[Coco] Sacrificial carts - opinions?

[Joel Ewy]

On 06/08/2014 01:00 PM, Tormod Volden wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 8, 2014 at 5:48 PM, Mark J. Blair wrote:
>> I strongly doubt that it would make economic sense to produce new injection-molded cartridge cases due to the tooling cost, but if I was stinkin' rich then I would do it just for fun. I've done plastic enclosure design at work and had them manufactured by ProtoMold. The tooling for a simple two-piece CoCo cartridge cases without the sliding cover would probably be around $10k. I don't think that the CoCo hobbyist market is large enough to absorb that cost. But it sure would be cool...
>>
> For injection molding there are the "real" molds in steel that can be
> used to mold millions of parts, but there are also lower quality molds
> with cheaper tooling cost for making smaller volumes. I think they are
> called low-volume injection molds or rapid injection molds. Might
> still be too costly though, and possibly what you were using already.
> If we had some design files we could get some quotes, not limited to
> injection molding. I think finding an existing case, combined with
> bulk "post-processing" could be a viable option.
>
> I know people get new cartridge cases made for Commodore 64. They have
> a larger community though... Are there other computers which have
> similar cartridges to the CoCo/Dragon? Can somebody design a iPhone
> case that also can serve as a cartridge case? :)
>
> Joel Ewy, are you around? Did your OpenSCAD design work out? Could you
> contribute some dxf files?
>
> Tormod
>
My Thing-O-Matic is a bit fiddly, and I've just upgraded the firmware 
and don't have it all dialed-in yet, but I hope to try another 
test-print soon.  After I get a successful build I can share the 
OpenSCAD file.

JCE