peteym5 Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 Hmmm... and these look like they come with nice quality labels and full-color printed manuals... Have you ever discussed things with Al before Pete? I have been having personal conversations with both Albert and Lance (video 61) on issues of pricing, component searching, Some of it has to remain confidential. Maybe someone out there knows something or someone in regards that can help knock a several dollars off the price tag of these things. Flash cartridges are also an option like AtariMax or SIC!. But I understand if the cartridge is not placed correctly in the slot, it trips the write pin and erases the contents of the cartridge. Why we prefer EPROMS I know there are EPROMS and Flash memory chips with identical pinouts. Maybe replace the flash chip in a SIC! or Atarimax cart with an EPROM. A few other people are making bigger flash cartridges like THE!CART 128MB, Bigbens Mega 4MB Cartridge. 1MB or more. However those are probably going to cost $30+ even with a bulk order, and we have to mark up for profit. So those are not good options for homebrew games. Most of the stuff we write are under 128K. The goal probably to get someone to make bunches of blank cartridges for under $10. Shell and board with slot that can take either flash or EPROM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 (edited) Hello Henrik, guys Since the shell for a cartridge has two components (upper and lower half) you need two forms doubling the cost to at least EUR 2,000. ... My big problem was to get reliable information. I've contacted some companies via eMail but non of them responded (very strange). It appears to me my contact try was too unspecific. The companies need a 3D model in a specialized CAD format of what to mold to make a price offer. This CAD format is nothing you ever heard of in your normal life (no AutoCAD, no 3DS Max, or whatever).This means: You need a perfect 3d model of your plastic shell in this specific format. Sounds not too complicated. But there is reason why there is a specialized CAD-format for plastic molding. It takes care for example about diameters in corners of your model. It takes care about thickness of walls. This is all needed because the hot plastic is pressed into the form and needs to flow into. Without all those things taking into account you can not make a useable model. This is all specialized knowledge (not taking into account the thousands of tiny things I forgot to mention because I am way not a specialist). Everything you create via injection moulding needs two dies. One for the top and one for the bottom of what you want to injection mould. So even if you'd only want to make top shell, you'd need two dies (or die halves). Remember model cars, airplanes and boats you have to paint and glue together? Remember how all these parts came in one piece of plastic and how you had to carefully break them apart from the "frame"? These are all injection moulded. One frame with (what seems to those who never put together such a model) a zillion parts, all with (slightly) different shapes. This means you can injection mould loads of different sized and shaped objects at once. If you forget about the brown Atari cartridges (metal plate would have to be shaped, springs be sourced, etc.) you only need two shells, the top shell and the bottom shell. It might be possible to design the shells in such a way, that both halves are the same. Meaning you could pick two cartridge shell halves from a pile, at random, and you'd have a complete cartridge case. No need to keep two stacks of shells, one for the top shell and one for the bottom shell. Just "throw" 'm all on one big pile, pick two (identical) shells, place the PCB, screw both (identical) halves together, glue on the label. Plug into Atari, switch it on, play! CAD is CAD. When designing something with CAD (or even on paper), shapes and corners, thickness of the material etc. are all taken into consideration. Only extra knowledge the designed would need to have is if the plastic we chose, has special properties. ABS for instance, shrinks quite a bit while solidifying/cooling down. But a CAD expert that's experienced with plastics should know all this. Sincerely Mathy Edited July 22, 2014 by Mathy 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari8bitCarts Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 Are any of these old dies lying around? I would believe that maybe one might be. That might help make your decision. But depending on the mold, the machine (by ton) would/could be the issue. You need to find an injection molding house. I would think the old die layouts are still around and you can send off to China to make some soft metal molds for low runs. But qty would be needed regardless. The process is really very interesting. The mold design, the type of resin, the injection machine, etc. I worked at United Technologies Automotives plastic injection mold facility, in a past life. Nothing like the smell of resin in the morning. It wouldn't be a CAD specialist you're looking for, it's a plastics engineer. Then the mold design would be crucial. Would it be a single mold with multiple cavities, most do both halves at once. The good news is that the parts are not that difficult to get released by the mold and the injection points would be standard. Anyone got Atari pull to get the cartridge shell designs or the molds themselves (designs) for review? