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3D-Printed Objects

Chopsticks

Well-known member
I have a performa 630DOS that had a damaged case and I got a little bored and started working on a case a while ago the removes the mechanical hdd (replaced with a Compact Flash card), removed the scsi CD-ROM drive, replaced the floppy drive with a FloppyEMU (using Gerber files I found online somewhere as I didn't want to pull apart my legit version) and I replaced the psi with a PicoATX PSU so the whole thing runs off a 12v wall wart. I did this quite a while ago to learn how to use Fusion360 and to be honest I need to redo everything to made the externals look more 'Mac' like but it was a proof of concept...
if you guys want I can open it up at some stage and take some more photos if anyones interested

 IMG_0287.jpg

IMG_0288.jpg

 

Chopsticks

Well-known member
I'd really like to see the innards of this!  I approve of the orange, too...
hey thanks, to be honest the orange was just the filament I had on hand at the time, I did this a few months ago :)

Its not a perfect begin/print by any means as it was my first CAD design but was a good learning experience, I was pretty happy with results though being my first print, leant a lot, im actually ending my night after many drinks but i'll unscrew the case in the next 1-2 days (depending on tomorrows hangover lol) and even though its a pretty rought design if people want id be happy to upload the stl files somewhere? if there's any interest
 

though please understand that im not very experienced so far in CAD design and there's many things I would change or do differently if I even got around to doing a revision, I kinda of went a bit OCD over about 2 weeks working on it and waiting for it to print that after getting the first working print done I moved onto other things...

at some stage I should revisit it and tweak the design as most importantly to make the external look more like something from the Mac II Line of computers... at least that was the original plan
do you have any suggestions on where would be a good place to upload the stl files should someone want to print their own copy, assuming they are happy knowing that there are subtle issues/tweaks needed? its far from perfect but would be great to see someone else print or use it a a base for their own designs...

 

Chopsticks

Well-known member
I do want to say it is only a rough I guess 'prototype' in the sense that everything fits together well but that there are many tweaks and refinements that needs to be done both to the case as well as my hacked together PSU adaptor so please be kind lol

 
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cheesestraws

Well-known member
though please understand that im not very experienced so far in CAD design and there's many things I would change or do differently if I even got around to doing a revision
Well, I am an unreformed software person who has no spatial awareness at all, so if it helps I am likely to find it impressive by default if it holds what it's meant to and doesn't fall to bits ;-) .

I always find it interesting when people mount their boards in unorthodox enclosures :)

do you have any suggestions on where would be a good place to upload the stl files should someone want to print their own copy, assuming they are happy knowing that there are subtle issues/tweaks needed? its far from perfect but would be great to see someone else print or use it a a base for their own designs...
I think this should be a question for the thread more broadly; I have no idea.  I watch with admiration as people produce these things, but I have no idea where to start myself.

 

Chopsticks

Well-known member
Well, I am an unreformed software person who has no spatial awareness at all, so if it helps I am likely to find it impressive by default if it holds what it's meant to and doesn't fall to bits ;-) .

I always find it interesting when people mount their boards in unorthodox enclosures :)

I think this should be a question for the thread more broadly; I have no idea.  I watch with admiration as people produce these things, but I have no idea where to start myself.
well they good thing is it willl allow any logic board using the same edge connector as the performa 630 with era exception that the logic boards requiring the 3.3 volt rail would need that wired up as mine is only wired for 5v, I believe some boards have 3.3v wired to one of the pins on the edge connector (forget what pin that was but its its trivial change) worth noting though that should someone want to print this they would need an original wiring harness to install into it. also the way it is designed it wouldn't be hard to for me to  remove the floppyEMU that I have installed and modify the front face plate. in fact one on the thing I wanted to do was to change all the buttons on the from to be more 'Mac' like, so for example the volume buttons are just circles but if I ever get back to this project I want to change their circles to look like the buttons used on a real Mac being a spare with a half circle on one edge ( hope that makes sense), and the floppyEMU buttons should be left and right triangle etc.
when I did all the printing I mainly was working on making sure things lined up and so forth so all those cosmetic changes haven't been done yet

 

Chopsticks

Well-known member
I have unplugged it from its 'place' below my se/30 so I'll do my best to upload some pictures of the internals either tomorrow or the next day, being that its on my main lab bench I won't forget lol.

