[Coco] miniFLASH product

[John Musbach]

What about making orders through http://www.miteject.com/index.html ? They
advertise low cost small runs.


On Fri, Sep 13, 2013 at 9:34 PM, Kip Koon <computerdoc at sc.rr.com> wrote:

> Hi Ron!
> I have some small projects I'd like to try and I have only one long plastic
> coco cartridge case blank which is way too long for what I need.  What are
> the sizes of the case and mounting style / type for PCBs?  I'm learning PCB
> design using some really small project ideas I've come up with and would
> like to eventually  put cases on them both to plug into the Coco or MPI and
> single board computers I'm designing.  Since I'm using the free version of
> Cadsoft's Eagle program, I'm limited to about 4" x 4" PCBs though most of
> my
> projects thus far are incredibly smaller than that.
> What can you do with machining cases and what do you have on hand at the
> moment?  Thank you in advance and take care my friend.
> Kip
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com]
> On
> Behalf Of Ron Bihler
> Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2013 8:18 AM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [Coco] miniFLASH product
>
> On 9/10/2013 10:55 PM, Mark J. Blair wrote:
> > On Sep 10, 2013, at 14:12 , Al Hartman <alhartman6 at optonline.net> wrote:
> >> Nobody is going to make enough of them today to make the tooling costs
> worthwhile. I would use a vacuformed case if I had to today. 3D printed
> cases would be too expensive.
> > I've done a couple of injection molded designs at work, manufactured by a
> company called Proto-Mold. I would guesstimate that if I duplicated the
> original Program Pak enclosure, say, just the top and bottom without the
> sliding door and the undercuts/side actions that it requires, the tooling
> would probably cost about $7k-&10k. After that, boxes would cost around $5
> each in small quantity with a cheap resin like black ABS, plus $500 setup
> per run ($250 per mold, if I recall correctly). A longer enclosure would
> cost a bit more.
> >
> > Custom molded plastics for a CoCo project would only be doable if a rich
> person chose to dump money into the tooling with no hope for financial
> return. I might dump a hundred bucks into having a single case machined out
> of a couple blocks of plastic for a personal project, but I think it would
> be hard to find a hundred people willing to spend a hundred bucks each to
> have a small run of custom molded cases made. It's too bad, because making
> custom plastic is kinda fun.
> >
> > Incidentally, both of my work projects were custom enclosures for
> evaluation kits for my company's chips. One was a small two-piece box made
> from clear polycarbonate, and the other was a larger 4-piece box made of a
> white ABS resin called Lustran. Both had the company logo molded into the
> top, and both turned out great. I was pretty happy with the results,
> considering that I have no formal training in industrial design. I'm an
> electrical engineer by trade, but my hobbies and interests include
> machining
> and mechanical design, and Proto-Mold does a great job of giving their
> customers a crash course in molded plastic design. They also have great
> design rule checking of submitted designs.
> >
> I was machining Rogers cases for a few bucks each.  This works for small
> numbers, Injection molding is the best for larger qty's but the initial
> 7-10k is difficult to handle.
>
> If anyone needs a small project case for the Coco I still have a few of the
> cases around.
>
> Ron Bihler
>
>
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-- 
Best Regards,

John Musbach