Neosteel Hip Belt Clone

Hi everybody,
since late 2014 I'm the proud owner of a neosteel arch. I'm not so proud that (due to the fact that I didn't loose but gain weight after the measurement) I couldn't wear the belt at all. The hip band was much to tight and it didn't work in any way.

After getting in a relationship with my now fiancée and her being open for my interests, I decided to give it another go. Unfortunately a new hip belt was far more expensive than I was willing to pay (I thought a second belt after a purchase of more than 1000$ should be strongly discounted as a service). So time passed until I discovered that there's an online service for metal laser cutting. Everything else should be easy to make (well, it wasn't, but it worked).

So what is this post about?
I want to share my project with people who are good with their hands and have a similar problem. I paid for my individually designed hip belt, so I won't share detailed plans like the dxf-Files. I think it wouldn't be right to post informations how to build a neosteel from the scratch. Anyways, the crotch module is so sophisticated to build, that there's probably no way to recreate it at home. So if you hesitate to buy a neosteel full belt, please let me tell you, it's worth it's money. But if you have a neosteel belt, which is to tight or too loose, here you are:

I strapped some cardboard to the original belt with lots of cable binders. Then I drew the lining with a pen and removed the cardboard. I took a photo of it and re-measured it to have it in scale in my editing program.

Before I ordered the laser-cut part (which was around 50$), I made a 1-1 printout and glued it to cardboard again. I enforced the cardboard model with adhesive tape and tried it - which saved me from making a big mistake (it was exactly the same size as the original belt, but needed to be bigger). The original model helped me to verify the outlines of my concept. I also did some minor corrections where I had problems with the old belt.

After ordering the stainless steel part at www.cutworks.de it was almost christmas. And I was not allowed to open my present, which was a dremel tool.

It took until February until I finally had time to work on my project. I figured, that I'd replace the pins with rods with a thread inside and 2-mm-scews to keep them in place (and loctite). Next time I'd choose 3 mm screws, because the broken dies cost me almost as much as the laser cutting. To make the story a bit shorter: the rest was bending and milling (which works amazingly well with the dremel tool no. 9901).



I haven't made the final finish in the pictures to remove the scratches from the work. And even after that it's not that neat and elegant like my original belt, but it works! And now it's unfortunately on since last week with only short brakes of a couple of hours. Well unfortunately. Fortunately of course!

I hope I'll get over the last problems (sitting especially) to wear it permanent. Thanks for reading