Wow, to be fair, this almost inspires me to give up, Zap is just out there in a (wooden) legue of his own And all by hand as well, just stunning
this is just so damn cool! you should make some plans for the case and sell them. i am sure they would be very popular! any way keep up the good work
Jesus Christ mate, I love it! You should patent the idea for a wooden iPod cover and get it mass produced... You would probably make some good money with that.
That looks damn tasty. Now we just have to wait for coolmeister to make a chrome-ish ipod or an eye-burning yellow one.
wow...just wow. I would seriously pay money to get a case mod like this made. I would suggest you do it to get money, but the demand would probably be too great! Awesome, purley awesome.
Thanks for the support. This project has kind of pushed me back into getting the rest of Redwood done. If I did make them they would cost a ton, simply due to the amount of time it takes, and mistakes are costly. That corner was me messing up while routing the edges out. It was sanded away before I finished. As for other exotic woods, I was simply using what I already had on hand. With the heavier wood and thick envirotex coating I am sure it weighs more, but I don't notice it.
Why didn't you use your laser to cut the wood? Really original, though! One suggestion: make a mechanism in the Shuttle PC that will keep the cradle tucked inside the case until you press a button (maybe even use a modified drive bay cover in front so it looks like that there is nothing there). Then it should pop out and allow you to charge your iPod. To make it even better, make it retract once the iPod is removed! Or even embed an RFID tag into the iPod and make the cradle pop out once you hold your iPod next to the PC! Or make a spring-loaded flap to allow the iPod to insert into the slot and connect with the connector. Not as stealthy, though...
The first obstacle to laser cutting is the fact that its not a very powerful laser-it can etch, but cutting through wood is very time consuming-and since this isnt a precisely measureable item (at least, not very easily), it requires hand work. Also, Zap's Ipod is for himself; Project Redwood is a sponsored project that he has to hand over in a month; I doubt hes getting payed enough to justify the addition of a custom wooden Ipod at his own expense
The laser can cut the wood quickly. It would make accurate cutouts for the LCD and Wheel hole. But it burns the wood black and it's actualy brittle at the edges. It can also not etch away the inside, at least no in any timely manner. I could cut it smaller and finish up with a dremel. But for this I wanted more of a challange, it was fun to just sit on my deck and take my time to work on it. I had a week vacation between my two jobs, and working on a super-project like Redwood isn't as fun as a single start to finish project. While I like the idea on the hidden dock... I want this PC to be more elegant then all-in-one. My memory card reader is external, and so I will have the iPod on the other side of my monitor to balance things out. Bit-Tech article now: http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=93556
You all should know already, but this Zap made the Slashdot front page: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/05/0514206&tid=222&tid=176&tid=137
