4 ms·

I wish they'd invest in proper injection molding tooling and get these made professionally. You can do that very cheaply in Malaysia and Taiwan, and of course C

I wish they'd invest in proper injection molding tooling and get these made professionally. You can do that very cheaply in Malaysia and Taiwan, and of course China. Total cost for tooling and integration/assembling jigs would be around $50-100k including engineering labor for mold design. It will take solid 2 years of work to get it absolutely perfect and to ramp up production. As much as these are philosophically cool, I am definitely not buying anything that's 3D printed. It's fine for tinkering, otherwise just garbage. Ya'll need a new name - ploopy is too close to poopy.

thrtythreeforty 5y ago
I think you and I have different definitions of "very cheaply." Small scale products like these are brutal on people who try to do small manufacturing runs (say, 1000) because that measly $50k becomes +$50 on each unit. Keyboardio liked to talk about this when they were building their first models.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  They should do fundraising. There is a critical energy needed to go over the hump - stay on the left side and forever keep making low volume goods. Get funds, seriously invest and it can become a solid competitor to high end mice from Logitech - difficult but worthy of pursuit. I've worked on both sides of the asymptote, not trivializing but products like this are in uncanny valley. Folks at WASD keyboards took 3 years to scale their Code-keyboards - it is hard to do but their keyboards are rock solid now.
- elcritch 5y ago
  To be fair, you could probably get a basic injection mold for these kind of parts for $3-$6k [1]. Likely you'd still have parts that'd be 3D printed. 1: https://icomold.com/much-injection-molding-cost/ https://icomold.com/much-injection-molding-cost/
  - Karliss 5y ago
    For very low runs maybe casting appropriate resin or polyurethane in a silicon mold might be suitable. That's doable in DIY setup with biggest investment being time and few hundred dollars worth material at most.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      I agree, polyurethane casting is the least you can do for a commercial product. It does take time but each mold is a 3D printer in its own right.
amatecha 5y ago
Hmm, luckily, one big upside of the "open hardware" aspect is, you could take these .stl files[0] and get them manufactured yourself (if you want a really nicely-produced piece). Yeah, it will cost a lot, but at least you have that option (especially going forward if Ploopy company stops selling the hardware). [0] https://github.com/ploopyco/classic-trackball/tree/master/hardware/Mechanicals/STLs https://github.com/ploopyco/classic-trackball/tree/master/ha...
sleepybrett 5y ago
Getting proper molds built is a very expensive up front investment when you don't know how big your addressable market is. It also impedes innovation in the early design (which these clearly are). I'm now curious if it makes sense to build replacement pcbs for off the shelf models. I certainly have a very old trackball that I used during the mac quadra era that is fucking fantastic except for the fact that it's ADB. If I could swap out the pcb and make it compatible with qmk and usb that would be fantastic. I do know that there is a small ADB to USB converter out there for keyboards that even let you do keystroke remapping, however I'm unsure of how it deals with mouse-things. But back to your main point. I think 3d printing makes sense in this space at least for the forseeable future. In the event that they make a 'hit' input device, once the design is refined a modest injection molded run of the case seems like a grand idea.
yellowapple 5y ago
Alternatively, a resin printer would get them most of the way there without anywhere close to that upfront cost.
john_yaya 5y ago
Probably not helpful here, but: if you want something 3D printed that doesn’t feel or look like it, you can print it at very high resolution in ABS, then expose it to acetone vapor for about 30 minutes. The item will smooth out and the later lines disappear. For other plastics, you can give them a coat of epoxy.

thrtythreeforty 5y ago

I think you and I have different definitions of "very cheaply." Small scale products like these are brutal on people who try to do small manufacturing runs (say, 1000) because that measly $50k becomes +$50 on each unit. Keyboardio liked to talk about this when they were building their first models.

systemvoltage 5y ago
They should do fundraising. There is a critical energy needed to go over the hump - stay on the left side and forever keep making low volume goods. Get funds, seriously invest and it can become a solid competitor to high end mice from Logitech - difficult but worthy of pursuit. I've worked on both sides of the asymptote, not trivializing but products like this are in uncanny valley. Folks at WASD keyboards took 3 years to scale their Code-keyboards - it is hard to do but their keyboards are rock solid now.
elcritch 5y ago
To be fair, you could probably get a basic injection mold for these kind of parts for $3-$6k [1]. Likely you'd still have parts that'd be 3D printed. 1: https://icomold.com/much-injection-molding-cost/ https://icomold.com/much-injection-molding-cost/
- Karliss 5y ago
  For very low runs maybe casting appropriate resin or polyurethane in a silicon mold might be suitable. That's doable in DIY setup with biggest investment being time and few hundred dollars worth material at most.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    I agree, polyurethane casting is the least you can do for a commercial product. It does take time but each mold is a 3D printer in its own right.

amatecha 5y ago

Hmm, luckily, one big upside of the "open hardware" aspect is, you could take these .stl files[0] and get them manufactured yourself (if you want a really nicely-produced piece). Yeah, it will cost a lot, but at least you have that option (especially going forward if Ploopy company stops selling the hardware). [0] https://github.com/ploopyco/classic-trackball/tree/master/hardware/Mechanicals/STLs https://github.com/ploopyco/classic-trackball/tree/master/ha...

sleepybrett 5y ago

Getting proper molds built is a very expensive up front investment when you don't know how big your addressable market is. It also impedes innovation in the early design (which these clearly are). I'm now curious if it makes sense to build replacement pcbs for off the shelf models. I certainly have a very old trackball that I used during the mac quadra era that is fucking fantastic except for the fact that it's ADB. If I could swap out the pcb and make it compatible with qmk and usb that would be fantastic. I do know that there is a small ADB to USB converter out there for keyboards that even let you do keystroke remapping, however I'm unsure of how it deals with mouse-things. But back to your main point. I think 3d printing makes sense in this space at least for the forseeable future. In the event that they make a 'hit' input device, once the design is refined a modest injection molded run of the case seems like a grand idea.

yellowapple 5y ago

Alternatively, a resin printer would get them most of the way there without anywhere close to that upfront cost.

john_yaya 5y ago

Probably not helpful here, but: if you want something 3D printed that doesn’t feel or look like it, you can print it at very high resolution in ABS, then expose it to acetone vapor for about 30 minutes. The item will smooth out and the later lines disappear. For other plastics, you can give them a coat of epoxy.