Tuesday, the classic computers collector Joe Strosnider announced the availability of a new 3D printing filament which reproduces the emblematic color play “Platinum” used in classic computers of Macintosh from the late 1980s to the 1990s. The PLA filament (PLA is abbreviated for polylactic acid) allows nostalgic 3D -printed parts Replacement and accessories that correspond to the original color of Vintage Apple Apple.
Amateurs generally feed this type of filament in commercial office printers, which heat plastic and extrude it in a computer controlled manner to make new plastic parts.
The platinum color, which Apple used in its desktop and laptop lines starting with Apple Iigs in 1986, became synonymous with a distinctive era of the classic aesthetics of Macintosh. Over time, original Macintosh plastics have become brittle and discolored with age, so match the “original” color can be a somewhat difficult and subjective experience.
A close -up of the “retro platinum” filament by polar filament.
Credit: Polar filament
Strosnider, which manages a website on its vast collection of vintage computers in Ohio, has worked for years to fulfill the distinctive beige-gray shade of the Macintosh Platinum diagram, which causes a plastic coil ready for hobby per polar filament and at the price of $ 21.99 per kilogram.
According to a forum post, Strosnider paid around $ 900 to develop color and buy an initial offer of 25 kilograms of the filament. Rather than keeping the proprietary formulation, he organized a polar filament to make color publicly available.
“I paid them costs to match the speaker box from the inside of my Mac Color Classic,” Strosnider on Tuesday wrote in a post tinkerdifferent forum. “In exchange, I asked them to release the color to the public so that everyone can use it.”
