**The OtterBox Symmetry Series Plus Case: A DIY Build Adventure**

As I sat at my workbench, surrounded by various tools and materials, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and anticipation. Today was going to be a day of building a custom case for my iPhone 14, using the OtterBox Symmetry series plus as the base model. I had chosen this project because it offered a unique combination of mechanical load distribution, water resistance, and sleek design that would perfectly complement my phone's features.

The first step in the build process was to prepare the case for assembly. As I carefully removed the existing parts, I noticed that one of them was already damaged, which led me to realize that washers were necessary to pass on some of the mechanical load, making the device more reliable. These washers would play a crucial role in the overall performance of the case, ensuring that it could withstand various stresses and strains.

Next, I turned my attention to the instacast, a specialized material used for creating custom parts. The instacast's unique properties allowed it to be molded into complex shapes and then filled with resin, which would provide mechanical strength and stability. As I worked with the instacast, I marveled at its versatility and ease of use, particularly when compared to traditional glues or adhesives.

With the instacast in place, I moved on to the reinforced nylon and ABS parts that would connect it to the rest of the case. These components were designed to provide additional support and protection for my phone, ensuring that it remained safe from damage even in the most extreme conditions. The lock lines, made from this same material, were particularly impressive, as they provided a secure means of connecting the various parts together.

As I continued with the build process, I encountered another challenge: strain relief. This was a crucial aspect to consider, as the case would need to accommodate the phone's internal components and ensure that they remained safely secured. By carefully tying knots in the excess material, I created a strain relief system that would provide additional peace of mind.

Finally, it was time to attach the camera rig to the case. This involved prying off another piece of material to make way for the attachment point, followed by the careful placement of the camera rig itself. The result was a seamless integration of this component into the overall design, creating a truly unique and functional assembly.

The finishing touches were the final step in completing the build. I took a moment to admire my handiwork, feeling a sense of pride and satisfaction with the results. But, as is often the case, there's always room for improvement – in this instance, it came in the form of fine-tuning the fit and feel of various components.

With the OtterBox Symmetry series plus case complete, I couldn't help but wonder how it would perform in real-world scenarios. Would it withstand the rigors of daily use? Could it keep up with my active lifestyle? These questions would have to wait until next time, as I embarked on a new adventure – using the completed case for a test drive.

The test was straightforward: simply plugging in the phone and watching as it powered up was enough to confirm that everything was working as intended. The battery life was impressive, with the phone seeming to charge effortlessly over several hours. It was clear that this custom case had been built with functionality in mind – and it showed.

As I took a closer look at the completed build, I couldn't help but feel a sense of admiration for the design process itself. From selecting the right materials to carefully crafting each component, every step had contributed to the final product. And now, as I gazed upon the finished case, I knew that it would be an invaluable companion on my adventures – a testament to the power of DIY ingenuity and creative problem-solving.

**The Result**

The completed OtterBox Symmetry series plus case was truly a thing of beauty, with its sleek design and rugged construction making it the perfect accessory for my iPhone 14. Whether I was commuting through busy streets or hiking through dense forests, this custom case would provide me with the peace of mind that came from knowing my phone was safe and secure.

And as I packed up my tools and headed home, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement for the next project – whatever it might be. With skills like these at my disposal, the possibilities seemed endless, and I knew that I would always be ready to take on whatever challenges came my way.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey everybody Adam Savage here in my cave uh and today we are going to make a new mount for my phone we're going to talk about my phone mount but how are we going to do that when the mount itself is what my phone is connected to uh well through a little bit of film trickery hi everybody Adam Savage in my cave uh and yeah this is the entirety of my tested camera rig there it is actually I don't even need that there she blows uh and this came about in early 2020 when the lockdown happened we all went remote here at tested and then we had a zoom meeting to figure out what we wanted to do and Norm Chan uh came in and set up a camera in the corner of my cave a a a a video camera that you know takes SD cards and he had a lavalier microphone that was attached to it and I was supposed to take that lob and put it on my belt and record myself and I looked at all that equipment and I was like there is no I just I can't and that was a very like early lockdown kind of move for everyone like I can't and I I looked at all that and I just didn't want to wrap my head around both building and telling stories and also operating this thing with all these parts I know like I seem handy at the same time I only have a certain amount of bandwidth and that camera was just not gonna work so I picked up my phone out of my pocket and I grabbed some lock line and with a quick clamp and a phone clamp for the phone uh I came up with this Mount and it has lasted low these last three years just beautifully um I've definitely dropped the phone a few times and you can see that my Mount here has cracked and I have fixed it with some