The forum's been pretty quiet of late, so I thought I'd spice things up a bit by giving you all a look at how our final cases are coming along.
With our previous pre-production batch of cases (the 'unfinished' ones that had some tool marks, but were otherwise quite transparent) we got a lot of very strong feedback from people telling us that a more transparent finish looks "sick as hell". So for our final pre-production sample batch, we got a mix of bead blasted cases (the finish we originally planned on) and some sanded/polished cases.
I have received some images of the polished finish, and folks,,,
I'll get into it in the next update, ETA next week sometime. The short version is that these are some of the samples we've gotten from our production CNC manufacturer, which is different from our earlier prototype manufacturer. We hedged our bets a little with this order by getting a couple of different finishes (polished and bead blasted).
We're not super happy with the initial bead blast finish from this manufacturer, and we don't really have the time or budget to go back and forth iterating to get a better sense of the right grit+process to get exactly the right result. But we *are* very happy with this polished finish (it's a nicer final result than anything we thought we might have access to originally!) so we're strongly considering just committing to cases with this finish for our production batch.
So far the polished finish hasn't seemed super scratch-prone, but that's obviously our main worry compared to bead blasting.
Transparent also feels more flexible, in that it is easy to dye/paint it to be more opaque, but hard to go from opaque to transparent. The smooth finish feels much nicer in the hand too imo.
Ideally long term we'll be able to offer different options for the case finishes. I'd love to be able to do runs of different colours and designs of cases too. But for this first production run we'll be going with what we think will be the best fit overall.
(2024-07-12, 02:48 AM)jacqueline Wrote: I'll get into it in the next update, ETA next week sometime. The short version is that these are some of the samples we've gotten from our production CNC manufacturer, which is different from our earlier prototype manufacturer. We hedged our bets a little with this order by getting a couple of different finishes (polished and bead blasted).
We're not super happy with the initial bead blast finish from this manufacturer, and we don't really have the time or budget to go back and forth iterating to get a better sense of the right grit+process to get exactly the right result. But we *are* very happy with this polished finish (it's a nicer final result than anything we thought we might have access to originally!) so we're strongly considering just committing to cases with this finish for our production batch.
So far the polished finish hasn't seemed super scratch-prone, but that's obviously our main worry compared to bead blasting.
that makes sense! the polished finish does look quite nice.
and i guess since the case model is open a bead-blasted case could be offered in the future (by the team, or indeed anyone) for people who strongly prefer that option - i personally have no strong feelings one way or the other
Yeah, I'm also really looking forward to seeing how this finish wears. Time will tell, but I expect it'll be a nice effect.
We will also certainly look into selling alternate case finishes+materials later, although pricing those alternates is going to be a Fun challenge at our scale.
Latest crowdsupply update mentioned the polished finish won't be the final one and had a single photo of 3 different finish. Can we have close up of the new one?
Here's some closer shots using what I've got in reach:
Hope that's enough to give you a bit of a sense? I'll try to get some proper photos of the fully assembled new finish the next time I've got a device with that finish actually assembled and on hand. We're pretty limited in the number of samples we have rn!
The forum's been pretty quiet of late, so I thought I'd spice things up a bit by giving you all a look at how our final cases are coming along.
With our previous pre-production batch of cases (the 'unfinished' ones that had some tool marks, but were otherwise quite transparent) we got a lot of very strong feedback from people telling us that a more transparent finish looks "sick as hell". So for our final pre-production sample batch, we got a mix of bead blasted cases (the finish we originally planned on) and some sanded/polished cases.
I have received some images of the polished finish, and folks,,,
It's good that different transparent/translucent case options are being explored. There are some devices, such as the Shargeek 100 Power Bank 2, even though the transparent design is more for looks than for efficient electronics design; and also transparency is more than just a fad (like the Teardown skin series from dbrand).
i picked up a bottle of clear acrylic nail polish and coated my case. i brushed both the outside and inside. if anyone wants theirs to be more transparent, this is a pretty good option. mostly if you don't mind the possibility of it looking kinda handmade.
first pic shows the difference between stock and nail polished.
I also swapped the screws to metric hex from the torx.
Beautiful! You might also be able to get this effect from spraying with a gloss clearcoat. If you get something polyurethane based then it should stand up to wear reasonably well.
