A NEW LOOK FOR A 90S ICON

Wednesday 14th October 2020 When Craig McGarrell came to us with a CAD project he wanted to turn into a prototype show piece, it was an excellent opportunity to showcase the talents of our talented engineers. Craig had a passion for the Sega Mega Drive games console, the must have console of the 90s, and was keen to reimagine the original Mega Drive as a contemporary console using the design cues from the original. IF THE GAMING PLATFORM WAS IN PRODUCTION TODAY HOW WOULD IT LOOK? Craig’s contemporary vision of the Sega Mega Drive includes the console in two colour ways, a pair of controllers and a virtual reality headset, something that could only be dreamt of in the 90s! This project was not destined to just be a simple set of painted 3D prints. Many of the parts were vacuum cast, an unusual route for the manufacture of just two prototypes, but in this case it was the best option to create the tinted translucent cases with the depth of colour which was a key design feature. In our prototypes we cast polyurethane resin for the cases, which were designed to leave internal electronics subtly on view through the production plastics. We supplied sample swatches at various thicknesses to fine tune this tint effect, something our prototype engineers often do to achieve the best results for tints and colours. Dummy electronics and PCB boards were manufactured to build within each of these tinted case works, along with a CNC machined heatsink. This combination of mirror polish and satin texture finishes was a nod to the heritage of the original Sega Mega Drive styling. These finishes, as always were created on the master models pre-silicone tooling. The Complete Fabrication team wanted to achieve maximum realism, so moving buttons and joystick seemed necessary for the games console, and we knew that if there is a button on a prototype someone will push it. We tapped into our previous knowledge of prototyping within the games industry to create some additional CAD to incorporate tactile buttons and 360° rotation on the joystick.