1. Looks sweet

Posted at 11:19AM on Jul 3rd 2007 by wolfmankurd

2. Great work and educational too, thanks.

For the slightly less ambitious person it would make sense to build an IPod or widget holder that mated to the existing center console or other car part instead of building a whole new center console. That would require less work to redo when they moved on from using an IPod to whatever comes next.

Posted at 1:15PM on Jul 3rd 2007 by Dick Brewster

3. NICE! Looks great, and not too horribly difficult...

i agree w/ #2, though... what happens when you swap out your ipood (mis-spelled on purpose) for something newer/better? time to bust out the dremel again? nonetheless, well done, and very impressive.

Posted at 1:50PM on Jul 3rd 2007 by tbare

4. Uh, might you have meant silicon*e*? Molten silicon might have damaged the original plastic.

I hate to nitpick, but this is kind of a pet peeve of mine.

Posted at 6:48PM on Jul 3rd 2007 by Joel

5. Very very cool. It looks like there are quite a few other useful hacks in his book that I have been looking to do, like increasing my current fm transmitter signal with some simple components. I went ahead and bought the book used on amazon for $1.81 + $3.99 for shipping. There were still 2 or 3 books left under $2 when I purchased mine. Honestly, how can you beat that price??? Thanks for the great link!

Posted at 7:22PM on Jul 3rd 2007 by Steve

6. i was excited about this till i saw how much this liquid plastic stuff costs. $80 a gallon

Posted at 1:14AM on Jul 4th 2007 by chupa

7. Chupa, at the start of his article he said it took $400 to $500 for materials 8-0

which was one of the reasons I suggested just casting an add on section instead of a whole new console ( a lot less materials). You can also save big $$ by using other materials like normal resins with a bit of fiberglass instead of the $80/gallon plastic.

If you paid careful attention to the draft angles of your clay add-on you could also dispense with the silicone stage and go directly from clay to plaster. It would take a bit more finishing work because of the mold line on the final part, but for a one off, who cares?

I think the article is great, but the thinking do-it-yourself, cash limited hardware hacker will use it as a rich source of ideas rather than a detailed plan.

Posted at 4:04AM on Jul 4th 2007 by Dick Brewster

8. It would be a lot easier and cheaper to do this by vacuum forming. You can get textured ABS and vacuum form that. Building the vacuum former is easy and cheap, and then you'd have the vacuum former for other projects.

Posted at 9:26AM on Jul 4th 2007 by drcrash

9. wow, shore 70D plastic as a two part mix! that's really hard stuff... i wonder if it's brittle

this is gonna get interesting, i'm ordering a sample kit so i can try it out!

Posted at 5:46PM on Jul 4th 2007 by ¤

10. I personally contacted this guy who created this, asking what his technique was. I was curious since I'm a car audio installer who does some custom work and am always looking at new techniques. There are literally hundreds of other ways to create a cool iPod dock or any other dock/insert/pod for any gadget (portable GPS, LCD screen, etc...). 2point5.com has vehicle specific docks and one of the founders of the company(Matt Turner) is a highly accomplished installer himself. I think his mac mini GTI was featured here at one point. Anyways, I would have used LEDs directly into the bottom of the dock rather than have to buy fiber optic cable. LEDs are cheap. Like I said, there are literally hundreds of ways to get things done... it's just all about time and money. In that case, some of the best "hackers/modders" are car audio installers since they're usually pressed for time to have things done and have nothing more than wood, fiberglass, bondo, wire, 12volts of DC power and some Bosch-type relays on hand.

Posted at 9:09PM on Jul 4th 2007 by Ron

11. A great how to and a really nice end product. IMO the craftsman's signature should be prominent not that bleep bleeping apple.

Posted at 9:36PM on Jul 4th 2007 by static

12. I've actually seen this one before, good to see it on HAD though.

@drcrash: would you be able to vaccuum form the cradle as well, in one solid piece?

Posted at 2:40PM on Jul 6th 2007 by srilyk

13. srylik,

Yes, I think you could vacuum form it. Judging from the picture, there's a tiny bit of draft (taper) there to make it demoldable. (Even if the walls are parallel, I think you could do it; you'd just have to be a little clever.)

You'd get some nasty thinning of the plastic toward the bottom of the wells, particularly where the side walls meet the floors of each depression. You could reinforce the vacuum formed plastic there, on the back side, with a little fiberglass. That's easy---just smear on some epoxy mixed with short glass fiber. One of the nice things about vacuum formed stuff is that if you're making a one-off, it's not a big deal to selectively reinforce it with fiberglass on the back side. You don't need a perfect mold like you do for a fiberglass part, and the fiberglassing is easy because it doesn't have to be pretty.

Posted at 7:50PM on Jul 6th 2007 by drcrash

14. I'll have to give this a try at some point so that I'll actually have a cupholder in my Crossfire

Posted at 5:15PM on Jul 9th 2007 by Shoaib