Hey,

Does anybody know what kind of plastic the cartridges are made of?

And has anybody ever tried to make a mold for the cartridges?

I was thinking maybe with this:
http://www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=3790&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&type=&mode=0&start=0

And new made cartridge shells we could stop the mass slaughter of virtual boy games for repro’s 🙂

Kind regards,
-Roel

ABS I would think.

I’ve been making some cases in PLA on my 3D printer.

I had this same idea actually. You guys beat me to it. 😉

Cool!

how did they turn out?

There is also the connectors you need to make or find..or adjust.

Right now I can get donor carts at about 5 dollars per. All baseball carts. I’ve got a good source with plenty of carts. So we should be fine for a bit. But, once i run out…repro costs will get higher 😛

-Eric

Here’s some I made today

Attachments:

1. 

   3d_cases.jpg
   

Low res image, but these cases seem to be of fairly high quality. What’s left in between us and fully custom carts? Finding a larger amount of connectors? Adjusting the cart case model to fit these connectors?

That is really cool! The future of VB reproduction carts and custom Homebrew carts just got more interesting.

Cool they look very high quality!

I watched this last weekend. It gave me some ideas for the carts

Wow, MineStorm, those look great! What make/model/tech is your printer? If that’s FDM, it’s got an impressive resolution.

roelvdm3 beat me to it… I was going to post that WEEKS ago and forgot 😛 There are many more videos covering the whole process in detail. I’ve been wanting to do a similar process; I would use a CNC router to make a mold, rather than duplicating an existing object, but it would be more-or-less the same materials and steps.

However, upon seeing MineStorm’s results from printing, I think I might just continue my plan to convert my CNC mill to an FDM printer…

Also, yes, the official cart shells are made of ABS, as are most consumer product casings. As roelvdm3’s link shows, there are now quite a few castable resins that can approximate the properties of ABS. Many 3D printing technologies can make something suitable, too. In fact, ABS itself can be printed using FDM printers (although PLA—Polylactic Acid—would probably be just as good for cart shells).

It’s a MakerBot Replicator 2

I print them on 0.27mm (medium res) and it takes about 50 minutes to make one complete case. So, not really practical for mass production.

Hedgetrimmer did me a few adaptions to the case .stl, so I can drop a FlashBoy+ board straight in without having to mod the case.

It’s a way for me to use up a surplus of connectors (left from failed case modding).

BTW I print the shells facing down so I get a nice smoooth finish from the print bed.

MineStorm, Have you posted your makerbot cartridge model on the makerbot site? This would be a great addition for furture printing.

All the model files are made by Hedgetrimmer. He’s a professional CAD modeller, as you can tell from his work.