- It's part two of the Solid Gold Xbox Controller Odyssey.
And by the end of this video, we are planning to be done,
but we definitely have some problems to solve.
Not with this piece, mind you,
but with some of the other ones.
The shoulder buttons, for example,
used to have plastic linking them.
So now there's no give.
Are they going to press properly?
We don't think so.
So we need to figure that out.
The battery cover, well, it used to have plastic clips
that fit in a thing and now it doesn't go in either.
So we're gonna have to solve that problem too.
Furthermore, the entire fit and finish of this thing,
I mean, obviously we can't just screw it together
the way we used to.
How do we join it?
We're thinking laser welding,
but, I mean-- - Uh-oh.
- Is it gonna fit together okay?
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(bright upbeat music)
Whoa, we got a wardrobe change here.
Where did I get this cool Foil Controller shirt?
Obviously, lttstore.com.
The first processing step is using a tungsten carbide burr
to quickly turn the sprues into expensive glitter.
Well, very, very expensive glitter.
Now under normal circumstances,
expert castings wouldn't offer any kind of compensation
for this material being removed onto the floor.
Which made me very uncomfortable
about how much money I was gonna be losing
throughout the grinding and finishing work.
Thankfully, we worked out something
where we were gonna weigh the finished piece
and then go based on that for pricing.
Phew!
Before we can do any of that though,
we discovered some small holes in the gold controller
which need to be filled.
And honestly, I'm kind of glad they're there
because getting to see this process was super cool.
Freaking lasers, baby.
This is the Rofin Starweld DX.
And at first I assumed that it was just kind of a fancy way
to solder or something like that.
But no, this thing is capable of shooting up
to an eight kilowatt laser pulse
that will instantly melt the metal that it strikes.
So basically, you'll line up this filler wire
and your part with the crosshair in the microscope,
put the pedal to the metal.
And bam, you're welding.
Mechanically, it's quite similar to arc welding.
Even using an argon assist gas,
but instead of using electricity to melt the metal,
you're using coherent light.
With the holes filled,
it was time to decide on a texture for a finished surface.
Now, one of the best things
about the new generation Xbox controllers is just
how grippy they are.
And although the casting was able
to retain a shocking amount of that fine detail,
well, we've got a couple of problems.
First of all, the surface is going to have to end up smooth
wherever the sprues were attached.
And it's unlikely that our factory texture
would have survived the polishing that was required
to get a shiny finish anyway.
So we decided to go with a custom texture.
The goldsmith Hendry here showed us two tests textures
on the inside of the battery cover and let us pick.
Oe of them he described as snake lightening,
and the other is more like a hammered or golf ball finish.
Now, we assume that these were finishes
that he applies regularly,
but it turns out that this process is
actually more art than science.
Apparently, he just kind of looks at the surface
of whatever came out of the casting
and does what feels right.
Anyway, the snakes spoke to me.
So that's the texture that we're going to end up using.
For the entire piece to look cohesive though,
a little bit of planning is required.
In this case, laying out the rough lines
to follow using a sharpie.
And like, I know they do this every day
and I trust their workmanship,
but I still really struggled watching
the first few marker lines and bits of grinding
because to my untrained eye it kind of felt halfway
through a Bob Ross tutorial where the canvas still looks
like a blob of happy green and brown accidents.
Full credit though, once it's done, Woo-hoo!
It looks so good.
Oh my God, that looks so awesome.
Oh man, we had some concerns about the shoulder buttons
because we thought this piece in the middle
would have to flex because it normally
would be made of plastic,
but they actually work like, fine.
They're awesome.
- [Speaker 1] Nah, it'll be fine.
Don't you stress Alex,
- As cool as snake lightning looks though,
it's more of an accent finish
than what we want everywhere.
For the top, we want that
classic, smooth bling-tastic mirror finish.
And achieving this is no mean feat
given how many imperfections are left behind
by the casting process.
So in order to get there
we start with what's called a porosity hammer.
See that? It spins.
So what it's doing then is many times a second
it's hitting or hammering the higher parts of the material
and then spreading them into the lower parts,
creating an almost perfectly flat surface.
Now because our part was so big,
Hendry, actually, had to put aside some
of the porosity hammers that he's already created
for himself and make a custom one out of this screw.
