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Honest Question - Retro Hadware 3D Printed Parts

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First post, by StriderTR

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I've been designing, modding, and printing quite a few things for some of my "retro" projects. These include items like IO shields, SD/CF-IDE and other bay adapters, bay covers (blank and customized), oversized case badges (DOS/Windows), and a few other things.

I was thinking of printing some of each and putting some of them out there for people to buy. I wont mention where on here. I'm looking at this as a spare-time hobby only, not as a way to make any real money, I have a full-time job for that. I just think these things are useful and cool for people like me, but not everyone has a 3D printer or knows how to design and/or modify the items they need or want. I really enjoy printing "retro" items and I figured, why not share it with others as inexpensively as I can.

So, I'm looking for your honest opinion. Do you trust 3D printed parts? What kind of things would you be interested in, what would you find useful or cool? I know what I like and use, but that's a sample size of one. Not enough to really gauge if it's worth doing. 😜

Thank you in advance!

EDIT: Typos everywhere. 😀

Last edited by StriderTR on 2024-06-24, 04:46. Edited 1 time in total.

Retro Blog: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/
Archive: https://archive.org/details/@theclassicgeek/
3D Things: https://www.thingiverse.com/classicgeek/collections

Reply 1 of 2, by akimmet

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I suppose you truly won't know unless you try.

One thing that turns a lot of people off of 3d printed parts is the appearance. If you have the capability to do resin prints, that would be a big advantage. Even though resin parts are probably weaker.

I could see a demand for IO shields to mount AT motherboards in older ATX cases. If you can get a good enough surface finish, various drive bay covers and adapters would be very useful.

Reply 2 of 2, by StriderTR

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akimmet wrote on 2024-06-22, 00:23:

I suppose you truly won't know unless you try.

One thing that turns a lot of people off of 3d printed parts is the appearance. If you have the capability to do resin prints, that would be a big advantage. Even though resin parts are probably weaker.

I could see a demand for IO shields to mount AT motherboards in older ATX cases. If you can get a good enough surface finish, various drive bay covers and adapters would be very useful.

Very true. 😀

No resin, not yet anyway.

The appearance can be "smoothed out" when sliced and your build plate will have a direct effect on front facing parts, like bay adapters/covers, so you can make them look really nice if you really want to. You can even do embedded and color layers for some pretty cool looking effects, like what you see below. I'm a huge fan of the Fallout franchise, so I've been making some stuff just for fun, teaching myself how to do those style of prints.

Retro Blog: https://theclassicgeek.blogspot.com/
Archive: https://archive.org/details/@theclassicgeek/
3D Things: https://www.thingiverse.com/classicgeek/collections

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