The next few days were LONG ones!

I tried to get pictures as our LG job progressed, but with 14 hours on Tuesday, then starting at 9am on Wednesday and not finishing until Thursday at 7 pm when we finished the install, I kinda forgot to document everything.
I got the print files done Monday evening for delivery to Autotrim in Lindsay first thing Tuesday. With the exception of the large invoices, I quite like visiting those guys!

The molding for the return of the small phone came out really good, right off the Techno, but it still needed a bit of sanding and sealing due to the porosity of the pvc. I did leave each section longer by 1/2" to allow for any sizing issues, but didn't really need it in the end.

 The back side of the molding got a 2" piece of 1/2" black pvc to give me the final thickness of the back of the phone. I could have heat bent the pvc easy enough, but decided just to kerf the material instead. It allowed for a little more control when mating and gluing it to the molding.

 With the molding all assembled and cleaned up, I used a hole saw to punch the 2" headphone jack through it. This was finished on the inside with a half section of abs pipe.

 The other end of the frame received the usb port and the pockets for the screw heads, as well as the very small, mysterious hole.

I machined the Torx screw heads from 1/4" styrene. I'll glue these in after we paint them the silver color that they get.

The lighting truss from Palmer Audio arrived Wednesday morning, and we took a few minutes to figure out how the small phone was going to mount to it. Thank goodness for creative clamping options, cause I'm pretty sure this isn't an intended mounting configuration!

Due to the heavy time constraints, we decided to go with a nickel finish on the metal bezel that ends up framing in the screen of the phone. There is so little of it showing on the real phone, that it was hard to tell if it was chrome or smoked chrome, so the darker nickel color worked like a charm. it almost becomes a non-factor, even at these scales.

The medium sized phone is a simpler version of the phone. It's bigger at 48"X82". As this phone will get black out cloth all the way around to hide the rear interactive projector, we didn't need the rounded molding or screws and usb port. We used 1/2" black pvc, edge glued to the face to create the thickness needed. The chrome bezel frame was done a little differently on this one. We cut the trim piece from 1/4" styrene, glued it directly to the face frame, then glued up 1.25" X 1/16" strips along the outside to create the illusion of thickness. As this phone also gets a full 1/4" acrylic screen added to it, the screen and the bezel frame become flush at the surface.

We arrived at the venue where the LG launch party was being held and started installing right away.

The first install was the small phone. With the backlit keys and the recessed screen that houses the tethered real phones, it looked stellar. They blasted so much light on it, the screen looked like it was backlit, even though it wasn't!

The added detail of the screws looked awesome. Even though no-one will even notice, I was glad I added them in.

the medium sized phone was installed next, Once the projector finally got synced up, it to was pretty awesome in real life. It's size alone was something to behold! We had to make the screen a little wider than real life dimensions due to the aspect ratio of the projector, but honestly, no-one would ever realize it. The buttons on this phone didn't need to light up, so we used reverse-vinyl cutouts on the backside, then back sprayed it with black.

The final and largest phone was the "Media wall" phone. this bad boy was 90" tall and over 14' long. This was all flats, except for the pocketed out grill for the speaker. This is where people will get photographed in front of it, on the red carpet.
Even tough the time was short, and the days became one looooooooong one, both we, and the clent were very happy with the finished product.
I think I want to build more large phones, it was exhausting but awesome. And when I finally wake up, I'll remember all the good parts fondly!
8)
JO

The new smart phones are HUGE!

Our current job didn't get finalized and ready to start until Friday. This meant hitting the shop fairly hard all weekend! We've been contracted to fabricate 3 new LG smartphones. Normally no big deal, except the phones are huge! The small phone is 31" wide, the medium phone is 48" wide, and the large phone is 90" wide. Each one has a different purpose, and will have different levels of detail.
Oh did I mention they're due Wednesday!?!
I was able to secure the 3d digital model that will be used in the various ad campaigns. However, as detailed as the model is, it isn't without flaws. Namely the corner radius's aren't quite the same. Although very tiny the flaws might be, when scaling and using different forms of fabrication, these problems are a giant concern, and compound dramatically. I will be pulling most of the geometry from the 3d model, but I'll be re-drawing it to better suit the build.
Friday was spent figuring out how it was all going to assemble, incorporating the different functions they each need to provide.
They did send me an actual phone, but sadly there was no SIM card in it.:(

The small phone is going to to house 3 or 4 real phones on tethers, and needs to be the most detailed.
The medium phone will house an electronic projector that will let people use electronic spray paint to draw on the "screen". This one has moderate detail.
The large phone is actually going to be a paneled 'media wall'. This is the graphic wall that has all the sponsors written on it that celebrities are usually photographed in front of. This one has the least amount of detail.

I started the day on Saturday by getting the pieces for the small frame cnc'd. I'm actually building the frame from 1/4" styrene, so I won't have to deal with any porous edges that would happen with pvc. Plus it glues REALLY well. I could have cut the whole frame from 1 piece, but the material yield would be so low. So I cut the end pieces that would establish the correct width, and corner rads. The side strips I just ripped down on the table saw.

I spent the next little while assembling all the parts that will become the finished frame. This is the section on the phone that will eventually be chrome, (or a reasonable facsimile)!
I skinned the outside of the frames in 1/8" styrene, which glued up almost seamlessly.

By the end of the day, the frame was all assembled and glued up. I really wanted to keep going with it, but when you chem-weld styrene, it can stay soft for a while, so I will router the rads on it on Sunday.

I was able to extract all the profile geometry from the 3d model in Hexagon. All of this info was imported into Corel to tweak. This will insure all the various bits and pieces will all work correctly together.

From the profile data, I was able to create the back profile on the phone in Aspire using some of the new version features :)
I placed the profiles back to back, leaving a space between them for holding the material down with some screws.

The corners I did seperately, and placed them in a circle to conserve material space.
All of these moldings are being machined from 2 layers of 3/4" pvc. I didn't want to use HDU, and I've got alot of PVC in the the shop. It'll be a little bit of work to cleanup, but it will work!

The black backer that will go behind the acrylic screen was cut from 1/4" black pvc. I also cut out the holes for the 3 light boxes that will light up the 3 touch keys at the bottom of the phone. When I placed it in the frame, it was like a well fitting glove. PHEW! There's always a part of me that wonders if I picked all the right vectors when I hit the Techno-cnc start button!
 We headed out early today (Monday) to get the rest of the material. The plastics supplier delivery to our area falls on Tuesday and Thursday, and I needed to get started on the rest of the stuff ASAP. So this meant a trip out there. Not bad, at least traffic was light for some reason.

 I also got the 4 flat panels for the media wall cut as well today. The above pic is the pocket for the speaker grill at the top of the phone, with the actual phone next to it. In fact, you can barely even see the speaker grill on the real phone, that's how large the media wall is!
Looks like the next few days are going to be LONG ones!
8)
JO