Saturday 6 June 2020

Injection Moulding Tooling Update

Just a quick post to give you all an update on the tooling for the MEGA65 case.  As most of you will probably already know, we are having real injection-moulded cases for the MEGA65, thanks to the generosity of the community who collectively donated the cost of producing the moulds -- a total of some 66,000€!

So, we are now at the point where they can do test-runs with the tools.  This will be done to produce a few pieces for fit-testing with the motherboard and keyboard. It will also be used to look for problems in the injection moulding process, e.g., if the plastic doesn't flow to every corner properly, or there are visible artefacts of the plastic flow slowing or doing other strange things. 

There will be more testing, and then finishing touches, like sand-blasting the texture into the mould cavities.  The coloured plastic for the production parts will also be used at the end. In the meantime it is easier for the factory to just use the naturally coloured plastic during testing, so that they don't have to store or throw away plastic they can't use for other things in the meantime.

Anyway, enough blabber from me -- enjoy the photos and short videos showing the tools in action!












10 comments:

  1. Wow.. you weren`t kidding.. they were short :) but great

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  2. That looks excellent!

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  3. a moment of beauty!
    CONGRATS to the mega65 team
    eagerly awaiting its release! :)

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  4. Hey Dudes, will there be multiple colors to choose from? Or will it be more like a unique brand color?

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    1. Hello,
      At this stage we just expect to produce them in a single colour "C65ish beigy grey" (I am sure that's a valid Pantone colour ;). The issue is that it costs several hundred euros each time you want to change the colour, as you have to empty and refill the hopper on the moulding machine, and then wait for the plastic already going through the machine to all work out. So while I won't rule out special coloured case runs in the future, for now, we are just planning on a single colour.

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  5. Absolutely understandable, it looks great anyway :)

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  6. This is really looking good!!!
    I follow this project a couple of years now….and i really want one.

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  7. What about to having it with devKit?

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