IMG_0300.jpg

IMG_0301.jpg

 
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Chopsticks

Well-known member
What's the screen and buttons on the front?
its a FloppyEmu that replaces the floppy dive with an SD-card(theres a slot under the contact flash card for the scared), i picked one up from BMOW a few years back to use with my SE/30 but the one in this mac is just home made version as i found some pcbs gerber files online and got some boards manufactured. basically this mac has no moving parts except a Noctula fan as the 68040 is overclocked and theres a 486 Overdrive cpu in the dos card so it got a bit to toasty for my liking without a fan in there. it's pretty much silent though.

 

cheesestraws

Well-known member
but the one in this mac is just home made version as i found some pcbs gerber files online and got some boards manufactured
Ahhh, that explains why I didn't recognise it.  I have a BMOW floppy emu and love it.

basically this mac has no moving parts except a Noctula fan as the 68040 is overclocked and theres a 486 Overdrive cpu in the dos card so it got a bit to toasty for my liking without a fan in there. it's pretty much silent though.
Maybe we should have a thread for custom cased macs and what they're doing. :) that might be interesting

 

Chopsticks

Well-known member
Ahhh, that explains why I didn't recognise it.  I have a BMOW floppy emu and love it.

Maybe we should have a thread for custom cased macs and what they're doing. :) that might be interesting


yeah its a great device, has made it pretty handy to have all my floppy OS installs as well as some driver discs and the odd floppy based software installs all in the one place, over the years ive found much of my floppy discs have worn out or got some form of data corruption/disc rot on them the ti dont have to worry about now, the hd20 mode has been handy too for transferring larger software to my se/30 too. it would be great to get a similar solution for CD based media that works in the same way

the only downside is my old Model A display is on the way out for the third time and i asked BMOW about retrofitting the the OLED display the models C uses as electronically it would work if but he told me thats its actually impossible with the model A hardware, and thats completely untrue, all thats needed is to change the code to allow the model A to use the oled code thats already in the firmware (he's locked it out using his boot loader that tells the firmware what board version it is running on..)
its disappointing but he won't be getting any more of my money in the future lol

as for the custom case thread i guess it depends on how many people are crazy enough to design and print an entire custom case, as not including all the trial fit parts and the changes made over time the final case parts for my custom case took probably about 150+ hours to print

 
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Chopsticks

Well-known member
Ahhh, that explains why I didn't recognise it.  I have a BMOW floppy emu and love it.

Maybe we should have a thread for custom cased macs and what they're doing. :) that might be interesting
 hey Cheesestraws, sorry for the late reply to this, I know you were interested in seeing the innards and I only just got around to taking a few pictures, there's a lot of ribbon cables that obviously would need to be shortened should I get back to working on this but hopefully these pictures can give you a look at the innards. worth mentioning that the psu adaptor was just a bodged setup build on some perf-board to invert the signal of the psu on signal but if I ever revise this project obviously I would need to get a small pcbs made up to connect the pico atx psu to the make psu harness, regardless here's a few pictures and if you would like and taken of a specific area please let me know.

so far there hasn't been any apparent interest in me uploading these parts somewhere for others to print/modify but should that change or be of interest again anyone just let me know and I'd be happy too upload somewhere.

here's a few pictures regardless and sorry again that I took so long to upload themIMG_0318.jpgIMG_0320.jpgIMG_0315.jpgIMG_0319.jpg

IMG_0322.jpgIMG_0317.jpg,

IMG_0316.jpg

IMG_0321.jpg

 
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cheesestraws

Well-known member
hey Cheesestraws, sorry for the late reply to this, I know you were interested in seeing the innards and I only just got around to taking a few pictures, there's a lot of ribbon cables that obviously would need to be shortened


Thankyou!  That's nifty.  I like how you've braced things against the front panel.  Ribbon cables—some people can make them neat, apparently.  I am not one of those people.  So you are in good company, at least.