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari8bitCarts Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 Check out this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xwwWB2q2zI Now these are small one cavity parts, so the machine can stay small. Watch the ejector pins on this one. How about 3D printing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EXsAeJ7RsU Becoming cheaper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 3D Printers like Replicator 2 already cost around $1500 new. If you are going to spend that much, you are better off just paying someone to make shells for you. I know there are other cheaper 3D printers out there, but I am not sure of their performance and size limits. It could take up to an hour to print each cartridge shell. Where does the people who make SIC!, THE!CART, Big Ben Mega Cart all get their shells from? I thought about those negative molds used for ceramics that are made out of a cement compound and getting those plastic pallets used in hobby kits. There are other items sold on adult sites that are meant to duplicate a human body part. Not sure if hard plastic can be used instead of the softer plastic. Hope you understand why I did not bring this up earlier. I looked at those maszczyk enclosures awhile back and stated at the time about being a tight fit on certain Atari computer models. Would need to machine off a millimeter from the sides to make it fit. Also may need something extra inside to hold the board in place. Maybe something cheap from a hardware store. XEGS and Williams boards have a hole in the middle, would have to drill a hole for a screw. It would take some work to do, not sure what Albert is willing to do. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted July 22, 2014 Author Share Posted July 22, 2014 It would take some work to do, not sure what Albert is willing to do. Albert is willing to pay to have someone design a new 8-bit shell from scratch, get prototypes made, and then have 8-bit shells made using injection molding. But I want to get the 2600/7800 shells I'm working on finished first. ..Al 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted July 22, 2014 Share Posted July 22, 2014 (edited) Albert is willing to pay to have someone design a new 8-bit shell from scratch, get prototypes made, and then have 8-bit shells made using injection molding. But I want to get the 2600/7800 shells I'm working on finished first. ..Al Do a Google ( or Yahoo or Bing) search for "custom plastic fabrication" a bunch of companies come up that you can submit specs to. I am sure someone is out there to do it under $500 for a bunch of shells. For Example, this one may be useful. http://www.envplastics.com Edited July 22, 2014 by peteym5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shawn Jefferson Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 (edited) Flash cartridges are also an option like AtariMax or SIC!. But I understand if the cartridge is not placed correctly in the slot, it trips the write pin and erases the contents of the cartridge. Why we prefer EPROMS That's not remotely true, but flash carts will end up costing more I'm sure. Edited July 23, 2014 by Shawn Jefferson Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari8bitCarts Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 Hello Henrik, guys Everything you create via injection moulding needs two dies. One for the top and one for the bottom of what you want to injection mould. So even if you'd only want to make top shell, you'd need two dies (or die halves). Remember model cars, airplanes and boats you have to paint and glue together? Remember how all these parts came in one piece of plastic and how you had to carefully break them apart from the "frame"? These are all injection moulded. One frame with (what seems to those who never put together such a model) a zillion parts, all with (slightly) different shapes. This means you can injection mould loads of different sized and shaped objects at once. This would be an over simplification of injection molding dies and process. I’ve seen multi-cavity (100’s) and multi-sectional dies. Depending on the complexity of the part, the die might come apart in many sections. Some parts would not release unless it was sectional. Mold and material flow is crucial. Time and and and pressure is an art. I've worked with 3000+ ton injection molding machines. That was why I suggested finding the molds, or make some cheap/disposable prototype (soft) molds. Those original cart shell dies must be around somewhere. I saw not too long ago someone was selling the Atari 5200 cart die. