Yay, Acetone!

Click for huuuuuge!

There are few things as gratifying as seeing a project starting to come together. In that picture above are two boxes containing two of the three major components which I had to fabricate for the iSight Tripod Adapters. The top containing 40 cut, cleaned, slotted, and prepped body tubes, and the bottom containing the 40 bottom end caps, drilled and fitted with 1/4-20 tee nuts for connecting to a camera tripod.

Please note that the slightly rough slots in the body tubes are okay. The only part which shows in the end is the top of the rounded hole at the end, so those are consistent and nice and smooth. For the rest of the cut I just made certain that it wouldn’t pinch the cable during assembly.

The third part which I have to make is the other end caps, which need to have a precise rectangular hole cut in them in order to accept the moulded vinyl end of the Firewire cables.

After that, I’ll just have to assemble everything, package the adapters, and they’ll be ready to sell! As of right now I’m thinking of US$29.95/ea, shipped to any US destination.

Oh, and did I mention that the only thing I can smell right now is acetone? It seems that acetone not only removes the blue lettering from PVC pipe, it also dissolves the surface slightly, removing any small scuff marks and generally cleaning the pipe. This allows me to make the bodies a pure dull white while leaving the endcaps a nice shiny pure white. I think the contrast, combined with the black Firewire cables, will look pretty nice.

It would have been nice to have white or grey cables, but for a small run I can’t be too picky.