Real Wood iPod

An anonymous reader submits "People have tried modding their iPods using wood before, but it took the genius of ZapWizard to create the Real Wood iPod. Hand carved from a solid piece of African hardwood to a thickness of just 2mm, the end result has to be seen to be believed. Wood grain is the new Apple White!"

Comments

Real Voodoo Ipod?

[Ray Alloc]

African wood...

Improved Audio As Well

[nathanh]

More importantly, the wood enclosure adds a depth and warmth to the music that simply isn't possible with man-made plastics. The resonant frequency of hardwood reduces jitter in the decoding circuit so the result is a higher fidelity experience.

Re:Improved Audio As Well

[teknokracy]

Buy the $1200 Monster Cable with solid mahogany plated connectors and heavy guage bark wire shielding, and you've got yourself an incredible sounding device.

Floating iPod

[ppolitop]

Does it float? It would be very useful companion while swimming ;) the doc

Re:Floating iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

Bedimere: And what else floats in water?

King Arthur: an iPod!

Bedimere: Right! So, if she weighs the same as an iPod, she'd float in water, and she must be made of wood, so.

Villagers: A witch! Burn her!

Re:Floating iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of portable audio players?

Re:Floating iPod

[BlackMesaLabs]

If it floats... then its made of duck... or something.
Either way, it turns out that iPod is a witch. :)

Touch wheel

[derphilipp]

I wonder how the touchsensitive selection wheel does work... Yes i read the article... (perhaps i missed something?)

Re:Touch wheel

[myukew]

Yes, the touch-wheel still works. Touch-wheels are capacitance sensors, you can learn about them at www.qprox.com

Re:Touch wheel

[datafr0g]

Cheers for the site!

Here's the blurb for those too lazy to search the site :)

QWheel(TM) touch wheel technology can be thought of as a 'capacitive potentiometer', where the wiper is a finger. The electrode consists of a simple resistive ring element placed behind the plastic panel; three capacitive QT sensing channels are connected to this ring, and the signals processed to 7-bits of absolute position. The result is output on an SPI serial interface. The device can be set to sense through panels up to 3mm thick, and even through gloves.

The entire circuit with the electrode ring can be fabricated on a single-sided PCB for very low cost. In many cases the technology is less expensive than mechanical equivalents, and in all cases is more reliable.

Steve Jobs iPod Collection

[Anonymous Coward]

Steve Jobs has a 10 x 10 iPod wallhanging in the hall by his office, there are about 25 made with various woods. (Hi gloss maple looks ..killer.. with white buttons.) This one would seemingly fit in but looks to be executed to lower quality than those in the display.

My absolutely favorite were five iPods in a row done by Dale Chihuly in his Macchia glass patterns. Insane !! priceless is more like it.

Re:Wood Ipod (guilt)

[axonal]

Plastic isn't any better, its made using oil.

Lotsa Pictures

[nmb3000]

There's enough pictures on there that this could easily go down.

Here's a Coral Cache of it to help ease some of the disappearing server Slashdot magic.

Re:well..

[_Shorty-dammit]

You mean like this? Actually I think this may have been on slashdot, or perhaps it was hardocp, but I recall seeing it a while ago. http://www.zaverio.net/

Termites

[axonal]

Great, now I need a termite protection plan for my iPod.

"No War for Hardwood!"

[billstewart]

Actually, deforestation really is a serious problem, and decorative hardwoods are often from much more environmentally sensitive areas than pine and some of the other softwoods that grow efficiently in tree-farms. People who like fancy guitars and other musical instruments have to deal with this issue also.

Some softwood types are also sensitive - old-growth redwoods forests and high mountain areas. Forest Service roadbuilding typically costs about 10 times as much as the value of the wood that gets logged using those roads, so it's essentially subsidizing the destruction of old-growth forests; the Clinton administration belatedly got around to banning it in many areas, and the Bush Administration rapidly re-authorized it.

Re:Not sure about this.

