I love this, but offering the product as a 3D print isn’t great. Sell me the guts and the STL, sure. But if I’m buying the whole thing, I would expect molded plastic. 3D prints are for enthusiasts or POC, not production
Depends the part, depends on the quality.
3D printing is great for small scale manufacturing and is production ready. But the QC needs to be top notch. Plus not everyone has or can use a 3d printer.
That said, if you sell 3d prints it needs to be disclosed, and you need to offer a decent warranty.
I make 3d printed e-reader cases. I designed it to be repairable and these parts have a very long warranty for the 3d printed parts since I know they won’t be as durable as injection molded.
I imagine everyone has access to a 3d printer, for example at a public library
That’s great! Thanks for the link. That name though… wouldn’t stop me from buying but I don’t think I could talk about it out loud with anyone.
Really I love saying it! Ploopy.
Haha, ok I can respect just owning it like that.
Agreed! That was the best they could come up with?
Well, “Micearrhea” was too long
I have the Ploopy Classic trackball and the Trackpad. Both are top notch products. 3D prints are excellent.
The firmware is open-source so I was able to flash my own layout for my own workflow. It’s QMK, used in mechanical keyboards. You don’t need to touch the firmware if you don’t have the inclination, it works out of the box.
There’s a small community of modders that have done wild things to the hardware too.
Wow, I cannot remember the last time I saw a new product with a full-size USB-B port
These look cool – bookmarked!
I’ve talked with this person in the past, they are very reasonable in general, although I disagree with their stance on not offering the hardware only and allowing the user to 3D print their own case. They currently don’t want to do that because they can control the quality of prints that get shipped with their product, and anticipate (based on previous experience IIRC) an increase in support needs for self-printed cases that they both aren’t willing to bear and aren’t willing to allow. They want this to be sold as a finished product that happens to include some 3D printed parts that you CAN swap out later at your own risk, which makes enough sense even though it’s not how I would prefer it.
Its also that the difference in cost would be minimal. I bought an adept and printed my own parts. Best trackball IMO. I would just like a bluetooth one for traveling.
For me the main benefit would be that I really like 3D printing and I’d rather not have the waste, so I get from my end it’s more of a niche request and I’m fine with where things are.
I just added this to my bookmarks, thanks!
I wish I knew about this before buying a Logitech mouse a while back haha.
Looks interesting, but I was looking at the headphones and you have to buy with Google Pay for some reason. 👀
*edit - OK actually you can put it in your cart and choose something else, but on the product page that’s the only option?
This are great and all. But no Bluetooth? Tf
I’m interested in those headphones they have.
