed my mind - should have put it in!; anyway, thanks for your continued valued and useful ideas khaag, appreciated!

I have made changes to the case mold and just made another case; out of time today, back tomorrow!

khaag · Post by **khaag** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 8:40 pm

collinE wrote:That is exactly what I'm doing for mine! I think I'm going to steal your pic if I have to illustrate. Mind putting your signature on it or something? I'm kinda lazy and don't want to have to myself.

Yeah, no problem. See edited post above.

Lazy bastard

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Wed Nov 19, 2008 10:12 pm

On reflection, the problem with having the strip on the side is that the two halves of the casing are unlikely to be at the same pressure, to keep together, if one part of the casing isn't pressed against another then the two halves won't be kept together correctly. This might well mean that that method doesn't work in practice. If that is the case (I will try it), there are two options left - one is the method I mentioned; having something applying pressure away from the casing will maintain negative force by the resistance of the plastic casing parts. other option is to seal the sides shut, sand smooth, use a little filler to make sure it looks perfect and re-sand; and cut window in the back around entire flat base, for all the components to be put through and connected, and then screwed in place. This method will certainly work, and work well, although I would need to have the rear corners less rounded and angled so the boards can enter the system more freely, with a little more space to do so.

Will keep you posted. The last method also has the advantage of being easier to screw down.

Pros and cons to each of the three methods; I know at least one of the methods will work, I will just need to work through the options to find the best to use.

bacteria · Post by **bacteria** » Thu Nov 20, 2008 3:51 am

Option 3 is out, cutting off the back of the case weakens the case dramatically, also the PSone mobo won't angle itself into the case. Tried it on a reject case.

Option 1 with the strip on the edge is used on commercial products like controllers; the plastic is consistently the same thickness, so it works effectively to position the casing halves before screwing the two halves together. Home-made vacuum forming gives variable results on thickness as absolute consistency isn't possible, which is why the two halves need to be as exact as possible, to allow for a small amount to be sanded away.

Option 2 with the clay pressed into place may well prove to be the final solution. Using clear tape on the sides to keep them in place, ramming a layer of clay inside the case where the two edges meet, leaving for a while to set then securing one of the two halves to the case itself with hot glue, removing the outer tape, lifting off the case base, replacing it (to check it registers correctly, then sanding the edges down to be smooth, followed by final spray painting of the two case halves may still be favourite.

Either of these two solutions would be, I believe, perfectly acceptable as a solution to a sold kit. People who buy my kit will not be total novices to portablizing; they will need to know how to trim boards a bit, soldering, using a Dremel for hole cutting, filing, spray painting, etc; so adopting either of the methods mentioned above will be easy for someone to follow and not unreasonable. I will also encourage any potential buyers to read my step-by-step guide (will be on my website when this project goes into turbo mode) to make sure they are totally happy with the work they will have to do to make the system, if they aren't they won't buy my kit. The vast majority of people on this forum will have no issue, I know, but people from other sites might (I will publicise on a variety of sites).

Getting to this point has taken many days of work and still a few more before I crack the solution to the casing. It is proving to be a royal pain in the butt, costing me money and taking bucketloads of time, but I am getting there. To put this into perspective, making the two casing halves, to this point, represents about a week's worth of work. Using a reasonable amount of plasticard sheets too for R&D, still, will get my money back with some sales (hopefully)!

We are now at the back end of November, I am doing what I can to get everything live by mid December, but if it goes into January, so be it; this isn't something I can rush. Sometime in January is certain, December is my target - be nice to sell some for Xmas!