Transparent Rubber Enclosures

February 12, 2010 by Mike Szczys 31 Comments

This clear rubber puck serves as the enclosure for a diy mp3 player. The wires encapsulated in the rubber are just there for looks but the utility of using this material as a case is fascinating. Alas, there’s no details on the material other than that it’s clear rubber. Update: [Reboots] picked up on some info that we originally missed. Looks like this is made from some Smooth-On PCM 780 urethane rubber.

We’ve looked into casting our own molds from silicone rubber in the past. That may be the process used here but we can’t tell what allows the two halves to be pried apart. We’ve embedded video after the break that details casting rubber around a part in one solid block, then cutting the rubber off of that to create a mold. We’re also familiar with the mold making kits from Tap plastics but as far as we know, they’re always colored and never clear.

We keep our eyes peeled for new prototyping products and we want to know more about the materials and the process used to make this cylindrical elastomer. If you’ve got the goods on how this is done, please share them in the comments.

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Altoids Upstaged By Gift Card Tins

February 7, 2010 by Phil Burgess 27 Comments

Nothing Earth-shattering here. Just, dare we say it, really cute!

The venerable Altoids mint tin has become an icon of the maker culture. Browsing through past articles on Hack a Day, Adafruit or Instructables, you’ll find project after project for which these pocket-sized enclosures provided just the right fit. Eminently practical, affordable, but the aesthetics have occasionally left something to be desired.

We recently stumbled upon these nifty gift card holders that resemble miniature versions of current-generation game consoles. They might be the perfect housing for your next microcontroller project…

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USB HDD Enclosure To DVD Connector

February 2, 2010 by Mike Szczys 123 Comments

This is a “why didn’t I think of that?” idea. [Alec] needed a way to connect an IDE DVD drive using USB. Rather than order a connector he pulled the circuit board out of an old USB hard drive enclosure and connected to his DVD drive. Bang, recognized and running.

This will prove extremely handy if you have a netbook without an optical drive. We’ve used Unetbootin to move Linux ISO images to a thumb drive in the past. In addition to getting around the lack of an optical drive, this saves burning the data to a piece of plastic. But, you should be able to use this with a Leopard retail DVD instead of a 16GB thumb drive for a Hackintosh conversion. That means you could install Leopard on a netbook without needing a Mac to transfer the disk image to your thumb drive first.

Freerunner With Android, New Case, Battery

December 27, 2009 by Mike Szczys 6 Comments

[Dennis] got snowed in after the biggest storm in the history of the state hit. Like any good hacker he didn’t let the time go to waste. He decided to dig out his Neo Freerunner to give it a decent battery and a new OS.

The original battery for the Freerunner has a controller board integrated into the package. [Dennis] pulled out the board and attached it to a portable DVD player battery. After running it through a discharge cycle with another hack of his, the board learned the new battery capacity. The larger battery plus a fast-charger from SparkFun required a larger case. He made it happen by combining a 2.5″ HDD case with the original body courtesy of some JB weld. The final portion of the hack was to load up Android which is as simple as untarring the package onto an SD card.

It’s a bit big, but the battery will last and he’s got an open platform. Nice work!

Tips On Picking The Right Case

June 6, 2008 by Juan Aguilar 12 Comments

Finding the right enclosure to house your latest project can be tricky, so Sparkfun wrote up some handy tips on the how to pick the right one.

The most important tip is to have your components measured before acquiring a case; even being a few milimeters too small can put you back at square one. To do this right, it’s useful to look at the dimensional drawings of prospective cases to get a sense for the size. These typically include recommended shapes for PCBs too.

You may find a case that meets your dimensional needs but doesn’t have the appropriate mounting bosses. To get the placement right, screw some plastic standoffs to the PCB, then use super glue to attach them firmly to the case.

Tips on button choices, hole drilling, and other typical issues with case modification can also be found in this guide. If this is something that’s been stumping you, give it a look.