small hose clamps it is long in the tooth and in desperate need of replacement and since Apple's just released a new phone and well actually sorry I do want to say this none of what I just described would be possible if the cameras that are in phones today weren't sufficient for the stories we want to tell and they totally are it's kind of mind-blowing uh it's actually completely mind-blowing how good those cameras are and so uh you know that's a value to us the iPhone 14 just came out we got a brand new one that's what's in here and I want to make a new stand for it and our friends at OtterBox have sent some products to utilize uh this is a magsafe Mount and this is a drop tested case that works with Apple's magsafe system so my goals here is to eliminate this clamp in favor of the magsafe system yeah and then I'm going to mount all that to some brand new three-quarter inch lock line that I have just received and hopefully will wrap this video on my new stand yeah very meta let's get started right the other advantage of using the magsafe system is I plan to make the cord actually travel inside the lock line so that uh it's self-charging that's the goal as it is I often have a cord attached to the phone and well there are a lot of takes of me tripping over that cord and dragging the phone so the phone is also in desperate need of some protection from me from me all right that is all of that stuff okay great okay uh case you know I still have to open cases like I'm 12. this is wonderful uh uh let's just goes in right let's just double check that this doesn't come apart in some way that I don't know but it's I think I think go yeah you might wonder why I'm going with such a bright color the fact is I actually lose the phone in the shop all the time should get me yeah there you are hi even connected to this stand I lose the phone all the time because I'll like I'll be holding it to film myself and then I'll put this down and frankly it can really disappear so I thought the lime green would be a nice workaround to make sure that I can see it this is great I was a little worried that it wouldn't hold it with enough um gription but that's just fantastic yeah that's yep this will go in here like that oh that's look at that that looks like we even know what we're doing here um oh I have a really good idea for that too and then the cord comes out of here and we'll come in there and come out the bottom okay oh right I also have a brand new feature for this which is this has been my clamp up till now and I I use this clip because it actually had the lock line attachment already to it because this was for some other kind of clamp which I can't remember right now but this is fine but I'll tell you the one thing this doesn't connect to is this workbench because it's like three and a half inches thick I clamp it in the Vise but then I don't have that Vice accessible so I am switching to our friend Erwin's clamp so that I can grab the table and not have anything in my way so in addition to attaching the lock line and solving that problem I'm also going to have this attaching here in some way that's nice and positive and then ah yeah the cord will come out of that with some strain relief that's the plan okay I guess it doesn't really matter if it comes out of there yeah yeah foreign this thing they've done a really nice I love these little vent clamps for your car uh it is not necessary for me for this build but all right so let's see if I can pull out one of these thing about lock line is hard to separate ah there we go Okay so right right right right right right right it is about where it starts so that would be the bottom and that would be the top so that ah I think what I want to do here is a really interesting one I think the best way to get a positive grab between this and the lock line oh Phillips screws um I think the best way to join uh this plastic part from the Auto Mount to my uh lock line is resin actually and I will show you what I'm thinking I'm putting the screws back in and this do I wanna hmm it's going to be the top it's got to come up all the way right okay so if that comes up to there ah okay so what I'm going to do is I'm going to have I'm going to get some quick set resin I think I've got some black awnings I'm going to tape this up and pour it into here to join these two parts to each other and then they will be one single part it's great okay now I want to foreign this Edge as stuff spills out that would be bad I've got some gel CA glue here gel CA glue is rocking my world lately giving me a lot of structure to play with it's great and this will keep any resin from leaking out this is old resin it's not going to be pretty but it doesn't matter what was old resin well old resin is usually it's old because it well how do I say this it's old because it's been around a while what happens when it's been around a while is that it absorbs a little water and when resin absorbs a little water it um it becomes foam it's actually I think how they make foam urethane resins is they add specifically precise amounts of water to it but it's Hydro hydroscopic it absorbs water so technically each time you use instacast resin you should be putting a little you I technically every time I use instacast resin I should be putting a little nitrogen in there before closing it up and I do not follow those best practices and then I end up with a gallon left of resin that's not amazing for casting but that's fine because it's great for this that I need and I'll actually bring a mold over in case I have some extra material and that'll allow me to use wet extra I don't you need and also see how quickly it's setting uh here we go yeah that sure why not yeah all right I'll tell you one thing you should never do with old resin is pour it all together to kick it don't do that it's bad mojo you can get a highly exothermic reaction from lots of resin being mixed together uh don't ask me how I know all right here we go uh I'll do I'll do six ounces total so we'll do two batches of three one two that's way more than we need but now again remember I've always said casting materials have a plus or minus of like ten percent and they'll still work just fine so you don't have to be slavishly perfect on your distribution but now I want this to