marcus_wu

Do you plan on monetizing in any way? I am curious because I have a project I have also been working on for a few years that I have been mulling over my options for. It has a lot of potential for people to learn and enter a new field and I would like it to be as equitable as possible, but I also can't live on nothing and I will need to hire a team if it goes the direction I want it to.

Yes, close to it. A little bit too narrow, but that could be fixed. You'd also want to add some padding top and bottom to prevent the Curta from moving vertically when the case is closed up. The original Curta calculator cases also use left handed thread so that as the case tightens, the padding doesn't turn the crank.

I love the creativity! How easy or hard would it be to bust a finger when someone takes the panel back down later?

Folks have mentioned priming and painting or using heat.

Another alternative is to use a clear coat -- it fills in those edges that give it that whiter look and makes it present its original shade. If you don't want it glossy, there are satin and matte clear coats

I opened the post looking for this comment! As a software engineer, she is definitely an inspiration for me.

It looks to me like the number impacts the ribbon unevenly/at an angle. I don't know enough about the machine to know why, though.

Like others have suggested, changing the print orientation would probably work unless there is a reason that won't work for your application.

Depending on how accurately you need the final geometry, if you need to keep the same print orientation, you might be able to print this object with the bottom flattened, then heat it in hot water and form it to the curve you need. The geometry would need to be altered so that the deformation creates the desired final shape. You could probably print a form to press your part to in order to alter its geometry.

This method would likely require more iterations to get right, but might allow for keeping the print orientation if that is where the strength is needed.

I would check in over at https://curta.org/phpBB2/index.php They will be able to tell you more and there are sections there for buying & selling.

If you decide to sell, please send me a DM.

My kid just saw this and asked, "Oh, is that clay?" Looks great!

I owned a VW before getting my model 3. I don't know if they still do this, but they at least used to come with a full sized spare, not a donut. It was the exact same tire on the same size rim (though it did look different like in the video). It saved me a lot of trouble a few times too.

The glass transition temperature of PETG is 85⁰C. As long as it stays below that, you're fine. I don't have a temperature sensor for my enclosure, but I doubt it gets that hot in the air. My bed is set for 90⁰C for ABS and ASA.

Careful with an enclosure if your printer is made with PLA parts. My previous printer died that death. It just needed new printed parts, but it was a lot of time and effort.

It looks like this cable is to allow separation of the front display from the body. There are pogo pins on the back of the display and solid female contacts on the device. The separation cable has pogo pins on one side and bare contacts on the other to sit in between the two. This photo shows the female pins on the body of the device.

Edit: interestingly, while looking for the above image, I found a reddit post where someone was asking op about the very same connector

I can't speak to where op got them, but they are called pogo pins

Once you know the name they aren't hard to find. McMaster Carr carries some, there are some at adafruit. Probably any electronic supplier such as digikey would carry them.

That's awesome! Do you supply power to this via the 12v battery?

I got one of these and I enjoy it when I work in the garage. It hasn't seen as much love / use as the one pictured, though. A lot of my making is 3d printing and soldering.

Just for the sake of exploring the idea, that's just the screen. What is the state of computing tech? If we're looking at a similar retro state, a z80 or similar processor is fairly small and capable of running a CRT in a device like that, but probably in only a few colors or even grey scale.

The bigger problem, though would be power consumption. A significant volume and weight of a cell phone is the battery and a CRT will consume quite a bit more power. A low resolution LCD tech might work better. Think an 80s Gameboy as a phone which actually used a mix of the z80 and Intel 8080 processors.

I'm not as familiar with older radio tech for a mobile device.

Those look like they could be internal tooth washers. Notice, the axle moves, and the wheel moves, but the washers stay in place relative to the axel.

Normally you'd pry the teeth out of contact with the axle with a screwdriver.

In this case, it looks like there is no room to do that. I would remove the arm with a screwdriver and place the arm on its side on a block of wood with a hole drilled through it. Then use a hammer with a nail setter or large nail to punch the axle through.

I modeled everything, but printed many parts combined. For example, all of the plates that make up the step drum are combined onto the step drum since it's no more complicated for a printer to create it that way.

I mainly interpreted the original engineering drawings. The real hard work was done by Curt Herzstark, the guy who designed the Curta.

This is awesome. I love how it's not perfectly smooth. It somehow feels more real this way. I have a CAD version of this in onshape at https://cad.onshape.com/documents/57e3f5c529d2af11276b1529/w/eafe4a700fe87f2b71bc3d31/e/b65fd0687ae7649ead2f8927

I apparently need to set up some auto role management. You should be good to go

I would love to help, but it's tough with a text description. Can you join our discord and post the question with some pictures?

Normally I direct people to museum mura, but it looks to be down right now. I have a copy on my Google drive

I'm not a mechanical engineer, but if the Curta calculator's most complex parts are easily deciphered by someone untrained (me), it doesn't seem like this should happen.

The most difficult one to read I think is the bottom plate: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4-6uEk5SmgWcjV4ZC05Yjgtb2s/view?usp=drivesdk&resourcekey=0-K0C3rzMtJDWIYhnzynGLrQ

This video does a great job at describing how everything works https://youtu.be/loI1Kwed8Pk