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A comment on Open source “split-flap” mechanical display.

Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by abetusk on Monday April 19, 2021 @02:36AM (#26859693)
Scott Bezek has a great video on "How a Split Flap Display Works" [0].

He also sells blank "flaps" on Tindie [1].

The documentation on how to build the Split Flap is also really awesome [2], including how to cut your own flaps [3].

I've been following this project for a while. It's pretty awesome. I estimate about $10 per character (as opposed to the $180/character (!!) another poster mentioned through Alibaba), with a large portion of the cost being the custom cut "flaps" (in small quantities). It seems like the cost could get in the $2-$4 range per character but I couldn't figure out how to do it without a significant amount of labor involved in cutting the flaps.

FYI, there's also a company called Oat Foundry that sells large split-flap displays [4]. I seem to remember the cost being in the $10k+ region but I don't see a price and I could be way off base.

Oh, interesting, I see Vestaboard also has a (smaller) one for around $3k [5].

[0] https://youtu.be/UAQJJAQSg_g

[1] https://www.tindie.com/products/scottbez1/blank-split-flap-d...

[2] https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap/wiki

[3] https://github.com/scottbez1/splitflap/wiki/Cut-flaps

[4] https://www.oatfoundry.com/split-flap/

[5] https://shop.vestaboard.com/products/vestaboard

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Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by murderfs on Monday April 19, 2021 @04:01AM (#26860145)
> I've been following this project for a while. It's pretty awesome. I estimate about $10 per character (as opposed to the $180/character (!!) another poster mentioned through Alibaba), with a large portion of the cost being the custom cut "flaps" (in small quantities). It seems like the cost could get in the $2-$4 range per character but I couldn't figure out how to do it without a significant amount of labor involved in cutting the flaps.

Laser cutting a bunch of sheets at once could be one option, but material selection might be a problem: PVC releases chlorine when laser cut, which will do all sorts of horrible things to optics/the meatbag operating the machine. Maybe a cutting plotter will work, since you're using really thin sheets?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by mschuster91 on Monday April 19, 2021 @05:33AM (#26860742)
> Laser cutting a bunch of sheets at once could be one option

Use a waterjet cutter instead. You'll have some issues with microplastics in the water, but these can be filtered.

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Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by abetusk on Monday April 19, 2021 @06:55AM (#26861245)
Show me a water jet cutter that's priced at the hobbyist level (and isn't a full time job to upkeep) and I'm there.
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Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by jiveturkey on Monday April 19, 2021 @12:39PM (#26864753)
I don't understand. Just send it to a service. You don't make your own PCBs do you? There's lots of things a hobbyist cannot do in-house, and even if you can just make far more sense (at hobbyist scale) to contract out.

There is the wazer, but it doesn't live up to its hype.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by mschuster91 on Monday April 19, 2021 @03:02PM (#26866676)
A lot of hacker spaces have waterjet cutters, they're not that expensive if you're a collective pooling together funds.
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Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by abetusk on Monday April 19, 2021 @05:18AM (#26860639)
Laser cutting is straight out for the hobbyist, because of the chlorine, as you correctly point out. I think the way to do this is either with a CNC or with some die punch solution.

Doing a single cutout of PVC with a CNC would be fine, but doing 40x23x7 is probably not.

Doing a die punch is maybe possible but I don't really know how to create a custom punch and what tooling to use.

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Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by atrus on Monday April 19, 2021 @06:17AM (#26861026)
It's too bad there isn't a bigger market for this, steel rule dies aren't too expensive to get made. And used clickers are pretty cheap too.

But only if you were doing a bunch of signs!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by jiveturkey on Monday April 19, 2021 @12:27PM (#26864604)
> Laser cutting is straight out for the hobbyist, because of the chlorine

Just don't use PVC blanks.

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Re:Open source “split-flap” mechanical display by thunderbong on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @02:16AM (#26871285)
This HN post has been submitted by Scott Bezek linking his github source code
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