hold on let's just make sure that yeah that looks good all around okay so now I want this to uh I know I poured these resins together but they're not going to do anything until I actually start to stir them so here we go I am going to stir them boy I mixed way too much I'm also kind of curious how how good this resin might actually be if it's good I may throw some castings in so uh your best practice for mixing resin like this is to count to Thirty one two 16 17 18 19 20. I usually do like 30 mixes making sure I'm scraping the sides and the bottom you don't want to end up with any unkicked parts and there can also be unkicked resin on your Popsicle stick or tongue depressor Okay so I can already feel like it's heating up so we're going to pour a little bit in here see if we get any leakage we don't and that should be all that I need for that to work please don't leak please don't leave okay we're gonna pour some here this is one of the uh little shoulder details from the alien spacesuit um yeah so you'll see this kick and it literally is like science fiction um and what's happening is the two parts when mixed together cause a temperature reaction an exothermic reaction that exodermic reaction creates it actually causes the chemistry to change the heat creates a chemical reaction inside that causes these polymer chains to lock to each other and I can visualize this I can see this it'll tell me but you can see how this is getting bubblier yeah so that's what's happening that's the heat building up and if you looked at this in a thermal camera right now I can tell you it's about yeah it's probably just about like a hundred 110 degrees Fahrenheit not that much but yeah when you mix a lot of it together it can get quite hot in fact when you want extra time because this stuff will kick inside of the next like few seconds when you want extra time I have in the past put instacast in the fridge so that it came out at a lower temperature yeah you can see it's now it's looking like beer boy if I had to make it look like beer and you see that foam that's that's the water content that's me not taking good care of my casting materials all right I'm just going to keep on keep on going here and you can see yeah um if it was fresh instacast you wouldn't see all that foaming it would just be clear and then all of a sudden it would start to go white and you'll see that happen here oh I can't stop messing with it because I'm impatient but I think I can pull these apart still not getting any leakage around that so I'm very pleased that should work beautifully oh there it goes so it just went from clear to not clear and the reason that looks different than that is because there's more of it here it's creating a higher temperature reaction that's going to be slower and that's going to be the slowest of all because it's the smallest amount again the amount of thermal uh the temperature change is dictated by the volume of the material so now you can see that this stuff is super thick it's like a like an oatmeal foam and then one second later oops yeah instacast is like science fiction that threading I am going to say that that is a right that's a three-quarter inch npt thread three-quarter yeah it's a three-quarter 16. is that right oh wait a minute no no I'm wrong it's not three-quarter yeah I think yeah that's it yeah this is it this is a three-quarter inch I'm right right three quarter inch 14 npt yes that's what it is I was right I just didn't trust myself a drill bit for that what is the tap drill for a three-quarter inch npt 14 thread for practical machinist.com simplifying a bit with an ordinary tap the tap drill is the minor diameter and the tap Cuts away everything between that and the major diameter of the thread I understand the philosophy I was looking for the actual number but sure okay based on what you've just said let's do this uh right so I'm measuring on the inside of the thread with the blades of my calipers and that is 0.9 six I would go to 0.95 let's see what I have here in that regard 0.9 5 3 1 61 64. yeah there we go that's what I'm looking for and now if I want to drill that and tap that to that I want to do this out of some Delrin this is all the off cuts of Delrin plastic yummy uh all right um that could do you know that's already got this hole in it which doesn't matter for this so what I can do here is I could have this go from there to there and then something like that right uh sort of a t-shape where I thread into the end and then I use bolts to hold that onto this guy it seems pretty straightforward I'd sand that a little bit flatter on the on the Disc Sander yeah I'm going to use that because it's a nice scrap sure foreign I'm going to find the center and half that great there's my Center give or take out foreign that's going to be about the center here's a fun game I know where Center is on this so I'm going to mess it up and I want to see how close I can get to Center by eye let's see here bring this right down oh that's a tough one ah all right I think I'm really close I'm gonna check my data now I'm 50 thou off that's 10 sheets of paper that's more than I wanted Titan yeah that guy's not gonna get interrupted so yeah there we go now without changing anything yes I'm going to take this bit out oh yeah I do have to still go now these Deming bits these big fat drill bits they can cause lots of chatter so I tend to run them slower doing this one at 1400 great you don't want it to get too hot so yeah that we'll I'll show you this uh what you what uh what you heard there that that was the hole that's going through this again mechanically it doesn't really matter and I like using scraps like this when I can oh seriously okay well then this is a bigger tap wrench than I have a tap wrench for it's a bigger tap than I have a tap wrench for so we're gonna go on this business to make this tap perfectly centered over that hole I'm going to use a easy little trick that's built into the tap the bottom of the tap has this conical hold drilled in it that is for receiving that and making sure that it's perfectly centered above the hole now I know that it is exactly where I want it to be and that means that the threads will be traveling perfectly vertically um I could uh actually because I want the pressure here ah