3D Printing an option for Powerbook 100 Series Rear Casings?

[LukeIntosh]

Hello folks! long time no see...

I decided to dig my dilapidated excuse of a PowerBook out of storage, and take another look at it again,

of course I could continue trying to get hold of a Rear casing, but I have been pondering the idea of building one with CAD and sharing it with the community, however i don't really have anything except the front bezel to go off of, any advice or assistance to push me in the right direction would be appreciated.

in the past i was pondering building the rear casing out of metal or wood or something crazy but gave up on both settling on 3D printing being the closest to original.

what are your thoughts? please share them!

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

You wouldn’t happen to be Luke Davis would you, from YouTube? If so, this is The Electrical Outlet! I remember you talking at one point about your 140 with a missing rear display.

Could you recreate the rear display housing as a 3D print? Probably. It’s not a super complicated part all thing considered. The biggest issue would be rigidity I’d guess. You’d have to print in a strong material like ABS and you’d need a large printer. The texture certainly would not match as well, painting it would probably be your best bet.

 

[LukeIntosh]

You wouldn’t happen to be Luke Davis would you, from YouTube? If so, this is The Electrical Outlet! I remember you talking at one point about your 140 with a missing rear display.

Could you recreate the rear display housing as a 3D print? Probably. It’s not a super complicated part all thing considered. The biggest issue would be rigidity I’d guess. You’d have to print in a strong material like ABS and you’d need a large printer. The texture certainly would not match as well, painting it would probably be your best bet.

Yes I am!, how could you guess? finding the material and a printer large enough should not be a problem, it's creating the CAD file from scratch, and as I have disposed of the old rear casing (stupidly) I only have the front bezel to go off of, i have a google doc with the area measurement but again, I am unsure where to go from.

somebody is recreating video cables for the 140 which is lucky, however they are still in development afaik.

i did also completely tear down a google sketch up model to get a rough shape of the rear housing, however i have not touched it since as i figured it would not be to scale.

 

[3lectr1cPPC]

Without access to a rear housing I’d guess recreating it would be very difficult. If I were you I’d go ahead and put a WTB out on the trading post section. There’s likely a lot of people who have spare housings with broken standoffs they could sell you. But in that case, you’d probably be better off printing a PowerBook hinge fix part and then just installing that in place of the standoffs instead of recreating the whole part.

 

[LukeIntosh]

Without access to a rear housing I’d guess recreating it would be very difficult. If I were you I’d go ahead and put a WTB out on the trading post section. There’s likely a lot of people who have spare housings with broken standoffs they could sell you. But in that case, you’d probably be better off printing a PowerBook hinge fix part and then just installing that in place of the standoffs instead of recreating the whole part.

Yes good point.

i may be in luck as somebody here does have an abundance of PowerBook parts laying around they are willing to sell me, the only problem i have to deal with would be the missing screws, EXTREMELY Tight hinges and of course the disastrous display cable.

and my failed DIY SCSI2SD

 

[Dogmander]

I have an 145B and 140, I'd be willing to work on recreating parts, whether that be taking measurements, photos, or rough models

 

[LukeIntosh]

I have an 145B and 140, I'd be willing to work on recreating parts, whether that be taking measurements, photos, or rough models

would defo help a few folks out there for sure!

 

[Dogmander]

Cool, if you want anything done, hit me up and I'll see what I'm able to do.