If you’ve played games on multiple consoles, you’re probably familiar with the intermittent uncertainty caused by each system’s unique button layout. They are all more or less in the same physical location, but each system names them differently. Depending on which controller you have, the same button could be X, A, or B. We won’t even start talking about color.
[Gina Heussge] (of OctoPrint fame) heard her partner want the buttons on his Steam Deck to match the Xbox color scheme, so she decided to secretly create her own set of buttons for the portable system. Only one problem… she doesn’t have experience with the silicone or epoxy casting process required for this operation.
Luckily, we had the Internet, and after looking at similar projects targeting other consoles, [Gina] felt confident enough to take apart the Steam handheld and remove the original plastic buttons. They are placed in an original 3D printed mold box that is small enough to fit in a food vacuum degassing container. The shape of the button called for a two-piece mold in which [Gina] built two channels, one for resin injection and one for air to escape.
The red, green, blue and yellow resins are then poured into four separate syringes and pressed into the mould. Orientation is very important here because each button has a slightly different shape. Looks like [Gina] might have gotten confused about what color each button should be on previous attempts, so on the last run she made a little chart to keep track of it. After 24 hours, she was able to remove the mold and see perfectly shaped buttons, but it took 72 hours for them to actually harden enough to move on to the next step.
[Gina] posted a wipe on the legend, we thought it must be hard to line up perfectly. Because the letters would wear off after a few intense games without protection, she finally sealed the surface of each button by applying a thin layer of UV resin and drying with a torch at the appropriate wavelength.
There were quite a few steps involved, and there was quite a lot of upfront cost to assemble all the materials, but there’s no denying that the end result looked pretty amazing. Especially the first try. We wouldn’t be surprised if the next time someone wants to go down this path, [Jina's] post will guide them.
Gina always comes up with great ideas, but the idea of using this food container as a vacuum chamber is especially good. I do a lot of things that can be defoamed with a cheap low pressure vacuum and this is a great way to do it.
I got this idea from a Hackaday post (also written by Tom) from December 2019: https://hackaday.com/2019/12/19/degassing-epoxy-resin-on-the-very-cheap/
Jasper Sikken tried it with resin and got great results, I just thought it should have been used with silicone and it worked ^^ But all the credit for the food container approach should go to Jasper!
Vacuum pumps (at least for this) are pretty cheap, and the oil they burn is actually a bit more expensive (although you can collect and reuse most of it). I suspect the food used here is a little anemic – better than nothing, it’s just that the vacuum is too slow and too underpowered to work well with more complex shapes and faster resins.
I have found that for resin work, at least regular cheap aircraft fittings and quick connects hold barometric pressure quite well. For myself, I used a thick piece of polycarbonate with a hole drilled into it for a vacuum fitting and some remnants of the old silicone as a gasket over the old pressure cooker base. I also use the whole pressure cooker for injection molding. It leaks a little in both directions, but is good enough for the role, and basically costs nothing other than a pump – just be a little paranoid that the relief valve is working fine and/or your airline regulators are working properly and I’m not. I believe sealed pressure tanks with 100+ psi compressors usually operate at – should be fine even at full overpressure, but threaded fittings are a relatively rare thin metal (I figured I could always solder or solder it, but I I don’t) and a small protrusion presses the lid against a fairly large area of the pot lid…
In college, we sometimes use a venturi vacuum generator to create a vacuum in carbon fiber laminate molds. If you have access to an air compressor, this may be a more economical option.
Except for electricity costs, because it’s almost inefficient. I’m also skeptical that a normal sized factory compressor can actually supply enough air to create enough vacuum to be really good for the job – working window on resin vs volume to be pumped out and how deep it can suck.. However, what happens is of course much better than nothing, and probably completely adequate – I don’t have a good instinctive sense of fluid dynamics in this stuff, and I’m not interested in trying to compute/look it up…
(And I’ve never made vacuum bags myself, only resin casting. So the requirements for vacuum bags are probably quite low – at least I don’t expect them to be higher – since fibrous resin always seems to be thin and hardens slowly. .)
I did this on a 3d printer https://www.reddit.com/r/SteamDeck/comments/10c5el5/since_you_all_asked_glow_dpad/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
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Post time: Jun-15-2023