I am doing that right yeah because I want the pressure here I'm slowly in bringing this down at the same time as I'm turning this if I didn't do it it would drop below it and I want that pressure because I want it to be cut and this keeps it centered and I'm just keeping a constant down pressure on this also works in your drill press if you have to as long as your vices you know clamped to the table oh just at the bottom I want to continue through the bottom just a little bit because these pipe threads are all tapered um they're not perfectly vertical they're tapered to elicit the best possible seal against leakage but I don't need that seal because again this is a mechanical not a Pressure connection just now should be able to yeah twist that out and before I move anything can't stress this enough don't move anything until you've double checked all your Persuasions so that means test fitting that I haven't somehow screwed up in a major and abiding way and that seems freaking fantastic uh it's getting a little tight there let's see here I think I want to go just a little bit deeper with pipe threads when you're doing this kind of mechanical thing it's always a little bit of a sort of creeping up on it kind of Moment by that I mean um you know I'm I I know that it thank you I know that uh mechanically I'd like it to go all the way to the bottom uh and so it's just about like you know running this a few times until and actually yeah yeah you're not going off axis that's great once you've really got like a bunch of threads already started you can eliminate that but for these big threads man it's really good just to make sure you'd be amazed at how far off access you can get with threads like this Beauty oh look at that oh I nailed it it's just slightly tight right there that's great okay so I want to go one more that's it just to there and we're gonna center finder goes there that goes there this comes yeah great oh yeah let's go up in speed foreign oh great excellent I love Machining Delrin so much foreign the king of materials Delrin is a brand name a chemical name is acetyl manna loves me some acetyl Okay so we have our piece there so the hold I was talking about there it is you can see it right there again that was through the piece of scrap I had and mechanically it doesn't really matter to this build so I'm really pleased with what I got there um I can soften some of those edges oh oh I hate nylon don't get me wrong I like nylon nylon all right I like nylon as a material I have no problems with nylon on a personal level I just find nylon tends to get a little too hot and sticky and melty so my solution is I'm going to go much slower and this is the way to deal with nylon is 500 RPM ah let's go with a thousand all right and this is how you get nylon to cooperate and go slowly yeah all right nylon you've been brought back oh very lovely yes yes so now I want yes I'm going to need a vice right behind you and then bam that Phillips 832s can I do that yes I can and I've got them in stainless and I like that so I'm going to use those oh I've actually even got some better ones that are I like the warmer look of stainless steel sometimes for builds oh and if you need four screws always pull out five again if this was for like an outside client I'd probably be doing these this whole pattern on the mill and drilling these on a drill press but again mechanically it's not that necessary my binding system here is a little Overkill so it'll be fine um what I am going to do though is I'm not going to start all four of these I'm going to start one and then I'm going to do the others that is an 832 tap we use oil even on plastic that is threaded and now I need the fruit a through hole for that which would be six yeah the one one seven there we go 11 64. let me go back to the tap drill let me deal the uh drill the other three holes and then I pull out that screw I drill the tap hole in each one sorry I thread each one foreign now that should all join together really nicely I start all four before I tighten down any yeah and I could use washers on these but again with four of these screws holding this in I don't really think it mechanically needs it uh it might actually you know what that will help washers are are good they simply pass on some of the uh yeah those are the washers pass on some of the mechanical load and that's a good thing oh I won't be able to get a second washer in there this is too tight but wait a second wait a second so I can slice them excellent that's it all right there we go yeah okay great yay that's the first part okay so now ah so this is another sign that your instacast has water in it is that after it kicks it rises um this stuff isn't fully boned yet because I got a nice smooth casting out of there what is this part this is actually the weird sink drain thing that sits on the shoulder bells of the cane alien space suit from Alien um yeah I've machined this many years ago uh but that also means that this part is mostly finished and it is nice and solid that is fantastic yeah that's great so now I have a way of mechanically attaching this is wonderful the lock line to that and now I need I need to be able to get the cable in there so let's pry off another piece I definitely feel like this is an optimal length and I'm going to go with it again oh it went a little short there we go so and that's the bottom and then this would be the top I just want to make sure that's still operates all right brilliant and it does and I can remove it it's all great the way I'm using the resin is not like a glue it is more like mechanically it fills both parts and grabs and I really think that should be a nice positive relationship um I guess if I really wanted to make perfectly doubly doubly sure I could drive an 832 screw right through there and I am going to go uh see the the drop in here is straight which means this could undo itself because there's no undercut so yeah I will just do this drilling towards your flesh always a good idea foreign feel it moving a little bit so this is this is definitely the right idea this just means in like six months when these two different disparate materials the instacast and whatever reinforced nylon or ABS the lock lines made from start working each other apart they won't be