I am making a homemade game controller. I am combining a thumbstick from a now discontinued and somewhat rare portable game system (the neo geo pocket), with modern arcade quality buttons. I’ve been looking for a broken neo geo pocket for years to get one of its awesome thumbsticks for this purpose (they are very reliable machines).
I recently acquired a broken one. The thumbstick is a simple mechanism of a shaft, thumstick top, a spring, shaft pivot/base and 4 switches. I would like to dissassemble the pieces, and have exact replicas made, because I don’t want to break working neo geo pockets for these parts.
where could I take or send these parts?
would that be legal?
I want to make a clear plastic case for this gamepad/arcade stick hybrid, how would I go about that? I would prefer to make it myself but don’t know where to start.
It all depends upon your ability to fabricate things. I don’t know your background, but you seem creative and are motivated.
Personally, I love making things from scratch. I have an abundant supply of flat plastic from Lexan to Bakelite. Cut-up old suitcases make good thermoplastic. I also keep a junk box of old parts for potential use. I would suggest not trying to duplicate exactly what other engineers did because you don’t have the same resources. Take what you have and see how it might work. You can bend and mold many plastics with a heat gun or a small propane pencil torch. A big soldering gun with special tips helps too. Attachments can be mechanical like nuts, bolts or wire, or chemical like epoxy.
Having someone else duplicate a part is too expensive.
Thanks for the advice, but the reason I want to clone the thumbstick is because it is by far the best controller for fighting games that isn’t an arcade joystick, the “feel” is just superb, and I want to replicate it… what type of shop would I send it to to be replicated? I wouldn’t mind it being made of aluminum either…
I wouldn’t mind trying to make a reasonable facsimile though, what kind of tools would I need to get started? Already have a heatgun!
A machine shop could make you one out of aluminum or some other metal. I don’t know if they commonly work with plastic these days. You should be able to find plenty of machine shops in your local phone book.
If you want to go the plastic route, they make stuff called Shapelock (there may be other similar brands, I just happen to remember this one) which you heat up in hot water then shape it into whatever shape you want. It is very easy to work with.
The first step is to muster raw material. That determines the tools needed. I use Dremel type rotary tools to cut plastic and shape it. The pencil torch sometimes works better than a heat gun. Aluminum is very shapable too. I often use Pop rivets to attach both plastic or aluminum. J_B Weld epoxy is very helpful. Small clamps and vise-grips hold position while making connections. A soldering gun can be used to poke a hole in plastic where you desire and can be better than a drill. You can find cutting tips for solder guns that allow you to slice plastic and make curved cuts. I maintain it would cost a fortune to pay an outsider to replicate something. Perhaps a better approach and one you may already be using is to monitor eBay and Craig’s list for the item. If you have one, someone else has one and wants to get rid of it.
Google “plastic 3d printer” for links to companies that will fabricate for you, or printers you can buy for home. This one for $950 seems to be all the rage.
Mattel sold a toy Vac U Form in the 1960’s. It came with sheets of plastic. Put an object on it and pump the handle to make a copy.
It was a fully functional, small scale Vac U Form. Similar to the big ones at fabrication places.
Today, people modify them to run with a shop vac. It replaces the hand pump and gives more suction. It can use thicker plastic sheets. Hobbyist use it for real work.
If you go on to manufacture them, you’ll undoubtedly run up against someone’s patents. I interned at a joystick designer & manufacturer and they had bought/sole-licensed a number of joystick design patents that really gave them a nice position in the market. Anything like a stick or pad with switches or potentiometers is probably locked up tight.
ETA: look up ‘rapid prototyping’ for making onesie-twosies.
Someone sells a machine that creates plastic parts using what I can only describe as a printer that injects plastic. It layers up the object by injecting plastic one layer at a time. For the life of me I can’t google it. It sells for less than $1000. Find someone who owns one and work with them to create the object you want.
You could buy a Makerbot kit, assemble, learn to use it, etc. but that is a whole 'nother thing. Your best best for fabrication would be a 3D print service like www.shapeways.com.
The challenge would be creating 3D files of the parts. The best approach would depend on the shape of the part. For something like the thumbstick you could take a photo of it against a plain background (from far away zoomed all the way in to minimize distortion) and trace the outline. Then you would spin the outline to create the 3D part.
Other things you might be able to get scanned by a 3D scanning service, others might need to be recreated in a CAD program using measurements and photos for reference.
You can accomplish a lot with 3D printing, but you will need to learn some 3D design skills to take advantage of it.
Another approach you can take is making silicon molds of the parts, but again that will depend on the shapes of the parts. It might work well, if you consider that they all were likely made from molds themselves. Look for seam lines and such, and see if you can figure out how they were molded. Maybe you can figure out how to cut them in half and make molds that replicate the original ones.