How's WP-43S Project Going?

[brouhaha]

(12-31-2013 05:32 AM)Waon Shinyoe Wrote:  (Well the good news is that there is another person, who owns 3D printer, interested in keyboard making and seems quite rich agreed to pay at least part of the cost~)
(He rebuilt a TI-89 ti keyboard with the 3D printer but it's nearly unusable.)

I've used four different 3D printers to make case parts for various calculator prototypes. I got the best results with a Stratasys Dimension 768BST, which was a commercial printer that cost somewhere around USD $25,000. The worse problem was that Stratasys uses the same sort of supply lock-in as inkjet printers, with a chip in the cartridge to track how much material is believed to be in the cartridge. The printer also keeps a log of cartridge serial numbers and how much material it thinks should be in the cartridge. That gives them an effective monopoly on material for their printers, so they charge more than 10x the market value.

I purchased a MakerBot Cupcake, then a MakerBot Thing-o-Matic. Both had only a single extruder, so could not print with support material (breakaway or soluble). The Thing-o-Matic had somewhat better output quality than the Cupcake, but not anywhere near that of the Stratasys, and generally barely suitable for prototyping (in my opinion). Also neither had a large enough build volume. (Stratasys has since acquired MakerBot.)

The only complete calculator case I have made (top and bottom shells and keys) was for the DIY3, was printed on the Stratasys at a cost to me of about $120, and was adequate for a prototype but wouldn't be acceptable for a commercial product.

I've recently sold both MakerBots and bought a LulzBot TAZ 3. It also has only a single extruder, though there may be a dual extruder upgrade in the near future. The output quality is much better than the Thing-o-Matic, approaching that of the Stratasys. There is also now support in the slicing software for doing breakaway support using a single material, though it doesn't work nearly as well as using a second material (ABS/polystyrene copolymer as Stratasys used for breakaway, or HIPS as the RepRap folks uses for soluble).

I'm going to do prototyping with the TAZ 3, and maybe sending out some stuff to be done on a Stratasys, but the endgame is definitely injection molding. I may have a line on getting molds made for substantially less money than the RMB 300000 yuan you quote.