able to separate because they've got a mechanical daily Bob there okay foreign and that runs nicely through there oh right this is the one I'm using that is a lot yeah it's definitely easier to feed it in One Direction than the other the question is can I receive it over here and again Maybe come on right look at that okay so now that all moves just beautifully and then my right legs I am okay so then this ah yes yes yes okay so I really want to get rid of this thing and then oh right there's one other thing strain relief so if this lives here this connects to that and connects to that and connects to that that's about how much strain relief I need and I'm going to tie a knot here for that strain relief is great now I've got a little extra material in there I'm going to come out through yeah that and that and then that knot will sit against yeah there we go yep threads have started oh dude it's the camera rig of my dreams foreign out of there right I can even grab my whole Vice I just put that anywhere okay okay go yeah okay uh so uh let's see this will go to a charger over there okay Moment of Truth here we go uh and look at that it's charging yeah dude so let's uh get the camera up yeah there we go oh oh you want to slate between those here here you go that's it way better way better such an improvement and now I've got a backup this is uh let's run this through one more pace so for the most part I don't usually have it charging uh uh simply because I move around a lot and the battery life on these phones is insane so for the most part I charge at the end of the day but it's really nice to have the option because it comes up all the time so I'm going to unplug this and we're just going to pretend I'm moving over to the mill okay let's uh head over here and I'll grab here take a look and that's just that's a lot more positive than the other one yeah that's great I could even do a piece to camera where I come over here and pop it in and that is like in that's a move I haven't done before not a move not not a move in my repertoire so for those keeping track at home that is an iPhone 14 sitting in an OtterBox Symmetry series plus case on a wireless charging car mount uh thank you guys for joining me for the oh hey thank you guys for joining me for this one day build I'm Adam and I will see you next time foreignhey everybody Adam Savage here in my cave uh and today we are going to make a new mount for my phone we're going to talk about my phone mount but how are we going to do that when the mount itself is what my phone is connected to uh well through a little bit of film trickery hi everybody Adam Savage in my cave uh and yeah this is the entirety of my tested camera rig there it is actually I don't even need that there she blows uh and this came about in early 2020 when the lockdown happened we all went remote here at tested and then we had a zoom meeting to figure out what we wanted to do and Norm Chan uh came in and set up a camera in the corner of my cave a a a a video camera that you know takes SD cards and he had a lavalier microphone that was attached to it and I was supposed to take that lob and put it on my belt and record myself and I looked at all that equipment and I was like there is no I just I can't and that was a very like early lockdown kind of move for everyone like I can't and I I looked at all that and I just didn't want to wrap my head around both building and telling stories and also operating this thing with all these parts I know like I seem handy at the same time I only have a certain amount of bandwidth and that camera was just not gonna work so I picked up my phone out of my pocket and I grabbed some lock line and with a quick clamp and a phone clamp for the phone uh I came up with this Mount and it has lasted low these last three years just beautifully um I've definitely dropped the phone a few times and you can see that my Mount here has cracked and I have fixed it with some small hose clamps it is long in the tooth and in desperate need of replacement and since Apple's just released a new phone and well actually sorry I do want to say this none of what I just described would be possible if the cameras that are in phones today weren't sufficient for the stories we want to tell and they totally are it's kind of mind-blowing uh it's actually completely mind-blowing how good those cameras are and so uh you know that's a value to us the iPhone 14 just came out we got a brand new one that's what's in here and I want to make a new stand for it and our friends at OtterBox have sent some products to utilize uh this is a magsafe Mount and this is a drop tested case that works with Apple's magsafe system so my goals here is to eliminate this clamp in favor of the magsafe system yeah and then I'm going to mount all that to some brand new three-quarter inch lock line that I have just received and hopefully will wrap this video on my new stand yeah very meta let's get started right the other advantage of using the magsafe system is I plan to make the cord actually travel inside the lock line so that uh it's self-charging that's the goal as it is I often have a cord attached to the phone and well there are a lot of takes of me tripping over that cord and dragging the phone so the phone is also in desperate need of some protection from me from me all right that is all of that stuff okay great okay uh case you know I still have to open cases like I'm 12. this is wonderful uh uh let's just goes in right let's just double check that this doesn't come apart in some way that I don't know but it's I think I think go yeah you might wonder why I'm going with such a bright color the fact is I actually lose the phone in the shop all the time should get me yeah there you are hi even connected to this stand I lose the phone all the time because I'll like I'll be holding it to film myself and then I'll put this down and frankly it can really disappear so I thought the lime green would be a nice workaround to make sure that I can see it this is great I was a little worried that it wouldn't hold it with enough um gription but that's just fantastic yeah that's yep this will go in here like that oh that's look at that that looks like we even know what we're doing here um oh I have a really good idea for that too