[Lesa Wright] just started selling enclosure kits used to convert a Wacom tabet into a Cintiq clone. You need to start with your own Wacom tablet, there are kits for four different models. You’ll also need to track down some other parts: a compatible laptop LCD screen, controller kit, and some cable extenders. From there, the kit takes over, with several pieces of laser-cut acrylic needing to be glued together properly, then a surprising number of spacers need to be cut from foam board in order to mount everything..

The kits come in at around $225. That might seem a bit steep since you need to bring your own electronics to the party, but have you checked out the price of the original Cintiq? You can expect to drop about twelve-hundred bones on a ready-to-use model. Before you take the dive, you should watch their collection of assembly videos, it’s quite a process.

Our fascination with multitouch is fairly well known, but it expands even further to cover all sorts of man machine interaction. Embedded above is a tech demo of g-speak, a spatial operating environment. The user combines gestures and spatial location to interact with on screen objects. If it seems familiar, it’s because one of the company’s founders advised on Minority Report. We doubt all this hand waving is going to catch on very quickly though. Our bet is on someone developing a multitouch Cintiq style device for people to use as a secondary monitor. It would bridge the gap between between our standard 2D interactions and gestures without making a full leap to 3D metaphors.

[via Create Digital Motion]

Several people have taken it upon themselves to fashion Mac tablets of their own, varying from extremely professional looking finishes down to duct tape and wire. Lets take a look at some of the more popular ones out there.

First lets go to the place that started many of these projects. Though not strictly a Mac tablet, the projects at Bongofish.co.uk deal with making your own Cintiq. The instructions are quite in depth and the forums have several Mac projects to view.

Back around 2004, [Joseph DeRuvo Jr.] put together this fantastic little mod. He grafted a Troll Touch screen to a Mac laptop and made a custom case for it. He did a fantastic job of enclosing everything and making it look great. One cool feature is that the cover that protects the screen, folds back to form a stand when needed. This guy put a lot of hard work into this and it shows.

Another extremely polished model is the iTab. Inspired by the DIY Cintiq at Bongofish, [wiestudios] has put together this beautiful piece. Going more with Wacom than Mac style, it’s another fine bit of engineering. It even has an apple and crossbones etched in the back!

Polish isn’t everything though, sometimes simplicity can bring a project into the hands of the average Joe. Check out [Florian Mourer]‘s ongoing project. He plans on building a custom enclosure at some point, but for now he’s got a pretty simple modification working. Again, this one uses a Wacom board so it is pressure sensitive. Unlike the others, he is limited to only a portion of the screen being sensitive due to the size of the tablet he had available.

Our very own [Caleb Kraft] has also ventured into the area of making Mac tablets. Using a cheap Wacom board, some duct tape, a screw driver, and a torx wrench, he shows us how to build a pressure sensitive Mac tablet in 15 minutes.

With the advent of the iPhone, it seems that a Mac tablet should be on the horizon. This is just one of the many cases where hackers have the technology first.