Thinkpads Forum

I have an idea people:
Does anyone have a high quality 3D scanner?
We could use it to scan every plastic part of vintage thinkpads (or any thinkpads for that matter) such as: HDD Caddy covers, memory door covers, battery door covers, latches, bezels, buttons, switches, port covers and many, many other parts.
Let us make a repository of scanned 3D files, so anyone now or in future with 3D printer and right material can print them, because those parts will be gone and I do not think Lenovo or IBM will produce them any more.
I know today's plastics for 3D printers suck, but technology is improving, materials are getting better and it would be great to have such a virtual repository, while we can.
Please, let me know your thoughts and thanks everyone in advance!

A nice idea. It would be great to be able to remanufacture parts, and even entire IBM/Lenovo laptops in the future. You could also choose what material to use for the prints. Imagine a fully magnesium alloy 600x or T43.

I would absolutely love to be able to scan and repair some bezel pieces, the 701 parts crumble so easily. I had almost thought of trying to remake simple things like memory doors or a front bezel in Solidworks but have zero experience with such programs.

I have seen this free Autodesk smartphone app called 123D Catch, essentially you take many many pictures of an object from as many sides and angles as you can and it'll stitch it all together to create a 3d object, for the simpler parts it could be worth looking into.

And count me in for a 560Z HDD cover.

brchan wrote:Imagine a fully magnesium alloy 600x or T43.

I guess the concept of 3D printing does open up the possibility to (at least in theory) remanufacture entire laptop cases and possibly rearrange port openings to accommodate a different motherboard. Further, if someone makes an interface through which a generic modern tiny motherboard / embedded computer can operate with the native LCD, keyboard and maybe the CD-ROM, our i5/i7 equipped 600X is at least a theoretical possibility.

Unfortunately, the LCD and to some extent, the keyboard, won't be able to be reproduced, so one must keep some spares of those. Other than that, everything else seems possible.

With the current available supply of parts for the 600s on eBay, and knowing this will be a machine (probably) only desired by a handful of enthusiasts like you and me, I think there will be parts available for years to come.

I doubt this system would get any kind of blistering resources, as it would probably be ideal to make it a passively cooled system. It would save some work to don't have to worry about locating a fan in there. I haven't paid enough attention to the latest news to know exactly how far passively cooled systems have made it in terms of performance, but performance for everyday tasks and to stream a movie would be sufficient for me if I ever got a system like this.

I wonder who one could run an idea like this by..

Let me know when it becomes possible to shoehorn one of these into a laptop:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813157475

It doesn't have the kind of I/O ports that I need, but at least
things are headed in the right direction.

Can anyone reprogram the xbox Kinect camera? Also the yoga 15 has a very advanced 3d scan feature, better than Kinect apparently.

I'm a bit surprised we haven't seen a flood of plastic covers and doors from china. I would have thought the rear I/O door cover on the early ThinkPad's would be top seller.

fultontech wrote:I'm a bit surprised we haven't seen a flood of plastic covers and doors from china. I would have thought the rear I/O door cover on the early ThinkPad's would be top seller.

I think most people over time found the doors to be annoying to open and close again and again, and some even removed them. This is probably why there isn't really a demand or market for I/O doors. Now if they were water proof and had seals, then I could see this happening.

Norway Pad wrote:And count me in for a 560Z HDD cover.

Sorry but I've pushed this onto the back burner . I played around with the SketchUp program but I think I still need more practice before I can get something that's ready for printing.

No worries. Maybe we wait until there is a mainstream smartphone app or something available so that parts can be scanned in a simple way. I will keep the 560Z for years, so eventually it will have it's HDD cover.

Norway Pad wrote:No worries. Maybe we wait until there is a mainstream smartphone app or something available so that parts can be scanned in a simple way. I will keep the 560Z for years, so eventually it will have it's HDD cover.