and then the cord comes out of here and we'll come in there and come out the bottom okay oh right I also have a brand new feature for this which is this has been my clamp up till now and I I use this clip because it actually had the lock line attachment already to it because this was for some other kind of clamp which I can't remember right now but this is fine but I'll tell you the one thing this doesn't connect to is this workbench because it's like three and a half inches thick I clamp it in the Vise but then I don't have that Vice accessible so I am switching to our friend Erwin's clamp so that I can grab the table and not have anything in my way so in addition to attaching the lock line and solving that problem I'm also going to have this attaching here in some way that's nice and positive and then ah yeah the cord will come out of that with some strain relief that's the plan okay I guess it doesn't really matter if it comes out of there yeah yeah foreign this thing they've done a really nice I love these little vent clamps for your car uh it is not necessary for me for this build but all right so let's see if I can pull out one of these thing about lock line is hard to separate ah there we go Okay so right right right right right right right it is about where it starts so that would be the bottom and that would be the top so that ah I think what I want to do here is a really interesting one I think the best way to get a positive grab between this and the lock line oh Phillips screws um I think the best way to join uh this plastic part from the Auto Mount to my uh lock line is resin actually and I will show you what I'm thinking I'm putting the screws back in and this do I wanna hmm it's going to be the top it's got to come up all the way right okay so if that comes up to there ah okay so what I'm going to do is I'm going to have I'm going to get some quick set resin I think I've got some black awnings I'm going to tape this up and pour it into here to join these two parts to each other and then they will be one single part it's great okay now I want to foreign this Edge as stuff spills out that would be bad I've got some gel CA glue here gel CA glue is rocking my world lately giving me a lot of structure to play with it's great and this will keep any resin from leaking out this is old resin it's not going to be pretty but it doesn't matter what was old resin well old resin is usually it's old because it well how do I say this it's old because it's been around a while what happens when it's been around a while is that it absorbs a little water and when resin absorbs a little water it um it becomes foam it's actually I think how they make foam urethane resins is they add specifically precise amounts of water to it but it's Hydro hydroscopic it absorbs water so technically each time you use instacast resin you should be putting a little you I technically every time I use instacast resin I should be putting a little nitrogen in there before closing it up and I do not follow those best practices and then I end up with a gallon left of resin that's not amazing for casting but that's fine because it's great for this that I need and I'll actually bring a mold over in case I have some extra material and that'll allow me to use wet extra I don't you need and also see how quickly it's setting uh here we go yeah that sure why not yeah all right I'll tell you one thing you should never do with old resin is pour it all together to kick it don't do that it's bad mojo you can get a highly exothermic reaction from lots of resin being mixed together uh don't ask me how I know all right here we go uh I'll do I'll do six ounces total so we'll do two batches of three one two that's way more than we need but now again remember I've always said casting materials have a plus or minus of like ten percent and they'll still work just fine so you don't have to be slavishly perfect on your distribution but now I want this to hold on let's just make sure that yeah that looks good all around okay so now I want this to uh I know I poured these resins together but they're not going to do anything until I actually start to stir them so here we go I am going to stir them boy I mixed way too much I'm also kind of curious how how good this resin might actually be if it's good I may throw some castings in so uh your best practice for mixing resin like this is to count to Thirty one two 16 17 18 19 20. I usually do like 30 mixes making sure I'm scraping the sides and the bottom you don't want to end up with any unkicked parts and there can also be unkicked resin on your Popsicle stick or tongue depressor Okay so I can already feel like it's heating up so we're going to pour a little bit in here see if we get any leakage we don't and that should be all that I need for that to work please don't leak please don't leave okay we're gonna pour some here this is one of the uh little shoulder details from the alien spacesuit um yeah so you'll see this kick and it literally is like science fiction um and what's happening is the two parts when mixed together cause a temperature reaction an exothermic reaction that exodermic reaction creates it actually causes the chemistry to change the heat creates a chemical reaction inside that causes these polymer chains to lock to each other and I can visualize this I can see this it'll tell me but you can see how this is getting bubblier yeah so that's what's happening that's the heat building up and if you looked at this in a thermal camera right now I can tell you it's about yeah it's probably just about like a hundred 110 degrees Fahrenheit not that much but yeah when you mix a lot of it together it can get quite hot in fact when you want extra time because this stuff will kick inside of the next like few seconds when you want extra time I have in the past put instacast in the fridge so that it came out at a lower temperature yeah you can see it's now it's looking like beer boy if I had to make it look like beer and you see that foam that's that's the water content that's me not taking good care of my casting materials all right I'm just going to keep on keep on going here and you can see yeah um if it was fresh instacast you wouldn't see all that foaming it would just be clear and then all of a sudden it would