NESPo: Another 3D Printed Portable NES

August 19, 2013 by Marsh 6 Comments

portableNESSide2

Grab your favorite cartridge and violently blow into the end, because [Dave Nunez] is sending us on a nostalgia trip with his 3D printed portable NES. He takes the typical route of chopping up a Nintendo on a chip (NOAC) retro machine rather than sacrifice a real NES, and opts for a NiMH battery over lithium (which isn’t a bad idea; they can burst into flames if you charge them incorrectly). The battery life is, however, tolerable: 2.5 to 3 hours.

All the components are packed into a custom-made 3D printed PLA enclosure, which [Dave] kindly shares on thingiverse. He also decided to 3D print each of the buttons and their bezels/housings, which he then topped off by cutting acrylic sheets that seal up the front and back. As a final touch, [Dave] slips in some custom art under the acrylic and mounts a printed LED nameplate in the corner.

We’ve seen [Dave’s] work at Hackaday before, when he built a one-size-fits-all-consoles arcade controller.

3d Printed Nes Portable Looks Fantastic And Contains No Hot Glue

May 17, 2012 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

[Parker] emailed us today to show off his latest NES portable build. This time he’s using the standard “top loader” NES instead of the typically used NES on a chip. This is pretty cool since the NES on a chip has compatibility issues with some games. For the screen, he uses a common PSone screen with a slight power modification. From the factory, the screen takes 7.4 V and converts it down to 5V to use. He removed this and ran it directly from his own 5V power source. It may not seem like that big of a deal, but with portables, every bit counts. He also ditched the sound amplifier from the PSone screen in favor of something a little more efficient. He seems to have done a pretty good job because he says it gets roughly 10 hours at full volume right now.

Another cool aspect of this deign is that the cartridge serves as a sort of stand for the unit, although the button placement looks like it might be a tiny bit awkward when used this way.