Well I mentioned this earlier but didn't link it http://www.123dapp.com/catch

Personally, I'm considering gutting an old unit and dropping a maxed-out Lenovo Tiny in there. Lots of screen replacement kits and keyboard mod instructions out there.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Make-a- ... h-Arduino/

I'm looking at a career change and 3D printing fascinates me. I am hoping to buy or trade for a good scanner and printer in the future, just work has been too busy for me to change. I also own a bunch of thinkpads so one day I will scan the parts and maybe host them (I'm not sure about the legality of hosting those scans).

As far as scanning the parts and posting them; I think it would be like supplying a 3rd party case for a mobile phone. You can't claim it's OEM. You would have to specify that it's a scan part made from whatever, balsa wood.

In some places, people have started companies much like an Internet café, but with 3D scanners and printers. If I wanted to stand in line, I can go scan and print parts or just take the scans home to mod or whatever. That might be another option rather then shelling out the money for a hobbyist printer.

Sorry to revive an old thread.

X60's have a small plastic part that engages the micro switch that controls the wifi and bluetooth radios. It looks like this:

https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB13cvvMVXX ... S-X60T.jpg


It isn't securely fastened to the chassis and has a tendency to fall off when disassembling the laptop. It's also prone to damage, as the U-shaped arms on the left can break.

Does anyone have a 3D CAD model of this part that's suitable for 3D printing?

It would be so great to have a 3d printable thinkpad parts repository. I am in need for X41, X61T, T43 15" hdd doors and these small plastic parts nearly costs the half price of the whole laptops.

Droider wrote: ↑

Fri Jan 03, 2020 3:38 pm

It would be so great to have a 3d printable thinkpad parts repository. I am in need for X41, X61T, T43 15" hdd doors and these small plastic parts nearly costs the half price of the whole laptops.

Feasible.

The thing is, 3d scanning is not that easy. Scanning black parts produces lots of noise when getting the data back. At least with the laboratory scanners I have tried myself. Remodelling by hand is time consuming, but also possible.

Sounds like someone is going to have to sacrifice their ThinkPad and spray paint it white for the scanning.
However the process would not be complete until they place an Apple sticker on the lid for true heresy.

It's been a while since this topic had an update and quite a while since I last posted.
Can you believe I came across a transnote and a 240z within that space of time? And a 3d scanner...

I've got a pretty big collection of Thinkpads and other laptops that are missing various parts - my Thinkpad X20 has been missing a hard drive cover for several years, the other weekend it got a fresh one and I can print as many as I like:





The part IRL looks pretty good after sanding down the layer lines since the print goes from the big flat part at the base of the laptop. the limitations of FDM printing - I have another design that fits the contours of the original drive cover, but it doesn't print well. This was made in Fusion 360 from a 3d Scan of the void and some low-res reference images of the original cover, so it's more simple in some ways, more complex in others. It's not like this thing is injection moulded like the original part. I've gotta make one for my X32 next, the chinese HDD cover I got years back has a terrible 1mm inaccuracy, sticking out from the laptop's shell.


Man, the soft-touch coating stuff is really getting scratched up. Under flash thing whole thing looks pretty terrible. It looks nice in person though.


I'm wondering where to upload these to, is Thingiverse the best place? I've also got a Thinkpad 600 series HDD cover that I designed with nice accuracy, that one looks pretty great in place - I got 3x Thinkpad 600 series laptops last year and fixed them up by measuring the parts manually and designing up a replacement, using my current 600X's HDD cover as a reference.

3d scanning black parts is do-able, you just need to use dry shampoo spray, or tweak the camera settings.
(ps: mods, I'm not sure how to stick to the forum rules, these pictures won't compress further at 800x600 but if required I can change them)

Gallery here: https://imgur.com/a/qVUGOB7

Absolutely stunning! Bravo!

3D printing seems like the only option for these older laptops. I have some vintage 770 series units and I can't find an HDD caddy for anything. I'm thinking of buying a caliper and measuring the opening and then creating a model in SolidWorks. I don't have a printer so I will most likely look for a local fab shop that provides 3D printing services. But I still don't have the HDD cover which will be more difficult to replicate without an original to use as a reference.

And someone just made a HDD door for the Thinkpad 560Z: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5237746
It's a pretty novel design that integrates an SD to IDE adapter.

Hmm, gotta share some of the stuff I made.