Another little proposal: Backside logo

[TrashyMG]

for the back logo, I may do design with Ponoko.com. They offer laser cut Stainless Steel in thicknesses of 0.4mm and 0.8mm, Brass and Copper at 0.8mm also various colors and opacities of acrylic plastics at various thicknesses.

I've dealt with them before and it was pretty painless process, just gave a design in SVG format and it just worked. I haven't dealt with etching, just cutting, but it seems fairly straight forward. Pricing was fairly reasonable for being such a custom thing. I would most likely do a bunch if others may be interested in it and sell it for cost + shipping.

 

[rygD]

for the back logo, I may do design with Ponoko.com.
[snippity]
I would most likely do a bunch if others may be interested in it and sell it for cost + shipping.

Thanks for sharing that info. I will check their stuff out. The copper sounds particularly interesting.

If you were to do a bunch would they need to be identical, or could your order include different designs and materials?

Does anyone know/remember how thick the standard logo plate is supposed to be?

 

[TrashyMG]

If you were to do a bunch would they need to be identical, or could your order include different designs and materials?

It shouldn't be hard to throw a couple different designs on a single sheet of metal... I did that last time, I had two different designs I threw on a single sheet of acrylic plastic.

 

[rygD]

@TrashyMG I want to thank you again for mentioning ponoko.com. While browsing through their other materials I see some that would work for my other projects and ideas. One that caught me off guard were all the colors of felt...I never thought of going to a company like this for precut felt.

 

[Bernd]

Your own link suggest you can laser cut alumuinium, but you need a very high power laser though, as aluminium is so conductive to heat, the tendency otherwise it just to conduct heat away and melt the entire thing. I assume laser cutting copper has similar challenges.

There mayor problem with copper is that it reflects the laser light and there is a high chance to destroy the optics.
Copper-vapour isn't that healty too.

Water-jet cutting, milling or etching are good ways to produce copper plates.

Aluminium on the other hand could be laser cut.
You need ca. two times the power of s steel-cut.

 

[Christoph.Krn]

@EvilDragon You could also use a flat plate of translucent (white-ish?) material in the square-shaped outer receptacle, and glue a Pyra logo made of opaque material (aluminium?) onto its inside. This way there would be just the flat, flush plate in the middle of the lid as long as the lights are off, and when the lights go on there is a dark logo within. This should work well for a wider variety of case colors. When the lights are on, it would work particularly well if the default color of the lighting was adjusted to the case color. You might not have as much of a problem with uneven lighting anymore either, because the effect may not be so out of place in this scenario, unlike when just a finicky logo is being illuminated.

Would this be better or worse production-wise? Could you perhaps omit the metal part entirely with this method by using different thicknesses for logo/no-logo areas, and then screw the plastic parts together from the inside like @mclien has indicated? I know too little about the materials and about lighting, so I have no clue...

@Bernd By the way, "Form follows function" was not originally intended to mean "Form has lower priority than function". The original meaning was in the sense of form ever /follows/ (along) function, with a thinking that form can also be function by transmitting humane qualities that resonate with people. The Pyra's functionality does come in a form (a.k.a. a "design") whether that's desired or not (whatever kind and type of form that ought to be). Look into how Bauhaus came to be if you want to learn more about this.

 

[rygD]

@Christoph.Krn That makes me think of trying something with a dark colored translucent outer layer, like some of what Ponoko works with, and sticking something opaque between that and the inner translucent layer. I thought ED or someone mentioned using a dark translucent plastic in the logo area.

As an alternative to that, I wonder how well a mirrored piece etched from behind would work (this was an idea adapted from suggestions on the material pages I was looking at earlier). Maybe there are other things that would work in a similar way, with a totally flat and blank exterior surface that shows stuff when the LEDs are lit.

I have another idea that sorta started with the first mention of the LEDs lighting from the side. I saw that flat stuff that will work with what I am thinking exists, however what I saw works the opposite way from what I wanted. I don't have the words to describe it in a better way quickly right now. I will try to check into what other sorts of materials are out there that are affordable, then try to make a post that explains the idea with proper terminology.

 

[mclien]

Some thoughts/ hints/ information:
cutting techniques: copper and aluminum have the "mirror" te laser and "head conductive" problems, which makes laser-cutting difficult. Watter-jet is it's problems too. Namely very fine particles, which end up on the bottom of the water-bath, which slows down the watter after cutting, plus the vapor that contains mentioned dust.
Then there is spark eroding, which can be used to cut material (and it's used to smothen the molds of the pyra, as ED as posted).

All non-metal materials can be easily cutted on those hobby grade laser-cutters, you now often find in hackerspaces. you can even engrave the plastic, to get it opaque. So Acryl and alike are just a bit of trail and error path.

@Christoph.Krn My suggestion of the screwed version is too expensive to include in the standard lid. Getting holes into the part, means you have to ADD that material into the mold, which is an annoying, difficult task to do.
Basically you can drill holes into it, place bolts and make them fit in length to exactly close the gap to the other form half (or even drill holes there to let the bolts slide into the other half of the mold). That's easily several hours to some days of work on the machining. Too expensive, I'd say.

Let the hacker drill four holes into the lid is an really easy task compared to that. Yeah, I know: My fault being late with that idea.

Anyway, letting the lid come with an unglued logo seams the affordable easy way to go.

black aluminum: only one way: anodization! (there are several companies that are specialized to do that. And if you ask nicely some will even path your tiny piece through with the next customers big ammount of black pieces)

 

[joekutz]

*awakes from mostly reading the boards*
I am also not a big fan of the logo design. How thick would the logo plate need to be? When the info was there, I missed it
I just thought about making my logo plate by CNC-milling it into FR4-PCB when I get my Pyra . This material is translucent where the copper is removed, so I could do it either with the logo or the background lighting up.

 

[mclien]

PCB nice idea. Could even be partly a pattern of the real PCB...
But might need the clear inlay to distribute the light anyway. Thinness is to find inside the blender files, i think.

 

[TrashyMG]

How thick would the logo plate need to be? When the info was there, I missed it

I haven't time to look at the blender files released to do all the renderings done by the community, I'm not sure if they're in proper scale. but I suppose knowing the case dimensions we can figure out the size of that logo plate.

 

[rygD]

Let the hacker drill four holes into the lid is an really easy task compared to that. Yeah, I know: My fault being late with that idea.

That is what I was going to do.

 

[mius]

Maybe someone can design a Palmtop Dragon version of "Palmtop Tiger". It's a character from some animu:

 

[Grench]

I haven't time to look at the blender files released to do all the renderings done by the community, I'm not sure if they're in proper scale. but I suppose knowing the case dimensions we can figure out the size of that logo plate.

You can probably figure out X and Y from the renders, but maybe not so much the Z. If I had to guess, I'd say Z is something on the order of 0.10 to 0.20 mm sheet aluminum.