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Island2Live Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 This would be an over simplification of injection molding dies and process. Ive seen multi-cavity (100s) and multi-sectional dies. Depending on the complexity of the part, the die might come apart in many sections. Some parts would not release unless it was sectional. Mold and material flow is crucial. Time and and and pressure is an art. I've worked with 3000+ ton injection molding machines. That was why I suggested finding the molds, or make some cheap/disposable prototype (soft) molds. Those original cart shell dies must be around somewhere. I saw not too long ago someone was selling the Atari 5200 cart die. I agree it's not that easy. But there are literally THOUSANDs of companies out there who are specialists in all kind of injection molding. All they need is a CAD model about what you like to create in a format named .IGES or .STEP. There is also free software out there (for example »FreeCAD«) which is probably not suited to create the next high-end front-panel of a car. But we are going to create a little cartridge shell here (two halves of course). It should not be that complicated to model ... especially if you ever touched other 3D applications like »3d Studio MAX« or even »POVRay«. Kind regards, Henrik (Island2Live) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Atari8bitCarts Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 (edited) Creating a new cart shell would be cool. But I would think the return on that wouldn't make much sense. I wish I could remember who just sold their 5200 mold. The 2600 thread on this same subject http://atariage.com/forums/topic/214472-about-cartridges-molds-colors-etc-etc/ Here was a Jaguar mold: http://atariage.com/forums/topic/159292-hot-atari-jaguar-injection-mold-tooling-on-ebay-now-call-curt/ Edited July 23, 2014 by chrislynn5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Island2Live Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 OK, »butter to the fishes« (not sure if this proverb is know in the US): Can anyone give me the detailed dimensions in mm of an Atari cart? Preferable the ones used for the »XE Game System« (the rightmost shell in Mathy's pictures)? Kind regards, Henrik (Island2Live) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mathy Posted July 23, 2014 Share Posted July 23, 2014 Hello guys @chrislynn5: Sometimes you have to oversimplify things to make them clear to people who are less technically inclined. @Henrik: The expression is used in the Dutch language too. Sincerely Mathy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roydea6 Posted December 6, 2015 Share Posted December 6, 2015 Hello guys As you can see, all three types of cart shells Atari used, have practically the same dimensions. Differences are less then a millimeter, I guess. That's not counting the lip. Sincerely Mathy Another view.. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 the whole lets keep a secret where you can get stuff from only hurts the community....and keeps a certain few in control of every thing.... keeping lots of people from even trying.... You are not keeping 'the competition' down... your just outright denying anything from being made or getting done and pricing higher with more and more out of the market... as you see less and less people remember it was the secret keeper himself who helped kill his own user base.... the more you restrict, the less YOU get! 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 (edited) We could get an independent person to make the empty cartridge shell and resale the shells to anyone for lets say $1.00 a piece. The person should not be connected to anyone producing programs on EPROM or flash cartridges. There is competition between entities and if one produces something themselves, they may not resale the shell to keep the advantage over the competition. I know anyone does not make a ton of money, but competition still exists. If someone did pay the shells to be molded they may have to buy a few thousand pieces to be made because of a minimum order will be like 1000 pieces before the company will produce something for you. But a few thousand shells would supply several entities for years in this community. I know the prices on 3D printers had come down since I last posted, but these things take time to produce each shell compared to injection molding. EDIT: looked up 3D printing. someone might be going through those spools that cost around $15 a piece and producing cartridges may use up a spool to produce 2 or 3 cartridges. Right there we are factoring $5 to $10 into the cost per shell. Edited December 22, 2015 by peteym5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dropcheck Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 IMHO I don't think the case has ever been keeping secrets or the ability to design and make the cartridges. It's cost. Always cost. All the theoretical pricing I've heard for a cheap bare shell done with injection molding has ignored the massive amount of research and trial and error in getting that perfect shell. Even if you do prototyping on a 3d printer instead of multiple attempts with injection molding you are talking a couple hundred. 3D printers don't just run on spools of plastic. They also require controled environments, electricity, replacement parts and maintenance and time. So say you devote three months to designing in a CAD program the perfect shell. Remember you are only working parttime in your spare time. Then you print protos on a 3D printer. The first one prints okay. But there's a error in a dimension and you need to redesign. Okay now you go to print the second copy. But now the 3d printer is coming up on a maintenance halt. so it takes you $10 and 2 hours to check and tighten everything up. Okay you go to print, halfway through the print the power fails. The next night you make another attempt. But something with bed leveling is off and the print fails. You're busy the next week and can't get back to it. Next week comes along and now the printer is freaking out and you spend the rest of the night troubleshooting why. Finally you find