it's part two of the solid gold xbox controller odyssey and by the end of
this video we are planning to be done but we definitely have some problems to
solve not with this piece mind you but with some of the other ones the shoulder
buttons for example used to have plastic linking them so now there's no give are
they going to press properly we don't think so so we need to figure
that out the battery cover well
it used to have plastic clips that fit in a thing and
now it doesn't go in either so we're going to have to solve that problem too
furthermore the entire fit and finish of this thing i mean
obviously we can't just screw it together the way we used to
how do we join it we're thinking laser welding but
i mean is it going to fit together okay
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well we got a wardrobe change here where'd i get this cool foil controller
shirt obviously lttstore.com the first
processing step is using a tungsten carbide burr to quickly turn the sprues
into expensive glitter well
very very expensive glitter now under normal circumstances expert castings
wouldn't offer any kind of compensation for this material being removed onto the
floor which made me very uncomfortable about how
much money i was going to be losing throughout the grinding and finishing
work thankfully we worked out something where we were going to weigh the
finished piece and then go based on that for pricing
before we can do any of that though we discovered some
small holes in the gold controller which need to be filled and honestly i'm kind
of glad they're there because getting to see this process was super cool freaking
lasers baby this is the roofin star weld
dx and at first i assumed that it was just kind of like a fancy way to solder
or something like that but no this thing is capable of shooting up to an 8
kilowatt laser pulse that will instantly melt the metal that it strikes so
basically you'll line up this filler wire and your part with the cross hair
in the microscope put the pedal to the metal and bam you're welding
mechanically it's quite similar to arc welding even using an argon assist gas
but instead of using electricity to melt the metal
you're using coherent light with the holes filled it was time to
decide on a texture for our finished surface now one of the best things about
the new generation xbox controllers is just how grippy they are and although
the casting was able to retain a shocking amount of that fine detail
well we've got a couple of problems first of all the surface is going to
have to end up smooth wherever the sprues were attached and it's unlikely
that our factory texture would have survived the polishing that was required
to get a shiny finish anyway so we decided to go with a custom
texture the goldsmith hendry here showed us two test textures on the inside of
the battery cover and let us pick one of them he described as snake lightning and
the other is more like a hammered or golf ball finish
now we assumed that these were finishes that he like applies regularly but it turns
out that this process is actually more art than science apparently he just kind
of looks at the surface of whatever came out of the casting and does what feels
right anyway the snakes spoke to me so
that's the texture that we're going to end up using for the entire piece to
look cohesive though a little bit of planning is required in this case laying
out the rough lines to follow using a sharpie and like i know they do this
every day and i trust their workmanship but i still really struggled watching
the first few marker lines and bits of grinding because to my untrained eye it
kind of felt like halfway through a bob ross tutorial where the canvas still
looks like a blob of happy green and brown accidents
full credit though once it's done
it looks so good oh my god that looks
so awesome oh man we had some concerns
about the shoulder buttons because we thought this piece in the middle would
have to flex because it normally would be made of plastic but they actually
work like fine they're awesome nah it'll be fine
don't you stress alex as cool as snake lightning looks though it's more of an
accent finish than what we want everywhere for the top we want that
classic smooth blingtastic mirror finish and achieving this is no
mean feat given how many imperfections are left behind by the casting process
so in order to get there we start with what's called a porosity hammer see that
it spins so what it's doing then is many
times a second it's hitting or hammering the higher parts of the
material and then spreading them into the lower parts creating a an almost
perfectly flat surface now because our part was so big henry actually had to
put aside some of the porosity hammers that he's already created for himself
and make a custom one out of this screw he told us this wasn't cool and i was
like you make your own rotary tools what do you mean that's not cool
of course that's not enough to get the mirror shine so we also need some love
from the polishing wheel brothers over here
so it was porosity hammer polishing wheels porosity hammer polishing wheels
uh rinse and repeat for oh about a day and a half due to the size of the part
one thing you might have picked up on at this point is that you know
the outside of this xbox controller and all the parts are made out of plastic
which is not electrically conductive whereas the gold one
is pretty much as electrically conductive as possible so
i need to make sure that we won't have any shorts or anything so i'm going to
come in here with the good ol acrylic conformal coating and just
give her a blast
now we just do that like four or five more times another problem that i
noticed is that the battery connectors
come up like this and if it's touching the gold again you're going to have
short problems and i think even in formal coding it
won't do us enough good now one big plus
is that i ordered a rechargeable battery
and that one you don't have to do this end which is much harder to deal with we
only need the two contact points so i think
as long as we do the conformal coating and then we just add in some electrical
tape on the side inside here we should be fine final assembly time
now that i've got the trigger buttons on the plan was actually just to test fit
these pieces and this one but this piece
is so finicky to get on and off that i'm
sorry guys we're just we're not going to see that process on video because we
don't want to do any more damage to these little plastic nubbins here the
thing is when you're putting plastic on plastic there's a lot of give you can
kind of slide things over each other and they don't destroy each other with metal
there's no such give so there's a strong risk of just breaking things off
so we're just gonna we're gonna leave it the way that it is um another concern that we had was
fatigue failure so gold is particularly prone to this you do the same thing with
it over and over and over again and like these micro cracks form until finally
just it comes apart but looking at how little flex honestly
alex i don't think it's gonna be a problem yeah i think it's fine and the buttons
feel surprisingly good like we had concerns about these
springs being strong enough because it weighs so much more kind of like on a
gaming keyboard right if you put a metal key on top of a cherry mx switch it
dramatically changes the actuation force here
feels great listen to that clack though
now comes the most fragile piece basically they told me
as soon as you touch this it no longer has a perfect finish anymore i'm like oh
okay no pressure or anything just put my gloves on really there's nothing that
makes me feel more inadequate than a one-size-fits-all glove oh come on baby
you can go one there okay all right all right all right all right all right
let's get it let's get it assembled okay now these screws were originally meant
to go into plastic last thing we want to do is like over torque it here all
buttons work on the on the top of it now let's try the face
everything's good this is very promising
okay this one is going to be tricky because you got
these little tab and nubbin things here and again remember plastic on plastic
flexible metal on plastic not flexible metal on
metal super not flexible kind of need it to
oop so you got these pieces that go in over here never given this much thought
to it wow does it get it just went right on
were you expecting that
oh oh okay
last piece bottom cover
this one's a little trickier because remember this is the part that got a
little mangled when there wasn't enough gold in the
mold uh
that's it okay alex do you have gloves
okay get get some gloves it's
so heavy
oh wow
i knew it would be heavy but it's so heavy i know right
even holding the individual pieces of it is looking all this thing's pretty heavy
her and the clad the clack so good
i know right as brutal and painful as this is guys we're gonna do the glam
montage now okay before we mess it up but the actual
experience of trying it we're going to get everyone in the office to try it out
we're going to make a video with everyone experiencing it that is going
to be a part 3 video because i just got
to be honest with you guys like this was very expensive to make and i
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if you guys enjoyed this video and you love crazy projects you can go check out
part one we're gonna have that link down below or you can check out our water
cooled playstation project or i don't know water cooled camera we've got lots
of crazy projects we've done over the years this
this might just take the gold medal though
got him