[jawtheshark]

I'm sorry, but I find this lack of respect. I have some carpenters amongs my wifes family, and what they make is very much different than the IKEA stuff you can get. (Of course, it is way out of my monetary league). I think that they'd love this. I'll probably show them this next time I see them. One of them was even interested when I opened his computer and showed how easy it was to assemble. He immediately thought of a wooden custom made case... go figure, you have geeks in every segment ;-)

Carpenters can make magnificent things out of wood. Okay, wooden objects (like this) are for everyone, but some people want wooden inlays in their cars too. I think that would be comparable.

I think it's a great mod. Still, I wonder how the wheel works. (As others have already posted) I don't have an iPod myself (yeah, a Shuffle, but that doesn't count), so I don't really know how they work.

Re:Wood Ipod (guilt)

[onion2k]

Wood is a lot easy to sustain than plastic. You can plant new trees and harvest them in 20 - 100 years. What's more, chopping down trees and planting new ones is actually better for the environment than simply leaving the trees there. As a tree grows it generates more oxygen and takes up more CO2 than an old tree.

Plastic, which comes from oil, takes a bit longer. Recycled plastic is a possibility, but that doesn't generate new oxygen or decrease CO2 levels. It still takes energy to do the recycling process.

Apple wood

[sita]

I guess apple wood isn't hard enough, but it seems like a natural choice for this particular application.

Already exists !

[Arthur B.]

woody ipod is nothing new, I'm not impressed. But if the guy showed a sarge ipod...

Full SFF Case

[gometro33]

You can check out some of this other work here: ProjectRedwood 3.0. I've been following it for a while and he says he has to finish by August so expect big updates.

Exactly !

[deathcow]

You're not kidding. I am still working with my CNC machinist on a solid granite back for my limited series U2 iPod. The granite reduces the vibrations from the iPods on board digital clock and from any CMOS gate switching during operation. I've seen some online studies that the granite dampens the vibrations and makes the iPods last a LOT longer (besides the obvious quality difference at the ear..). Are you doing any iPod overclocking or extra cooling? Have you thought about replacing your wall receptacle outlets to feed your iPod the cleanest power?

regards
iJack Simpson
owner, Yahoo iPod Overclockers Forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/iPodOverclockers/

Re:Wood Ipod (guilt)

[deimtee]

Strangely enough, converting an entire tree into CO2 by either burning or decomposition will release exactly the net amount of CO2 that the tree absorbed over its life. Weird huh?

Re:Wood Ipod (guilt)

[Inda]

I used to use mahogany at work to make full size models of car parts. Lots and lots of mahogany. Lots and lot of waste (although a great deal of it found its way into my home).

People used to say similar things to you about harming the Brazilian rain forests but it's simply not true. The mahogany from the rainforests was never good enough for making models; it was only good enough for making crap furniture. Our wood came from plantations and this was 15 years ago.

I think its all been given a bad spin. Most of the time Pine is used and you can almost watch that grow. ...I also used plastic. Horrible nasty stuff full of carcinogens. Expanded polystyrene made flies go docile. Scarier than wood.

Would you do something like this?

[Reverant]

Because I know iWood!

Re:Wood Ipod (guilt)

[rah1420]

There's not a way to make plastics without oil, but there's a way to make oil out of organic wastes which can, of course, be used to make more plastics.

This was some pretty cool stuff.

Re:well..

[niittyniemi]

> How long until we can start getting, say... a mahongany powerbook?

You can't get your hands on real big-leaf mahogany nowadays as it's very rare and there has been talk of protecting it under CITES. Most reputable timber yards won't handle it.

The various replacements that are sold as "mahogany" are too soft and not dense enough.

> A pine iBook sounds appealing.

Again, too soft. What would be nice is one made out of African Blackwood. African blackwood is used for making woodwind instruments and is jet black and very hard wearing. Doesn't need any finish either and is fairly easy to shape with rasps etc.

Re:well..

[mrchaotica]

I'm pretty sure I can beat dents in a car body with a plain old pine 2x4 too...