Worklog G-Luma 64

[fibbef]

Dang it. As much as I love the winged section, it's making this portable WAY too bulky. I originally designed it because I wanted the portable to be somewhat narrow, so I put the batteries in the wings. But on my latest revision I made the whole unit 6 mm thicker (small but noticeable) and 20 mm wider. So now I should have plenty of space to keep all battery cells in the main compartment. But goodbye beautiful wings...

Wii for scale.

I may chop off the wings but leave an overhang to cover the cart slot.
The closer I think I'm getting to a completed case, the more I begin to doubt myself...

 

[fibbef]

I had a major "aww screw it" moment while designing my case. I had bought a spool of glow filament for no particular reason (because it's cool) and decided I will make this portable glow once again.

The surface is a little rough, but it will have to remain as is since I've already had a heck of a time getting this thing to print at all. And yes, I'm aware that despite there being a Luma printed on my case, Mario Galaxy has nothing to do with the N64. It's a gimmick. Just go with it.

Sorry to you Paper Mario fans, but I've mostly abandoned the gloomba theme (name changed to G-Luma just for this reason). However, I've kept a small remnant of this project's history near the heart of this portable.

Time to work on electronics.

 

[Matthew]

And yes, I'm aware that despite there being a Luma printed on my case, Mario Galaxy has nothing to do with the N64. It's a gimmick. Just go with it.

And this is why Fibbef is one of my favorite members.

 

[Noah]

I love the design, especially the vents for (what I assume to be) passive cooling. Can't wait to see this completed!

 

[GingerOfOz]

Portable that starts with G- but isn't built by Gman

 

[fibbef]

the vents for (what I assume to be) passive cooling

More or less. The plan is to put in a small fan north of the gloomba piece behind that internal wall. The wall is there to guide the airflow down toward the RCP. How effective it will be, I don't know. Sadly, this is where my ignorance of such things shines through.

Portable that starts with G- but isn't built by Gman

I've been called out.

 

[fibbef]

Ok, I had to dig through a few pages of posts to dig this one up. Since I recently finished a project that was incepted back in 2017, I'm continuing the trend of trying to wrap up old projects. The name for this project may yet be in flux, but I still want to print it in glow filament. I should probably buy a new spool of it since what I have is going on 2 years old.

When I last left this project, I had to drop it since I fried my voltage regulator. Also, the 3rd party expansion pack stopped working. Turns out the board bend went too far and just broke through all the traces. I now have a new regulator and have just been using a jumper pack and the rebuild is going well: cart slot is wired, power is connected on a temporary basis, and screen and amp are connected for testing. At this very moment I have everything running off of a 7.4V battery pack because I want to see how long the system will last on 2 cells rather than the 4 in my original design. Currently going on 55 minutes and I move Mario around every so often to make sure it's not just subsisting in a low-ish power state.

I've decided that I'm going to redesign my case from scratch. The last one I was building was kind of nice, but not as planned out as I would have liked and I'm certain I would have eventually ran into more problems down the road.

That's all for now. I hope to have somewhat regular updates until this is complete.

 

[fibbef]

I feel like I'm jumping the gun with an update on this, but I'm eager to show what I've got so far.

I'm trying to make this the most planned out project I've ever done so far, considering that most of my projects are thrown together with minimal planning and I deal with issues as they come along.

The earlier days of portables always seemed to be "make a front and back half of a case, cram everything inside, and pray." I think the BitBuilt community has proven that there is a better way, and I am determined to follow in their footsteps. Rather than "hang" the internal components off the front of the case, my design choice is to make a 3D printed layer that holds components in place against the motherboard while also providing an airflow channel. A 30mm fan will be placed in the rectangular slot on the right, with exhaust feeding out the left.

I'm also working slowly on the case's front half, which isn't so much a priority right now. I really want to work on this from the inside out, as in the past I've had a tendency to make a case and then shoehorn everything inside. Hopefully by planning all the parts, I can just sandwich them all nicely together once all is said and done.

 

[fibbef]

Progress remains slow while I over-engineer the design. I printed out an OK-ish test print of what will be the bologna of my N64 portable sandwich. The airflow channel appears to have printed well, despite a bulk of it not having any print supports. The 2 screws on the left will hold down the joystick, which doesn't fit until I either trim down the board it sits on or redesign the shroud above and to its right.

Here's the underside of the same piece. One of the screws juts out into the airflow channel, which shouldn't cause any problems. But the one visible here is screwing down straight into a heatsink, so I will need to dremel its length so it doesn't cause any problems.

After spending at least an hour today tightening the belts on my printer and re-adjusting the z-offset of the BLtouch, I'm currently test printing the back panel. So hopefully another update before too long.

 

[fibbef]

First test print finished! I know a lot of people don't post about all of their tests, but I'd prefer to post regularly than to let this project stagnate for another 2 years.

All things considered, not terrible for a first test print. It helped me identify a few areas that need tweaked, as a good test print should. Pretty much all the improvements need to take place in the middle piece, which makes sense since it's the most complex out of the three. Although I may add another screwpost to the bottom center of the design, since the two shell pieces want to split away from each other there.