Fiberglass Palm Pilot Holder
 

I made a little palm pilot holder and I think it turned out pretty damn good for my first time molding fiberglass. Although, If I had taken more time with the fiberglass and sanding, it would have looked 10x better, but I didn't have the patience. The palm pilot is used for my RTEK Ecu.

1) Cover Palm Pilot in plastic bag(s) to be used as mold.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j..._123/palm1.jpg

2) Placed Palm on Paper plate and coated it with Pam and mixed up the epoxy.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j..._123/palm2.jpg

3) Laid a good amount of epoxy down then laid the fiberglass down and coated that with epoxy.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j..._123/palm3.jpg

4) Removed Palm Pilot (mold) from casting? unharmed.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j..._123/palm4.jpg

5) Cut off the excess fiberglass and cleaned it up a little. The plasic bags kinda screwed up the cast because of the wrinkles.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j..._123/palm5.jpg

6) Laid more fiberglass to to make it more sturdy.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j..._123/palm6.jpg

7) Once that dried I laid another coat of epoxy over the entire piece and cut to shape and sanded it a little. I was just going to cut a hole for the cord, but the damn thing comes straight out of the bottom of the palm so I had to cut the whole area out. I went back around the edges with epoxy to kind of 'seal' in the exposed fiberglass from cutting.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j..._123/palm7.jpg

8) I really had no Idea where or how I was going to mount it. I did find that I had some holes already in the dash on the passenger side, so I just figured I'd use those (not my first choice, but seemed to be best choice given the location I wanted the Palm). I made up a little bracket with some aluminum and some little pieces of metal I had laying around. I wanted to be able to angle the palm if I get any sort of glare so It's attached to the metal bracket with one nut/screw that allows it to pivot (future wing nut). It needed to be out of the way of the passenger, but not cover my gauges or EBC and the glove box still needed to open w/o interference.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j..._123/palm8.jpg

9) I can't believe how well the location turned out, It's Right where I wanted it. I know looks a little hack-ish in the pic, but I cleaned up some of the rough edges and painted it.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j..._123/palm9.jpg

10) Here it is unpainted, clear of glove box, clear of gauges, clear of passenger legs, clear of shifter throw. The Palm actually kind of 'snaps' into place and is pretty damn solid when it's in the holder.

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j...123/palm10.jpg

It was a pretty neat experiment, but overall I give myself a 7 out of 10. (-1 for holes in the dash, -1 for the poor casting(stupid plastic bags) and -1 for using a fiberglass boat repair kit from the autoparts store). I have since painted it black (should have gone with a flat black gloss brings out all the imperfections in the casting) and looks pretty nice, location is perfect, palm fits almost perfectly and actually snaps into place firmly. Overall the entire bracket/holder only weighs about 90 grams or 3.2 oz.

All and any Suggestions and Constructive Criticism appreciated.

A couple pics of it painted..

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j...123/palm11.jpg

http://i272.photobucket.com/albums/j...123/palm12.jpg

It might not be pretty, but is very functional and a good bit of fabrication.

hmm ... maybe I could do a holder for my LM1 using a technique like this .

I wonder if you could have used a poly condom (non latex) when molding?
I doubt the latex ones would hold to to the resin, but who knows.