TR King spot patterns (1 Viewer)

.
3. If the plastic lasted for a reasonable amount of time and was cheap enough to reproduce, perhaps we could just treat them as 'disposable'
4. Taking the whole thing a stage further - given these only have to be made out of the standard one color filament, a printer of the same industrial type that they use, in the smallest size that would be suitable, appears to run around £1000 ($1300), and their heavy duty filament is £30 ($40) a kilo, which looks to be about the amount needed for a punch, I could get a new toy :)
.. So a machine that will allow you to make all sorts of various "cheap" edge spot style punches... :) :).
 
.. So a machine that will allow you to make all sorts of various "cheap" edge spot style punches... :):).

That would be the ideal solution. But even if it only gave us prototypes good enough for testing that would make any machining process much cheaper down the road as we would have the CAD files and I bet I could send a file to China and have a metal one made for 1/4 of the price of a US machine shop.
 
3D metal printing is what you need, or you need someone who has one!


Amazing technology. It lays down metal "powder" at the micron level and then it's basically "forged" with a laser a layer at a time. So basically, lay powder then laser, lay powder then laser, etc. repeated till the piece is finished. Reclaim the unused powder for reuse -- virtually no waste of materials.

I want one and I have no need for one! lol


Also I'd really rattle the cage of your pigment supplier to stress why you need smaller R&D sample packages. I can't imagine there isn't a way to go about this. Go up the chain to get to the right person. Why would any company throttle potential future bulk sales?
 
3D metal printing is what you need, or you need someone who has one!


Amazing technology. It lays down metal "powder" at the micron level and then it's basically "forged" with a laser a layer at a time. So basically, lay powder then laser, lay powder then laser, etc. repeated till the piece is finished. Reclaim the unused powder for reuse -- virtually no waste of materials.

I want one and I have no need for one! lol


Also I'd really rattle the cage of your pigment supplier to stress why you need smaller R&D sample packages. I can't imagine there isn't a way to go about this. Go up the chain to get to the right person. Why would any company throttle potential future bulk sales?

Those machines run at $600k - $1m, slightly out of my budget :)
I saw that while searching for other things.
 
Why would any company throttle potential future bulk sales?

Problem is that these suppliers 'bulk sales' are often between a pallet and a truckload.
The $2,000 single bag (which could last us 10 years) is their sample :)

Seriously, poor experience with this. Several times we've had a sample and perhaps because of age or contamination by the salesman, the real thing produced different results.

Maybe someone could go raid a cosmetics company, they seem to be the main users of this stuff.
 
I would think they could tell you the basics. It's the specific sources of each type and proportions that would be Colonel Sanders level secret. Anyway...

Properties you require would be - minimum temp reaction, color fastness (fade resistant), non-bleeding that will work with a mix of materials like mineral, plastic, fibers (or similar)?
 
I would think they could tell you the basics. It's the specific sources of each type and proportions that would be Colonel Sanders level secret. Anyway...

Properties you require would be - minimum temp reaction, color fastness (fade resistant), non-bleeding that will work with a mix of materials like mineral, plastic, fibers (or similar)?

They only disclose an ingredient if it requires a waiver from us for some reason, or a certificate guaranteeing how we will use it (eg that it would never enter the food chain etc.)

All colorfast dyes are suitable. Our property requirements are far less than the main users of these things.

Of course you can find smaller re-sellers but we've been there, done that also. Up to 10 times the price and no guarantee of color stability from batch to batch. We have enough trouble for some of the existing ones as it is.
I could buy tons of different types at $100/lb but that's just going to add 20c to the price of a chip.
And don't forget as I indicated elsewhere that trying to develop a new color can cost us several thousand dollars of factory time and other materials in addition to the die so it's not as though you can keep 'trial and erroring' as it's probably only a 1 in 3 chance it works.

You may be surprised that the color of the dye used often bears little resemblance to the finished chip colors because the remainder of the ingredients are far from white or transparent to start with.
This is why there is a premium on DG and Bright White as you have to effectively bleach out the rest of the ingredients and the material to do that costs $$$.

Also remember this isn't something we've just been trying for 4 years, it's been an evolving process for 60 years and most dyes (except removal of lead etc.) really haven't changed much over that time. What's been tried and failed is documented.
 

Create an account or login to comment

You must be a member in order to leave a comment

Create account

Create an account and join our community. It's easy!

Log in

Already have an account? Log in here.

Back
Top Bottom