Trying to get a keeb cnc'd

[ElephantOrphanage]

Hey! im new so I hope everyones well and that I'm not being annoying in anyway. I want to get a polycarb keeb cnc'd and I was wondering if anyone had any insight onto how to the logistics in something like this would work out. I'm not running a gb or anything, Its just gonna be a one off for me.

[MIGHTY CHICKEN]

Find a manufacturer, this can be found easily on Alibaba.Com, just search cnc and message like 5 manus for quotes on a one-off, they’ll get back to you with pricing, then you just pay and answer any questions they have


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[Leslieann]

While you can go the China route, I would recommend checking Craigslist.
You don't need anything more than a cnc router for polycarbonate and if it's just cut plates you could even use waterjet or laser which is even faster and cheaper.

[harukai]

Is it common to cnc your own housing? I'm thinking of doing it too, since there's none on the market that fits my type/needs. Hesitant because of unknown difficulty for other types of materials.

[MIGHTY CHICKEN]

Is it common to cnc your own housing? I'm thinking of doing it too, since there's none on the market that fits my type/needs. Hesitant because of unknown difficulty for other types of materials.

Well, most people usually wouldn't design a whole new case and make it themselves, but there are people have done it. Generally if the material is hardish and doesn't have some weird property of corroding quickly, you can do pretty much anything you want

[_rubik]

Is it common to cnc your own housing?

No, it's not common. If you have money but not the skills, I supposed you could send a one-off proto order to a manu but that's not cheap to setup. If you have the skills like folks in Making Stuff Together you could CNC it yourself (but you'd need access to the material and tools).

That's not even touching on the modeling / designing challenges.

That said, if you have the means and skills, more power to you! I don't and am very jealous of those who do

[Leslieann]

Is it common to cnc your own housing? I'm thinking of doing it too, since there's none on the market that fits my type/needs. Hesitant because of unknown difficulty for other types of materials.

Not at all.
Besides cost (starting around $400 and up), most lack the skills in CAD to design one.

While you can learn CAD in a weekend (if you're hardcore about it), you aren't going to learn CAD well enough to make a $400 keyboard case. Tiny details (radius, finish, tolerances) make a HUGE difference in how much it costs to make a case and you won't find them by following a couple of CAD tutorials on Youtube. Some of these little things can cause your cost to more than double. Don't forget, if you make a mistake there is rarely a fix, you get to start over and that means paying full price again, so if you need to redo it 4 times you get to pay 4 times.

There is still other considerations as well, finding a shop willing to do it (they hate one offs) and will back burner you after you locate one, it can literally take 6-12 months to find a shop and get it actually made. Then after all of this you need to find a shop to do your finish, most shops doing anodizing do industrial finish which is for protection not decorative and so they don;t care if the color misses a small spot or isn't the exact color you want, minor blemishes, etc... You need to make sure they understand that and you need to understand that if you want some special color you're going to be paying for draining the tank and the color. Not to mention once again waiting in line for a break for them to interrupt their bread and butter work to do a special color with higher precision just for you.

All told it can take years and thousands of dollars.