Hi, all,
The recent update on Crowd Supply (regarding the difficulty in mass-producing parts with 3D printers) reminded me of some RepRap/RepStrap innovations from a few years back:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20150318000301/http://justindunh am.net/making-cast-resin-3d-printer-parts/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150318000301/http://justindunham.net/making-cast-resin-3d-printer-parts/ - http://reprap.org/wiki/Clonedel - http://reprap.org/wiki/Moldmaking_Tutorial
This was before cheap, mass-produced 3D printers became widely available, so many people were bootstrapping their RepRaps by purchasing 3D-printed parts from others. At some point, someone realized that it was a lot faster to 3D print a set of parts, make molds from them, and then use those molds to make additional part sets, than it was to separately print each set of parts.
I'm not sure how complicated the parts of the laptop case are, but if the parts could be re-designed to be optimized for resin casting, it might cut down on the production time. Of course, I've never done any resin casting before so I don't know how feasible this would be in practice. Also, I have no idea how fast modern 3D printers can run now, so the speed advantage might not even exist any more.
Anyways, I just though I'd mention this on the off chance it might help speed things along.
Keep up the good work!