start to go white and you'll see that happen here oh I can't stop messing with it because I'm impatient but I think I can pull these apart still not getting any leakage around that so I'm very pleased that should work beautifully oh there it goes so it just went from clear to not clear and the reason that looks different than that is because there's more of it here it's creating a higher temperature reaction that's going to be slower and that's going to be the slowest of all because it's the smallest amount again the amount of thermal uh the temperature change is dictated by the volume of the material so now you can see that this stuff is super thick it's like a like an oatmeal foam and then one second later oops yeah instacast is like science fiction that threading I am going to say that that is a right that's a three-quarter inch npt thread three-quarter yeah it's a three-quarter 16. is that right oh wait a minute no no I'm wrong it's not three-quarter yeah I think yeah that's it yeah this is it this is a three-quarter inch I'm right right three quarter inch 14 npt yes that's what it is I was right I just didn't trust myself a drill bit for that what is the tap drill for a three-quarter inch npt 14 thread for practical machinist.com simplifying a bit with an ordinary tap the tap drill is the minor diameter and the tap Cuts away everything between that and the major diameter of the thread I understand the philosophy I was looking for the actual number but sure okay based on what you've just said let's do this uh right so I'm measuring on the inside of the thread with the blades of my calipers and that is 0.9 six I would go to 0.95 let's see what I have here in that regard 0.9 5 3 1 61 64. yeah there we go that's what I'm looking for and now if I want to drill that and tap that to that I want to do this out of some Delrin this is all the off cuts of Delrin plastic yummy uh all right um that could do you know that's already got this hole in it which doesn't matter for this so what I can do here is I could have this go from there to there and then something like that right uh sort of a t-shape where I thread into the end and then I use bolts to hold that onto this guy it seems pretty straightforward I'd sand that a little bit flatter on the on the Disc Sander yeah I'm going to use that because it's a nice scrap sure foreign I'm going to find the center and half that great there's my Center give or take out foreign that's going to be about the center here's a fun game I know where Center is on this so I'm going to mess it up and I want to see how close I can get to Center by eye let's see here bring this right down oh that's a tough one ah all right I think I'm really close I'm gonna check my data now I'm 50 thou off that's 10 sheets of paper that's more than I wanted Titan yeah that guy's not gonna get interrupted so yeah there we go now without changing anything yes I'm going to take this bit out oh yeah I do have to still go now these Deming bits these big fat drill bits they can cause lots of chatter so I tend to run them slower doing this one at 1400 great you don't want it to get too hot so yeah that we'll I'll show you this uh what you what uh what you heard there that that was the hole that's going through this again mechanically it doesn't really matter and I like using scraps like this when I can oh seriously okay well then this is a bigger tap wrench than I have a tap wrench for it's a bigger tap than I have a tap wrench for so we're gonna go on this business to make this tap perfectly centered over that hole I'm going to use a easy little trick that's built into the tap the bottom of the tap has this conical hold drilled in it that is for receiving that and making sure that it's perfectly centered above the hole now I know that it is exactly where I want it to be and that means that the threads will be traveling perfectly vertically um I could uh actually because I want the pressure here ah I am doing that right yeah because I want the pressure here I'm slowly in bringing this down at the same time as I'm turning this if I didn't do it it would drop below it and I want that pressure because I want it to be cut and this keeps it centered and I'm just keeping a constant down pressure on this also works in your drill press if you have to as long as your vices you know clamped to the table oh just at the bottom I want to continue through the bottom just a little bit because these pipe threads are all tapered um they're not perfectly vertical they're tapered to elicit the best possible seal against leakage but I don't need that seal because again this is a mechanical not a Pressure connection just now should be able to yeah twist that out and before I move anything can't stress this enough don't move anything until you've double checked all your Persuasions so that means test fitting that I haven't somehow screwed up in a major and abiding way and that seems freaking fantastic uh it's getting a little tight there let's see here I think I want to go just a little bit deeper with pipe threads when you're doing this kind of mechanical thing it's always a little bit of a sort of creeping up on it kind of Moment by that I mean um you know I'm I I know that it thank you I know that uh mechanically I'd like it to go all the way to the bottom uh and so it's just about like you know running this a few times until and actually yeah yeah you're not going off axis that's great once you've really got like a bunch of threads already started you can eliminate that but for these big threads man it's really good just to make sure you'd be amazed at how far off access you can get with threads like this Beauty oh look at that oh I nailed it it's just slightly tight right there that's great okay so I want to go one more that's it just to there and we're gonna center finder goes there that goes there this comes yeah great oh yeah let's go up in speed foreign oh great excellent I love Machining Delrin so much foreign the king of materials Delrin is a brand name a chemical name is acetyl manna loves me some acetyl Okay so we have our piece there so the hold I was talking about there it is you can see it right there again that was through the piece of scrap I had and mechanically it doesn't really matter to this build so I'm