He told us this wasn't cool.
And I was like, "You make your own rotary tools?
What do you mean that's not cool?"
Of course, that's not enough to get the mirror shine.
So we also need some love
from the polishing wheel brothers over here.
So it was porosity hammer, polishing wheels,
porosity hammer, polishing wheels.
Rinse and repeat for, oh, about a day and a half
due to the size of the part.
- One thing you might've picked up
on at this point is that, you know, the outside
of this X-Box controller and all of the parts are made
out of plastic, which is not electrically conductive.
Whereas, the gold one is pretty much
as electrically conductive as possible.
So I need to make sure
that we won't have any shorts or anything.
So I'm going to come in here
with the good old acrylic conformal coating
and just give her a blast.
Now we just do that like four or five more times.
Another problem that I noticed is
that the battery connectors come up like this.
And if it's touching the gold again
you're going to have short problems.
And I think even informal coding it won't do us enough.
Good. Now one big plus is
that I ordered a rechargeable battery and
that one you don't have to do this end
which is much harder to deal with.
We only need the two contact points.
So I think as long as we do the conformal coating
and then we just add in some electrical tape
on the side inside here, we should be fine.
- Final assembly time.
Now that I've got the trigger buttons
on the plan was actually just to test fit these pieces
and this one
but this piece is so finicky to get on and off that.
I'm sorry guys.
We're just, we're not going to see that process
on video because we don't want to do any more damage
to these little plastic nubbins here.
The thing is when you're putting plastic on plastic
there's a lot of give
you can kind of slide things over each other
and they don't destroy each other with metal.
There's no such give.
So there's a strong risk of just breaking things off.
So we're just gonna, we're going to leave it the way
that it is another concern that we had was fatigue, failure.
So gold is particularly prone to this.
You do the same thing with it over and over and over again.
And like these micro cracks form
until finally just it comes apart.
But looking at how little flex, honestly, Alex
I don't think it's going to be a problem.
I think that's fine.
And the buttons feel surprisingly good.
Like we had concerns
about these Springs being strong enough
cause it leaves so much more kind of like
on a gaming keyboard, right?
If you put a metal key
on top of a chariot, max, switch, it dramatically changes.
The actuation force here feels great.
The, of that clack though now comes the most fragile piece.
Basically. They told me, as soon as you touch this
it no longer has a perfect finished anymore.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
Don't pressure or anything.
Just put my gloves on.
Really? There's nothing that makes me feel more inadequate
than a one size fits all glove.
Oh, come on baby.
You can go on there.
Okay. All right.
All right all right all right all right all right all right
Let's get it.
Let's get it assembled.
Okay. Now these screws were originally meant to
go into plastic.
Last thing we want to do is like over torque.
It here, all buttons work on the
on the top of it and let's try the face.
Everything's good.
This is very promising.
Okay. This one is going to be tricky
because you got these little Tabin nubbin things here.
And again, remember plastic on plastic, flexible metal
on plastic, not flexible metal on metal, super not flexible.
Kind of need it to sneak
up these pieces that go in over here.
I've never given this much thought to it.
Wow. Does it get, it just went right on.
Were you expecting that?
- Oh,
oh okay
Last piece.
Bottom cover
this one's a little trickier.
'Cause remember this is the part that got a little
mangled when there wasn't enough gold in the mold um,
up
Tads.
Okay. Alex, do you have gloves?
Okay. Get, get some gloves.
It's
so heavy.
- I know. Right?
Even holding the individual pieces of it
is what kills things pretty heavy.
Her, her, her
- The clack.
- I know right.
As brutal and painful as this is guys
we're going to do the Glen montage now.
Okay. Before we mess it up.
But the actual experience of trying it
we're going to get everyone in the office to try it out.
We're going to make a video with everyone experiencing it.
That is going to be a part three video
because I just gotta be honest with you guys.
Like this was very expensive to make and I got to milk this
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If you guys enjoyed this video and you love crazy projects
you can go check out part one.
We're going to have that link down below
or you can check out our water-cooled PlayStation project
or I don't know the water cooled camera.
We've got lots of crazy projects.
We've done over the years this.
This might just take the gold medal though
ah yey,
got them.