Check Out This Functional 3D Printed Macintosh

[MacRumors]

Designer Kevin Noki recently spent several weeks creating his own homemade, functional Macintosh built from the ground up, which he dubbed the "Brewintosh." Designed to look like the Macintosh Plus, the machine Noki crafted features a 3D printed exterior and components, and it works like the real deal.

In a 47-minute video, Noki walks through the process that he used to create the device. As Ars Technica points out, Noki went completed more than 29 complex steps, each of which was a major task on its own. He started out by measuring every single surface and angle of a Macintosh Plus, modeling it in AutoDesk Fusion 360, and then printing the parts, putting them together, filling gaps, sanding, and texturing.

He modified a 10-inch thrift store screen to have LED backlighting and a dimmer knob, he crafted a power assembly, built in connectors, speakers, and other hardware, and designed a Mini vMac emulator using Linux. The whole process is fascinating to watch.

The Mac Plus is the exact right size and texture, it supports 3.5-inch disks, it supports appropriate Apple keyboards and mice, and has every other detail you would expect from a real Mac. Printing the components took over 48 hours, and the whole project spanned months.

Article Link: Check Out This Functional 3D Printed Macintosh

 

[psxp]

WOW! amazing!

 

[kingtj1971]

As someone who recently really got into 3D printing? Yeah, this is insane, but very cool!
I can't figure out how to get anything useful done in Fusion 360, to be honest, and I find Blender a big struggle. TinkerCAD is about my speed to create simple designs to print for people.

Luckily, I can find what I need already designed someplace, 99% of the time, so just wind up scaling a print up or down a bit, or doing minor things to one to get what I'm after.

 

[JosephAW]

Still have half a dozen actual working units. They have way too much time in their hands.

 

[Chuckeee]

Hope he did NOT make it using SLA.

 

[coolfactor]

This guy is a GENIUS! And so patient! Wow. Amazing work!

 

[Fuzzball84]

That is awesome…. One of the good things about 3D printing.

 

[vipergts2207]

As someone who recently really got into 3D printing? Yeah, this is insane, but very cool!
I can't figure out how to get anything useful done in Fusion 360, to be honest, and I find Blender a big struggle. TinkerCAD is about my speed to create simple designs to print for people.

Luckily, I can find what I need already designed someplace, 99% of the time, so just wind up scaling a print up or down a bit, or doing minor things to one to get what I'm after.

I got a Bambu Lab printer in the Fall and started 3D printing stuff. Fusion 360 can have a bit of a learning curve, but once you learn it, it's an incredibly powerful tool. I started out trying to use TinkerCAD, as I didn't realize there was a free version of Fusion. I found TinkerCAD to be incredibly limiting and not really capable of what I wanted to do. If I were you I would just follow along with some online tutorials to learn what it's capable of and how to use it properly. I took some courses in college that introduced me to Autodesk Inventor and its similar to Fusion so the learning curve wasn't quite so steep for me. Even though those classes were taken close to 20 years ago now (2008) the philosophy behind CAD hasn't changed too much.

 

[CarAnalogy]

This is incredible. I would love to see this in person.

 

[ericinboston]

Unless I am mistaken, this is NOT a 3D-printed Mac. The outer plastic shell was 3D-printed. But everything else was salvaged or replacement/upgraded parts. If he did print all the non-plastic (metal) parts, he didn't show him doing so in this video. And he didn't show how he printed the plastic parts like the wiring shell, the integrated circuit boards, and buttons, etc. If I'm wrong, please let me know and maybe a timestamp in the video where he shows/talks about these discrepancies I listed.

Impressive that he did all this, but I think it's extremely misleading to title this article "Check Out This Functional 3D Printed Macintosh".

 

[vipergts2207]

Unless I am mistaken, this is NOT a 3D-printed Mac. The outer plastic shell was 3D-printed. But everything else was salvaged or replacement/upgraded parts. If he did print all the non-plastic (metal) parts, he didn't show him doing so in this video. And he didn't show how he printed the plastic parts like the wiring shell, the integrated circuit boards, and buttons, etc. If I'm wrong, please let me know and maybe a timestamp in the video where he shows/talks about these discrepancies I listed.

Impressive that he did all this, but I think it's extremely misleading to title this article "Check Out This Functional 3D Printed Macintosh".

Do you actually think you can 3D print a working screen and processor or are you just being pedantic?

 

[visualseed]

This was worth the watch. Brings back a lot of memories.

 

[StralyanPithecus]

Better than the original 😁. Amazing work and great detail!

 

[ericinboston]

Do you actually think you can 3D print a working screen and processor or are you just being pedantic?

That's my point...as far as I am aware, you cannot print screens and processors with a 3D printer. There are 3D printers that print metal but I've never seen them in use and don't know their limitations.

I don't think I'm being pedantic about this...it was a question that I honestly wanted to know based on the article title, the 40 weeks of work it took, and the long video showing how he did it plus the hype from MR. The title of the article (and the youtube video) is quite misleading when all he 3D printed was the shell (as far I can tell) which probably took 1-2 weeks out of the 40 weeks of work. If that's the case (no pun intended), he might as well have just grabbed a Mac case and polished it up and used that instead of 3D printing one.

 

[vipergts2207]

That's my point...as far as I am aware, you cannot print screens and processors with a 3D printer. There are 3D printers that print metal but I've never seen them in use and don't know their limitations.

I don't think I'm being pedantic about this...it was a question that I honestly wanted to know based on the article title, the 40 weeks of work it took, and the long video showing how he did it plus the hype from MR. The title of the article (and the youtube video) is quite misleading when all he 3D printed was the shell (as far I can tell) which probably took 1-2 weeks out of the 40 weeks of work. If that's the case (no pun intended), he might as well have just grabbed a Mac case and polished it up and used that instead of 3D printing one.

So being pedantic it is. Also, have you ever done any CAD work?

 

[gallo.s.chingon]

I wonder if anyone is gonna tackle a (G3 like) iMac or even a G4 ish one

 

[victorvictoria]

Functional? What is its function?

 

[adib]

Functional? What is its function?

Computer history museum. Like how Babbage's Analytical Engine is re-constructed.

 

[TheNewLou]

Someone needs to 3D print (or 3D design, I suppose) an iPhone 4 shell (or iPhone 5c shell, since it'll be plastic I suppose), so we can insert an (upcoming) Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 & a battery so we can have a Linux iPhone or iPod touch.

Just make sure the 3D printed iPhone case gets rid of the chin & forehead by shrinking the case rather than expanding the screen.

This will be for some of us "I want a mini iPhone" people.

 

[sos47]

wow, very cool

 

[MysteriousStain]

The joy of making pictures in FullPaint (better than MacPaint). I have an old floppy with some pictures on it but have no way of reading the disk (800k)

 

[crjackson2134]

Amazing effort.

 

[svish]

Interesting video. Was fun to see it.

 

[Dfds]

That's my point...as far as I am aware, you cannot print screens and processors with a 3D printer. There are 3D printers that print metal but I've never seen them in use and don't know their limitations.

I don't think I'm being pedantic about this...it was a question that I honestly wanted to know based on the article title, the 40 weeks of work it took, and the long video showing how he did it plus the hype from MR. The title of the article (and the youtube video) is quite misleading when all he 3D printed was the shell (as far I can tell) which probably took 1-2 weeks out of the 40 weeks of work. If that's the case (no pun intended), he might as well have just grabbed a Mac case and polished it up and used that instead of 3D printing one.

it was the way it came across as you didn't ask a question but made a statement which was pedantic.

 

[Mr.Ben]

I'm disappointed he didn't call it a Nokintosh... 😏