Wow thanks for the quick response, I'm so glad to hear this project is still alive and I was so impressed by those new pictures of the 12x18 pad! I did have one question though since I'm not familiar with Cerakote but would it wear down teflon based skates faster than say a standard hard pad?
To answer your question, I don't believe so. Due to the wet sanding process I do, that takes out a lot of the percievable texture from the surface. There might be a bit, mostly in the beginning, but after a bit, the Teflon would start to fill in the small voids left over and would slow down that process. On top of that, it might even make it a bit smoother, but probably wouldn't effect the actual friction numbers much.
These look very nice! Im definitely intrigued. My current desk mat does me fine and at $15 its hard to complain. But you work is very nice and its sucks its so expensive (you charge a good price and I understand its more in the way of materials/production cost). I think if you attempted to run a group buy for this it would go over a lot better. I know i'd definitely go in for one at say a $150 price point, and even possibly at $200.
+1 for the GB idea, altough it seems unlikely with you not having much time.
I think the maximum I would want to spend is around 150$ too.
Unfortunately, a group buy is not feasible. At least not for me at this point. Not without incurring more steps in the process that I would have to pay for in order to get them out in a timely fashion. This is a multi-faceted problem for my setup right now.
Some of the primary issues with that would be the following. I don't have any way of receiving bulk sheets of aluminum. They typically ship in 4'x8' sheets, these would weight about 60 pounds, and are flimsy when handling at that size. I don't have anything setup right now for cutting that large of sheet efficiently. I would need to get a fence setup for a circular saw, buy a new blade for it, etc. I know this could be done fairly easily, but new blades for this purpose are typically $50 each.
I just did a bit of google searching, for the aluminum itself, I found a place that would deliver 4'x8' sheets to my house. The cost was $245 per sheet, and $277 for shipping. Just curious, I started adding sheets to the order to see how it effected shipping, price only went up by $10 for an order of 4 sheets. Now, I could make 36 mouse pads at 10"x12" out of a single sheet, but I want to keep offering custom sizes. Which would cut into that just due to odd cuts, not knowing what sizes I would be cutting next, etc.
Also, I spoke with my paint shop about the cost a few months back. I asked if not having holes to hang in the oven was effecting the price, and apparently it isn't. But I wouldn't be able to get a price break on the Cerakote itself until I got to about 100 pieces. I really don't think this is feasible. Even with advertising on OCN in the mouse section. Even then, I can't advertise, or even get an artisan account until 75 rep, and then it costs money per item to list in the artisan section. I think it was 50 rep just to create a post in the classifieds section.
But the biggest issue, is actually time. I make every one by hand, with a strong dose of OCD. The first one had a couple blemishes under the Cerakote that I thought would buff out with the media blasting, apparently I was wrong. So, now I go overboard on smoothing them out before sending for paint. Granted I do use power tools to make them, but everything is by hand, no automated stuff in my shop yet. About the closest I have to that is a cross cut sled for my table saw for cutting to size. After that, I round the corners, and soften the edges by hand with my 4 inch angle grinder, or sand paper for sharp and masked edges (I just take the corners off enough so they don't tear up mouse cords and arms, the edges from my saw cuts and the shear are like razors), and then hand sand to get those scratches out. Even after paint, I take a hand finished approach with a wet sanding process using 2,000 grit sandpaper.
With all this, I still have to find time for my wife, two kids, and I have been working out of town and living in hotels during the week for a large part of the last year. Such is the nature of the game when you work in industrial construction trades, have to go where to work is if you want to keep working.
These look cool.
Question:
Can they be made out of smoked cheese?
Nope sorry, won't survive the bake part of the coating process. Best case, they have to be able to withstand 180F for 2 hours.
