[Sebastian] describes himself as a "real novice" when it comes to CNC. To take advantage of his new CNC router, he decided to tackle his most challenging project to date: replicating an original wooden Game Boy case. And spoiler alert: he succeeded.
Of course, he had a lot to offer. At least from a woodworking perspective, you can't go wrong with walnut as a material. On the other hand, he can be unforgiving and picky sometimes when it comes to tools, and [Sebastian] probably used nine different tools to get the job done. However, the challenge was complicated by the need to recreate many of the details of the original plastic injection molding box. There are upper and lower shells, each of which must be milled on both sides. This makes it difficult to sign up for a coin lottery. This involves using custom indexing holes and also using the old "blue tape and CA glue" mounting trick, which seemed to look pretty good. The best bang for your buck is the front panel lettering, which is engraved with a drill and then filled with white spray paint. Then a bit of putty removed the excess splash and left the letters contrasting well with the dark wood. Beautiful!
But not everything was easy. There are a few things that plastic can do that wood can't, such as preventing threads from splitting on small screws. So when a mix of salvaged and new components arrived, the body had to be re-glued. It looks amazing though, and [Sebastian] says what we see in the video below is a one-off. Pretty good for a first time. Surprisingly, we've never seen a wooden Game Boy—a wooden NES, yes, but not a Game Boy.