really pleased with what I got there um I can soften some of those edges oh oh I hate nylon don't get me wrong I like nylon nylon all right I like nylon as a material I have no problems with nylon on a personal level I just find nylon tends to get a little too hot and sticky and melty so my solution is I'm going to go much slower and this is the way to deal with nylon is 500 RPM ah let's go with a thousand all right and this is how you get nylon to cooperate and go slowly yeah all right nylon you've been brought back oh very lovely yes yes so now I want yes I'm going to need a vice right behind you and then bam that Phillips 832s can I do that yes I can and I've got them in stainless and I like that so I'm going to use those oh I've actually even got some better ones that are I like the warmer look of stainless steel sometimes for builds oh and if you need four screws always pull out five again if this was for like an outside client I'd probably be doing these this whole pattern on the mill and drilling these on a drill press but again mechanically it's not that necessary my binding system here is a little Overkill so it'll be fine um what I am going to do though is I'm not going to start all four of these I'm going to start one and then I'm going to do the others that is an 832 tap we use oil even on plastic that is threaded and now I need the fruit a through hole for that which would be six yeah the one one seven there we go 11 64. let me go back to the tap drill let me deal the uh drill the other three holes and then I pull out that screw I drill the tap hole in each one sorry I thread each one foreign now that should all join together really nicely I start all four before I tighten down any yeah and I could use washers on these but again with four of these screws holding this in I don't really think it mechanically needs it uh it might actually you know what that will help washers are are good they simply pass on some of the uh yeah those are the washers pass on some of the mechanical load and that's a good thing oh I won't be able to get a second washer in there this is too tight but wait a second wait a second so I can slice them excellent that's it all right there we go yeah okay great yay that's the first part okay so now ah so this is another sign that your instacast has water in it is that after it kicks it rises um this stuff isn't fully boned yet because I got a nice smooth casting out of there what is this part this is actually the weird sink drain thing that sits on the shoulder bells of the cane alien space suit from Alien um yeah I've machined this many years ago uh but that also means that this part is mostly finished and it is nice and solid that is fantastic yeah that's great so now I have a way of mechanically attaching this is wonderful the lock line to that and now I need I need to be able to get the cable in there so let's pry off another piece I definitely feel like this is an optimal length and I'm going to go with it again oh it went a little short there we go so and that's the bottom and then this would be the top I just want to make sure that's still operates all right brilliant and it does and I can remove it it's all great the way I'm using the resin is not like a glue it is more like mechanically it fills both parts and grabs and I really think that should be a nice positive relationship um I guess if I really wanted to make perfectly doubly doubly sure I could drive an 832 screw right through there and I am going to go uh see the the drop in here is straight which means this could undo itself because there's no undercut so yeah I will just do this drilling towards your flesh always a good idea foreign feel it moving a little bit so this is this is definitely the right idea this just means in like six months when these two different disparate materials the instacast and whatever reinforced nylon or ABS the lock lines made from start working each other apart they won't be able to separate because they've got a mechanical daily Bob there okay foreign and that runs nicely through there oh right this is the one I'm using that is a lot yeah it's definitely easier to feed it in One Direction than the other the question is can I receive it over here and again Maybe come on right look at that okay so now that all moves just beautifully and then my right legs I am okay so then this ah yes yes yes okay so I really want to get rid of this thing and then oh right there's one other thing strain relief so if this lives here this connects to that and connects to that and connects to that that's about how much strain relief I need and I'm going to tie a knot here for that strain relief is great now I've got a little extra material in there I'm going to come out through yeah that and that and then that knot will sit against yeah there we go yep threads have started oh dude it's the camera rig of my dreams foreign out of there right I can even grab my whole Vice I just put that anywhere okay okay go yeah okay uh so uh let's see this will go to a charger over there okay Moment of Truth here we go uh and look at that it's charging yeah dude so let's uh get the camera up yeah there we go oh oh you want to slate between those here here you go that's it way better way better such an improvement and now I've got a backup this is uh let's run this through one more pace so for the most part I don't usually have it charging uh uh simply because I move around a lot and the battery life on these phones is insane so for the most part I charge at the end of the day but it's really nice to have the option because it comes up all the time so I'm going to unplug this and we're just going to pretend I'm moving over to the mill okay let's uh head over here and I'll grab here take a look and that's just that's a lot more positive than the other one yeah that's great I could even do a piece to camera where I come over here and pop it in and that is like in that's a move I haven't done before not a move not not a move in my repertoire so for those keeping track at home that is an iPhone 14 sitting in an OtterBox Symmetry series plus case on a wireless charging car mount uh thank you guys for joining me for the oh hey thank you guys for joining me for this one day build I'm Adam and I will see you next time foreign\n"