Hi!

My name is Dirk, you might remember me from the TOHKBD project or the FunkyOtherHalf shop. I am a hardware developer that makes all sorts of fun/functional/funky gadgets for the Jolla phone.

This is me:

Jolla has now made a beautiful tablet and I want to make a carbonfiber casing for it. Carbonfiber is awesome! It looks great and offers great protection. Keep it light, keep it sporty, keep it Funky!

The idea

The tablet is beautiful, but as with all other tablets it has a very large glass area which makes it vulnerable to scratches and cracking. Without a strong protective casing it is a bad plan to throw it in your backpack with all your other stuff.

Things like charging cables, pens, other electronics or even books can put concentrated loads on the screen which can easily crack a screen. Having a strong casing covering the screen with a soft inner lining will remove all the concentrated loads, by absorbing a lot of the force and spreading it over a large surface area.

During use you can easily slide of the casing and put it in the normal position, exposing the screen. Due to the flat surface on the back, placing it on rough surfaces will certainly scratch the back panel. Not good. Slap a casing around it and you can place it down anywhere.

Being able to carry the tablet around with you  and use it wherever without worries increases the functionality and will guarantuee a longer life without cracks and scratches.

Sounds good right? And as an added bonus it also looks awesome!

The Construction

The casing is made from 5 layers of 200gram/m2 cloth with a twill weave. 

This is laminated using epoxy resin with a 'wet lay up' method. This is a fancy term for 'lay down the carbon by hand, pour the epoxy from a cup, distribute it evenly with your creditcard and go over it will a paintroller to sqeeze out the air'.

A plastic sheet is tensioned over the wet laminate and tensioned by hand. Small air bubbles under the plastic are removed by going over it again with a roller.

pictures from early prototype mold and laminate

The finished laminate is about 1 mm thick. This is left to dry for several hours.
 

The part is released from the mold, a CNC-mill is used to cut the outline and camera/speaker holes, the edges are sanded by hand, the sides of the laminate are sealed and the velvet layer is applied on the inside.

What We Need & What You Get

For the 'mass-production' of a carbonfiber part I need:

• Multiple molds, since it takes hours for epoxy to cure
• All sorts of pneumatic stuff to hook up a lot of vacuumbags
• Lots of tools for milling and sanding down the parts
• Spraypainting tools for finishing layers
• Enough orders to get to bulk ordering carbon and epoxy

What you get

You will get a carbonfiber/epoxy casing with a nice satin finish. Rounded edges and soft velvet inner coating to prevent scratches.

The casing slides on from the top or bottom and it totally reversible, so you can use it as a heavy duty screen protector as well as a regular casing!

Your tablet will look awesome and you will be the local hero with your sporty techy look.

Shipping

Shipping comes with tracking! You will get a notification from the postal service when the casing is shipped and you can track the progress of the shipment via the link provided by them.

Multiple casings can be shipped in one package, so if you want one (or two or three) more you can select 'Extra Casing'. That way you only have to pay for the shipment once.

Development

The Casing is under continuous development during this campaign. You can follow this and share your ideas here: talk.maemo.org.

Depending on the success of the campaign I can develop and try more things.

If the goal is doubled, I could for instance do one of the following:
- add different materials (carbonkevlar/alutex/kevlar/glass)
- change to infusion instead of wet layup (stronger, lighter, but more expensive)
- make custom cutouts
- custom  velvet lining colour
- outsource production to speed things up

The Impact

It would have been possible to sell this via my regular shop funkyotherhalf.com, but the amount of tooling for this projects is considerably higher.

I need to:
- build multiple molds. more molds, faster production.
- arrange a CNC machine to be able to mill the casings
- be able to do bulk ordering on carbonfiber cloth and epoxy
- get a bucketload of coffee (+20% stamina) and buy bread (+10% mana)

To be able to afford this, I need this campaign to make it a reality. Treat yourself you a fancy and functional casing to protect your tablet and support me to develop more Funky stuff!

coffee will we consumed in high quantities from this mug

Risks & Challenges

At this start of the campaign, the design is ready, but open for debate and improvement. There is a lot of tooling to be done though to change the production from one-offs to pumping them out by the tens at a time.

The production of products in these quantities is something I gained a lot of experience with during the TOHKBD project. Carbonfiber and other composites is something I worked and played with for years, and I am confident about the production of this product.

Other Ways You Can Help

If you want to help in the project or have a question, you can come to talk.maemo.org, ask me anything on IRC or send me an email at info at funkyotherhalf.com, or use the contact form on my site.