http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/23/how-to-make-a-wii-laptop-part-1/ brutal hardware punishment. Curious to see the rest.:lol: more pictures: http://www.engadget.com/photos/wii-laptop/
It is called prototyping! Could you afford to purchase CAD software, intricately design the plastics, then pay $2000 for a mould to be made from your designs and a one-off casing made?
I thought the aim was to take a Wii and put it in a new case with a screen and power supply. If you can't design a decent looking case, then part of the task is failed, IMO.
Ben Heckendorn makes some amazing stuff but I also agree that his designs are awful. THey may be practical to use but to look at ........ There was a guy over at NTSC-UK that made a SFC portable which looks pretty nice. Yakumo
I agree the Wii laptop may not be one of his best designs, but he only has a CNC router to work with. Curves aren't easy to do. I'm hoping that he'll try vacuum forming for at least once. Vacuum forming is very cheap, and you can make any shape you want as long as it's convex. It also looks good for portables (link)
Now we're talking! I know you can hire out the services of a vacuum formers in the UK, I'd imagine the same is true in the US.
CNC routers can do curves just fine unless you are using a 20 year old machine. The only time you might have problems is if you are trying to hand program the routing path instead of using something with a path optimizer (e.g. a CAM program). Vacuum forming would still be the best looking choice for a custom case like this though.
glad you like it. I hope to finish a SNES portable before too long. mairsil: Ben works for a sign making company, and about a year ago he bought the shop's old cnc router. It's not exactly cutting edge, if you know what I mean If Ben wanted to do curves, he'd most likely have to put quite a bit more work into the case design, because he draws all his designs in Illustrator, 2d. Curved designs also leave less room for internals like large PCBs.
Well, even two axis milling/CNC machines should be able to do some pretty nice curves. Though, if he is doing everything in Illustrator, that could explain a few things. :icon_bigg
Link? marshallh: I agree that is a really cool looking portable, but why did you use the N64's analog stick? Why not replace it with a PS2 analog stick or something?
A fully functioning N64 stick is way more accurate than any potentiometer found in later controllers, including the gamecube's.
