This is early to ask this question, but what would be the high point for pricing on what the community would want to pay for a 60% resin 3D printed SLA case?
The reason I ask is that I have some designs that would only work with something like the Form 3L that was just announced, but the amount of resin it would take to print them may make them into $150+ cases.
I had a unique design I saved from two years ago that is too complex to print on a standard FDM printer (I made one amazing print out of dozens of printing attempts), but I’d love to try a group buy one day if enough people are interested in a clear resin SLA printed case that would push the limits of 3D printing.
I created a macro pad version of the design for the NovelPad and haven’t put it up for sale because it would need to cost about $75.
I’d probably start first with finalizing my design for the NovelPad and running a smaller group buy to see how it functions in daily use and perhaps not sell the NovelPad case at a profit.
SLA is expensive, but it doesn’t have the same design limitations of FDM printing, so I could create some really striking Laserwave and Cyberpunk designs with RGB in mind.
SLA is also different from traditional injection molded plastic and even CNC machining - so you could create objects that were either impossible, or extremely difficult to mold or machine.
If people feel that the prices are reasonably justified and they really like the design, you might have a market for it.
Main factors would be explaining why you need so much resin for the design. Why the design itself is complex for standard printers (and how that translates to extra costs).
Although arguably the most important feature is how awesome does this 60% case look, feel, and function?
Would these be printed in sections and assembled, or printed in one piece? I know SLA printers don’t generally have huge print volumes. I would certainly be interested in seeing what kind of designs you are talking about.
I guess you asked a question and we’re not answering. I would pay around $120 for a tray mount or $200 for a top mount case. That’s probably the highest I could see going for a 60%.
Any idea how this kind of case might sound?
I don’t know much about SLA printing but from what I’ve quickly seen, I feel like it can make for a beautiful, nicely hefty and noise dampening case.
I agree with @pixelpusher, if it’s fancy and functional, more than one will go crazy for it
I love the idea of artisan cases and am working on a project now, but I think the mechanics of how a resin print would function would be a bigger issue than whether or not people would pay for it. I think that you’d almost be better off casting parts of a case and then casting or thermochemically welding the individual cast parts together.
As a maker, I love FormLabs prints, the resolution is incredible, but resolution really hasn’t been the issue for anything but switch parts and keycap stems. I think the durability, GPa, density, etc.will be the issue. I don’t know what larger resins would be like, but I almost wonder if you’d be better casting the important features and thermochemically welding or resin-pour infilling the rest to save on material.
That’s what I’m thinking. I’ve done lasercut/CNC parts and cast/weld the little parts together to get away with things that I can’t do with pathing and tool clearance, I think printing key features and casting the rest would be the better bet than printing the whole thing. Casting is good at one thing: filling a void. Printing is best at one thing: defining faces. Combine the two.
I need to read up on the different resins Formlabs offers. It would be nice to find more functional uses of SLA prints, but the different properties may simply limit it to prototyping test objects for pre-production.
Getting some people to test/review would help I think, but assuming there are no major issues I could easily spending up to $200 on something unique- I think resin/plastic in a lot of cases sounds better and CNC really limits creative options.