 

Chopsticks

Well-known member
well I only had one cable harness so I didn't want to shote

Thankyou!  That's nifty.  I like how you've braced things against the front panel.  Ribbon cables—some people can make them neat, apparently.  I am not one of those people.  So you are in good company, at least.
well I never wanted to shorten the cable harness during the design phase in case I changed things, I do honestly do want to get back to the design process and refine things and that would involve shortening most of those ribbon cables bit my workload Over the last 6-12 months studying mechanics engineering at university has majorly limited my free time to work on projects and when I have had free time other projects have kind of taken me away from this so there actually a tons of things I need to do, that I haven't had the free time to do (mechatronics is bloody hard both time wise and knowledge/study wise). like I have a bunch of projects outside of these classic Macs even that I have had the time to explore yet.

thank you thought for your kind worlds though, its very much appreciated, especially since im pretty new to the forums here and it means a lot to get some positive feedback... it really does so thanks again :)

 
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rplacd

Well-known member
Forgive me if this is a simple question, but how do y'all measure the radius of curved edges/fillets for reproduction? I'm trying to figure out how feasible it would be for me to make a repro version of a PowerBook 1xx screen rear case, and with a good set of calipers seems like the toughest part would be measuring the radius of the curved edge fillets.

 
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jessenator

Well-known member
Forgive me if this is a simple question, but how do y'all measure the radius of curved edges/fillets for reproduction?
I can tell you the way I did it with the Color Classic piece. I think there are specialized tools one could use, but since I don't have access, I have a fairly accurate method. I use precision measurement equipment (just good, metric rulers) and photograph them (with a lens that gives me the least amount of distortion) from multiple angles, to make sure I get it all. In some cases you could get away with a flatbed scanner. I then used a drawing program (I used illustrator, but one could use another solution, where you can place images and scale units until you're working 1:1
tuDFA7Z.jpg


pNFWcy7.jpg



In other parts, such as the curvature on the "facade" of the name plate, I measured the thickness in three spots with my calipers: edges and the center:
wav82oM.jpg

iFNUez2.png


I know that photo doesn't look it, but the "support" plastic backing behind the curved facade/fascia piece is flat on this "inner" side, so measuring the height was the surest way to get the curvature correctly.

These weren't all of the measurements I took, but this is a start. I go back and forth, from drawing, to reference piece, re-measure, and I went through a number of 3d meshes until I was satisfied with my end result. Obviously, even with the beta version linked above, I missed a couple of small things: the thickness of the prongs near the base.
 

As far as a special tool—if something like this was made at a smaller scale, that might work: https://www.amazon.com/Contour-Gauge-Duplicator-Outline-Tool/dp/B081DGCQX8

 
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rplacd

Well-known member
I can tell you the way I did it with the Color Classic piece. I think there are specialized tools one could use, but since I don't have access, I have a fairly accurate method. I use precision measurement equipment (just good, metric rulers) and photograph them (with a lens that gives me the least amount of distortion) from multiple angles, to make sure I get it all. In some cases you could get away with a flatbed scanner. I then used a drawing program (I used illustrator, but one could use another solution, where you can place images and scale units until you're working 1:1





In other parts, such as the curvature on the "facade" of the name plate, I measured the thickness in three spots with my calipers: edges and the center:



I know that photo doesn't look it, but the "support" plastic backing behind the curved facade/fascia piece is flat on this "inner" side, so measuring the height was the surest way to get the curvature correctly.

These weren't all of the measurements I took, but this is a start. I go back and forth, from drawing, to reference piece, re-measure, and I went through a number of 3d meshes until I was satisfied with my end result. Obviously, even with the beta version linked above, I missed a couple of small things: the thickness of the prongs near the base.
 

As far as a special tool—if something like this was made at a smaller scale, that might work: https://www.amazon.com/Contour-Gauge-Duplicator-Outline-Tool/dp/B081DGCQX8
I think I found the little mini curve duplicator tool you're looking for! A company named MicroMark makes small version of trades tools...

https://www.micromark.com/6-Contour-Gauge

image.png

 
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