Well, that's a matter of whether of not I want the wood to match the calc - if I do, that'll be hard, to get a sliver of maple! Balsa would work, though I'm imagining making a set of 5 for when one breaks. Bass I've not looked into, but I'm not sure if I can afford bass or balsa, as I have neither on hand.

Have you thought about using a planer to get the cover thin enough?

Certainly, yes, that is how I'd do it. It'd plane up a lot more wood then I'd use though; I mean it's inefficiency is what makes me want to not do it.

Hence why I think bass/balsa would be a good choice, since it's already so thin. Do they not sell regular lumber in very thin pieces?

Meh, honestly I have almost no money; that's the reason I won't buy precut wood. With money, all things are possible, but without, still quite a few things. Now I'm trying to make a cover out of a paint stick I found - it looks like a similar wood and is thin, so I'm cutting it into pieces and gluing them together to make it wider than a paint stick.

I'm sorry about being unable to take anyone else's advice. But at least, what I tried worked! Here is a picture of the completed door:


I cut the paint stick into pieces, glued them end-to-end, and sanded that. Here is a picture of it in "operation":

Sadly I couldn't find wood screws that small, so I used plastic screws, which don't work all that well and are too closely threaded.

Here is a closeup of the backup battery compartment. So that the screw holding the tab down didn't interfere with the battery cover, I succeeded in making a decent little cut (inside square cuts are hard):


I made this screen cover. Taking the screen cover from the host TI-82, I sanded the old paint job off, painted the white part on, and then painted the brown on. I am not satisfied at all with the controllability of this white paint pen (although I did need to write that backwards). And it is off center, being about 1/8 inch too low - but that is the fault of the case cutting job. Better luck next time, pretty much; there are many things I learned making this that'll enable me to make the next better.



Now... what do you people think of the sellability of it? I could use the money, and a friend of mine said "you could totally sell that". Is there any interest?

Work out the kinks and dimension errors (like the screen above), and I'd totally buy one.

IF I had any money, that would totally be something I would buy. Ill poke my teacher about it, though, she may be interested.

a note: the text for "skylites" and "ti-82" is a little messy. actually, it looks like the ink is running, which I'm sure is not whats really happening. have you any text stencils you could use?

Great job! How long did it take for you to construct this? It looks exactly like the original!

The cost of this would be about:
çost of calculator + cost of materials + $5*days building (time) + $30 (to cover tools) + shipping
This would vary of course, but I think the above formula would be a good pricing plan.

I would completely interested in buying this!

I would probably get one. Looks amazing!
It might be possible to get the keys laser engraved.

Thank you for the complements.

Luxen: Indeed, the ink runs. I was disappointed at the way the pen flowed (Sharpie oil-based), and it was pretty uncontrollable, especially when writing backwards. And sadly no, I don't have any tiny stencils, though that'd be great!

16aroth6: Yeah, if only I could get them lasered next time, I think that would work well.

willwac: Oh, let's plug in the algorithm!
cost of calculator ($8, a decent deal) + cost of materials(Largely gifts, honestly, maybe $8 ) + $5*days building time (Thats hard to calculate, see paper below. Round it to 32 hours, say I worked 4 8 hour days, which would be ludicrously hard , but $20) + $30 tools + shipping (likely about $8 ) = $74. o.O o.O

So, I kept a meticulous log of all the time I put into working on it. Here is a picture.

I started breaking down in my care towards the end, but I would say it is a minimum amount of work put in, at least. How many days from beginning to end? Well, probably about 8 months! As with many projects, there were many holes in my working on it; many long breaks. So from the day I started to the day I ended (that could be calculated fairly accurately from my Cemetech posts) doesn't really count, but I'm glad I kept a log.

I'll probably be auctioning it, if someone was actually willing to pay around $75 for it.

Or you could just sell it $13.37 plus $82 P&H.
And keep the P&H part in small print.

When I have done projects like this, I usually get packaging tape, cut out the pattern in the packaging tape, then tape to the object and paint over the tape. When the paint dries, pull off the tape.