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Mechanics and Construction => Mechanics and Construction => Topic started by: blackbeard on August 15, 2010, 07:21:56 AM

Title: Plastic case duplication
Post by: blackbeard on August 15, 2010, 07:21:56 AM
So my buddy has himself a 1970's dumb terminal from a school dumpster with one of those sick cases and we were thinking of how cool it would be if we could duplicate the case in some way. Obviosly we don't want to damage the case nor the electronics insidebut removing the case shouldn't be too difficult. We're thinking of trying to vacuume form it but that might leave us with a very flimsy end result. Any tips?
Title: Re: Plastic case duplication
Post by: futmacl on August 15, 2010, 12:18:57 PM
So my buddy has himself a 1970's dumb terminal from a school dumpster with one of those sick cases and we were thinking of how cool it would be if we could duplicate the case in some way. Obviosly we don't want to damage the case nor the electronics insidebut removing the case shouldn't be too difficult. We're thinking of trying to vacuume form it but that might leave us with a very flimsy end result. Any tips?

Resin casting is probably what you need.

You can have a look at these how-to tutorials:
http://www.smooth-on.com/pdf/Smoothon_HTB_2008.pdf (http://www.smooth-on.com/pdf/Smoothon_HTB_2008.pdf)
http://www.silicone.jp/e/catalog/pdf/mold_rtv_e.pdf (http://www.silicone.jp/e/catalog/pdf/mold_rtv_e.pdf)
http://www.brickintheyard.com/documents/polytekcatalog.pdf (http://www.brickintheyard.com/documents/polytekcatalog.pdf)

...except you probably don't want to buy Smooth-On products, unless you want to overpay. I have a pretty comprehensive list of resins, etc, in here:

http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/guerrilla_cnc1.shtml (http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/guerrilla_cnc1.shtml)
Title: Re: Plastic case duplication
Post by: Razor Concepts on August 15, 2010, 12:33:50 PM
Buying more terminals could be an option if you dont want to spend the time duplicating them. Probably very cheap but hard to find
Title: Re: Plastic case duplication
Post by: blackbeard on August 16, 2010, 11:17:58 AM
Buying more terminals could be an option if you dont want to spend the time duplicating them. Probably very cheap but hard to find
Oh I couldn't do that! I don't like destroying old things like that. Vintage computers are sort of like my hobby.
Title: Re: Plastic case duplication
Post by: voyager2 on August 24, 2010, 05:20:38 AM
I've got one of those ancient electronic typewriters, Canon I think.
Originally I was going to pull it apart...
But after discovering that it worked and had a full cartridge of ink,i thought differently.
It's amazing what you can find in your Gran's store room...