[HELP ME] - Selfmade Mousebody (Parts)

[CeeSA]

I would like to make my own (or parts of it) mousebody.

I wonder if anybody could give me tips about the material and handling to use?

Should be:
very light
easy workable / malleable
air-drying? (although, we have an oven)
stiffness after drying
filable / drillable
nontoxic

I also hope that some could share personal experiences.

Thank you.

[dirge]

Polymorph? You get it in beads and it melts in close to boiling water. So you can drill etc when dry. Sets quite quickly but can be softened again in very hot water.

It's cheap too, get some and try it out. Normally used for when plastic parts break, like the controls on a washing machine etc. http://www.amazon.co.uk/PD-White-Polymo ... B0027IZC3S

[webwit]

Get with the times. 3D print.

[7bit]

Or just buy a mousetrapper and wait ...

[CeeSA]

for work I use of course a trackpoint. Gaming w/ a mousetrapper?

@dirdge - I will try Polymorph - thank you

3D Print is to expensive (I think)

[damorgue]

I made a couple before I ended up printing it. Some will call it blasphemy but vinyl records are made of a fully dense thermoplastic. This means that it can be heated to glass transition point or beyond to melting without damaging it to be able to reshape it. It also won't shrink when melted because it isn't porous like so many other common plastic household items. If you make a model in clay, you can put a vinyl record on top of it and put it in the oven until it starts to shape itself after the underlying model. You may have to put on some thicker garden/dishwasher gloves to press the vinyl around smaller features or concave surfaces on the sides. Once it has cooled of, you will have a shell. If you cut out two U shapes for the mouse buttons, then those will flex nicely too.

Also, this is by far the cheapest source of good material I have ever found. Go to a thrift shop or the like and they will sell your records by the box for close to nothing.

[Findecanor]

I am very much a "maker" and there are lots of materials that I have worked with so far... I could rant away a lot:

Build a "frankenmouse" from plastic parts of other mice. Poly cement (Humbrol, yellow bottle) does smell and you should not inhale the plastic dust. If you work outside, then you should be fine, though. Use Milliput as putty. Then paint.
I started rebuilding a mouse into a vertical mouse this way, but I did not finish it because I found a better vertical mouse on eBay. The big problem I had left to solve was how to close up the large gap in the side of the mouse and still make it possible to open it if anything needed to be serviced.
Almost all mice are made from a polystyrene blend (which includes ABS). It can be bent using heat, but it is very easy to mess that up and be left with a burned mess.

Sulfur-free sculpting clay, silicone ("RTV") mould, thin shells with fibreglass weave layered with epoxy.
You are very free in which shape you can sculpt. Perhaps you could make a hard "gelcoat" by mixing pigments into the epoxy.
Fibreglass weave is thinner than matting.
Be careful so that you don't inhale sanding dust. Epoxy does not smell much, but is very toxic if ingested. Marine epoxy that cures slowly is often harder than epoxy glue that hardens faster, but is more runny. Fibreglass can also be laid with polyester but that does smell incredibly toxic, so I would not recommend it.
There are other types of soft mould making materials than RTV but they are often more fragile or it shrinks too much.
The drawback is that the casting and moulding materials can be pretty expensive for small projects because they are often only available in large packages. In some places only available online.

The "papercraft" method: Build from paper, reinforce with fibreglass on the inside. Then sand the outside and fill/smoothen with filler based on epoxy/polyester based on what you used for reinforcement. You can get good stiffness if you layer overlapping harder pieces of paper or use many layers of thin paper (papiér maché). Must be completely dry before you start laying fibreglass. The paper limits which shapes that you can make easily: boxes, cylinders and cones are easy, spherical shapes are more difficult.
Can be a bit fiddly when making something small. This method is used a lot by people who make armour for cosplaying.

If you want a rubber-like surface, consider using leather or vinyl. Glue on using contact cement. Leather can be made more malleable and stretched when subjected to warm water. Too much heat thickens/shrinks it.
There is also a rubber-type of Sculpey, but it is not very durable. I have not tried Sugru (air-drying silicone), but I think that could be great for some things.

Small parts can be made from scratch in polymer clay (Fimo, Cernit, Sculpey III etc.) and hardened in the oven. The different brands can be blended to get different properties. Cernit is the hardest, but also the most brittle.
However, a part cut/filed from a piece of plastic (ABS, styrene, acrylic) is always stronger than polymer clay.

3D-print might be the best for a mouse though. Perhaps there is a hackerspace in your area that has a 3D printer.

[Findecanor]

If you make a model in clay, you can put a vinyl record on top of it and put it in the oven until it starts to shape itself after the underlying model.

Interesting. I have used polystyrene sheet and wood forms in the oven, but it is not very easy. Perhaps vinyl is easier to work with.

In the cosplaying community, a lot of polystyrene armour is "vacuuformed" using a special machine that sucks the air out from underneath so that the soft plastic forms around the form. The form is often wood or plaster (plaster must be properly dried or it will crack). The problem is that a vacuuforming machine is a big investment, in money or labour.
BTW, the shell for the Maltron keyboard is vacuuformed. Many plastic modellers use vacuuforming also.

[7bit]

I would like to make my own (or parts of it) mousebody.

I wonder if anybody could give me tips about the material and handling to use?
...

I also hope that some could share personal experiences.

Thank you.

To me it seems obvious to use wood:

Should be:
very light
easy workable / malleable
air-drying? (although, we have an oven)
stiffness after drying
filable / drillable
nontoxic

[Muirium]

Hear hear. Wood is the most awesome material, hands on. There's nothing else quite as natural.



It takes skill, of course. But it's also cheap. Once you've got the hang of it you can always make a side business out of bespoke homemade furniture and sculptures!

[graboy]

3D Print is to expensive (I think)

Since they're working on getting some 3D printers set up for community use on GH, 3D printing might be a viable option -- I'm sure they'd be interested in helping you with the project. Out of curiosity, are you planning to use the Avago 9800 from the recent groupbuy (if you participated), or salvage the guts from something else?

[CeeSA]

I would like to use a Avago 3090. For me it is better than the 9800 with accerlation.

3D Printing would be nice...

Could anyone advise me a software for the inputfiles?
Seems very complicated to me....

[damorgue]

Inputfiles for 3D printing? Generally, they slice up .stl files which most CAD software can save in. You could use any CAD software and you would be able to get it to .stl and print it.That said, if you are to 3D print it I would recommend you to:

A) Make a clay model
B) Scan it, 123D catch will do fine
C) Fix it in software of your choice
D) Print it

Modelling organic shapes is difficult when you need them to be accurate to your hand without references.

[damorgue]

I did it in simple regular dough I made and not some nice clay, hence the colour: (those things which look like tears in the mesh are just buggy visuals)
http://i.imgur.com/5879gxJ.png
http://i.imgur.com/viawlG8.png

[CeeSA]

Thank you, I will try 123D catch. Which software do you use for fixing? Blender? Blender looks so complicated to me.

[damorgue]

Yes, but if you have any experience in any polygon CAD software, I suggest you use the one you know. If you make a smooth enough physical model and a good enough scan, you decrease the work required in software. It may be possible to print a rough and untreated model and then fill and sand the physically printed part until it gets smooth as well.

http://p3d.in/grQOo
That is how my model looked straight from scan.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention you need to have some clear indication of dimensions. I used a checkered paper underneath which facilitates the 3D capture, as well as providing a scale. By knowing the size of the squares, I could scale the model to ensure that the entire thing comes out the correct size. This is not required with a proper and calibrated 3D scanner, but who has those.