Way back in 2008, Apple unveiled the first unibody Macbook with a chassis milled out of a single block of aluminum. Before that, essentially all laptops, including those from Apple, were flimsy plastic screwed together haphazardly on various frames. The unibody construction, on the other hand, finally showed that it was possible to make laptops that were both lightweight and sturdy. Apple eventually began producing iPhones with this same design style, and with the right tools and a very accurate set of calipers it’s possible to not only piece together the required hardware to build an iPhone from the ground up but also build a custom chassis for it entirely out of metal as well.
The first part of the project that [Scotty] from [Strange Parts] needed to tackle was actually getting measurements of the internals. Calipers were not getting the entire job done so he used a flatbed scanner to take an image of the case, then milled off a layer and repeated the scan. From there he could start testing out his design. After an uncountable number of prototypes, going back to the CAD model and then back to the mill, he eventually settles into a design but not before breaking an iPhone’s worth of bits along the way. Particularly difficult are the recessed areas inside the phone, but eventually he’s able to get those hollowed out, all the screw holes tapped, and then all the parts needed to get a working iPhone set up inside this case.
[Scotty] has garnered some fame not just for his incredible skills at the precision mill, but by demonstrating in incredible detail how smartphones can be user-serviceable or even built from scratch. They certainly require more finesse than assembling an ATX desktop and can require some more specialized tools, but in the end they’re computers like any other. For the most part.
So much custom work holding.
Solid aluminum must make a pretty good Faraday cage…
“You’re holding it wrong.”
I didn’t see how he finishes it. Anodize? Alodine? Clearcoat? Paint? It’s going to look like crap soon without some kind of finish. Or does it just have to look good long enough to publish the video?
yes, this statement in the article is abjectly false. Apple produced MANY laptops from aluminum and even titanium. What distinguishes these earlier designs from current manufacturing processes is that they were produced by forming sheet-metal, rather than milling from a solid block. They were beautiful machines representing meticulous design and manufacturing, and this besmirchment should be rectified at once. Flimsy plastic my butt.
The unibody construction didn’t even solve any real engineering problem. It was a marketing gimmick to justify more expensive laptops.
There’s two basic ways you can make a laptop: A) all components and the shell mount to a rigid internal skeleton, B) The shell has mounting points for all the components on the inside, and the components act as additional load bearing elements to make the structure rigid instead of an internal skeleton.
When the outer shell flexes under load, case B can provide more rigidity so the device feels “solid”, especially if you have large components that are simply glued against the shell. However, all the components are under stress and subject to load cycling fatigue, which can break solder joints and move connectors out of place. Case A feels more flimsy, but that’s just the shell moving around the internal skeleton, not putting stress on the components. It’s often designed to act as a bumper in this way.
This is why Apple had to design the unibody macs with all sorts of supporting ribs and variable material thickness to limit the movement of the components inside without adding too much weight, and still the MacBook Pros developed a problem where they would reboot when you pick the machine up by the corner, and a host of issues with the DVD drive etc. They came out perfectly mediocre in terms of reliablity when counting three-year warranty returns.
It’s kinda like cars in the 1950’s – built like a tank, drives through a brick wall without bending a bumper, and kills everyone inside on impact.
Similar story in aviation engineering. I was really surprised to learn about stressed skin construction (was a long time ago not sure if that is correct term) where the skin itself, fancy aluminum foil really, was very structural. A small dent in it could compromise the structure. Made sense when I remembered grade school “standing on an empty aluminum can” then have a friend poke it trick.
Or, compare to the early “indestructible” Nokia phones. They had user-replaceable plastic covers, not for the point of fashion, but because they were designed to fly into pieces when dropped: the back cover, front cover and battery came off, absorbing the kinetic energy of the impact.
Of course the phone felt like a plastic toy compared to modern solid glass and metal slabs, but you could throw it at a wall and it would still work after re-assembling the pieces. That’s exactly because the electronics inside were secured tightly in a pressed sheet metal frame and the shell was mounted somewhat loosely around that skeleton.
The funny thing about that. Once they take that beautiful Apple chassis and stuff it full of components… it becomes only marginally more useful than it was as an empty case!
My Panasonic CF-27 Toughbook’s case was magnesium. Bought new in 1999.
Let’s add one small detail about the first unibody macbooks: not only they weren’t actually “unibody”, but also prone to breaking due to the fan exaust blowing directly onto the display lid made of 2 pieces of aluminum glued together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUaJ8pDlxi8&t=190
So, yeah, not exactly “not flimsy”.
I respect this guy and his tenacity. Get’s a mill for free and, unlike most other reviewers, goes on a 12 months quest to make an iPhone enclosure with it. Damn.
Pro-Tipp when you need to do DIY photogrametry
Print a 10mmx10mm or 5mmx5mm grid you made in Powerpoint on an overhead projector film, put the transparent grid at the depth of your point of interest – can even be slightly off – make a foto with your perfect camera, get the foto into powerpoint measure your grid, do the math – be king
(its really easy)
“essentially all laptops, including those from Apple, were flimsy plastic screwed together”
Check out the PowerBook G4. 2001 to 2003 they were titanium. 2003 and 2006 they were aluminum. Definitely not flimsy plastic screwed together by any stretch of the imagination!!
Came here to say this. I’m not a fan of Apple as a company, but their laptop designs from the late 90s through the mid-late 2000s were leading the pack.