a clip is broken or a control wire is frayed and replacement has to come from halfway across the country or the world. Three weeks later you finally find time to start again. And so it goes.... Okay, now say everything looks good. A prototype finally finishs printing and passes muster. You decide that a production run of no more than 500 is a resonable number to start with. If they sell great, but if not you aren't drowning in stacks of unsold shells. Who wants to store thousands of shells for however long it takes to sell them. Storage sheds cost money. I certainly don't want to store them in my house. Remember over the last 5-10 years I've been on this forum, I've never seen a project sell more than a couple hundred copies. And that's for a complete project. Not support parts. Completed projects. Most of which have not been cartridge based. Now you start looking for a production house that will do 500 at a reasonable price. The 3d design you spent so much time and money developing is only 1 step along the way to produce a injection mold. That's when you find out that the prices plastered over their website are fudged. Not outright a lie, but not the whole truth either. There's a multitude of hidden costs. Like your 3d design is actually bigger than the maxium size advertised...... By the time you get three or four quotes, you are looking at a delievered price of $5 per shell if you are lucky. Now if you will do a thousand that will drop to $3.5 or so. But still you are talking nearly $2000.00. All on the gamble that you will sell enough to break even. Which will take selling at $10 a shell to do. That's a lot of money for a plastic shell. But if you charge any more to actually make a little money, now it's virtually certain that few will buy. You can hear the screaming of overpriced crap through the ether. Let's don't go into what happens when the production house screws up the order somehow. That's a nightmare no one wants to think of and unfortuanately does happen. I think that is the real reason why no one individual has come up with newly designed Atari 8bit cartridge shells. Atarimax seems to have been willing and able to take the financial risk, but it's unlikely an individual can. Perhaps a better approach would be something like a offering on Kickstarter.com No one person foots the bill exclusively. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Dangerous Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 (edited) If I could ask for one thing it would be this: Please don't have the "lip" or "handle" on the back of the carts. It makes it so they don't fit nicely into universal game cases. Not everyone wants to store their games in a sock drawer. Black or grey...doesn't matter to me But I like grey. Edited December 22, 2015 by travistouchdown Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 I've been looking for a cheap plastic enclosure that would work as a cartridge shell if you cut the end off it. I've checked Serpac, PacTec, Bud, Hammond, and AliBaba, and there's really nothing close enough. I think AA cartridge shells should be the oxford blue color from this site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Albert Posted December 22, 2015 Author Share Posted December 22, 2015 I think AA cartridge shells should be the oxford blue color from this site. I like that. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 (edited) wow that reads like a book of all the worst case crap that can happen and reads like it happens every time.... Not my experience in real life.... and trust me if it can go wrong it's probably happened to me..... how about instead of ordering a thousand shells all on your own you get together with the 20 other people all asking about them and doing their own projects to go in with you on the run...splitting the costs... with the number of times we see this exact same request/ conversation one would hope it would happen that way... most of this stuff has already been perfected time and time again... cases of shells don't take up all that much space and are normally packed to take up as little space as possible and then you have to assemble the halves yourself..... even the full height shell I have seen over the years are nested during packing with backs and card covers packed seperate... and since you still have to put the guts in yourself no matter what... the assembly step is of no consequence... send a half case to each and you won't even waste a closet in you house/attic/basement/shed/or trunk.... heck I have had shipments drop shipped directly to multiple locations for little or no cost... having designed enclosure cases labels and catalogs for a dental supply company with higher scrutiny and restrictions on materials and never having all those problems and costs with some very small quantity at that I get very confused by the continual it's so tough/impossible to do with everything but the kitchen sink falling from the sky... If we couldn't get it made we often sifted through the sourcing books of all the business and often found something made for or by someone else... a phone call and a verbal handshake and we helped each other out... often resulting in splitting of costs or making a larger order and splitting it at cost between us... and that was in competitive market.... fast forward twenty years... the other supply houses that didn't work together like we did are gone.. in fact last time I talked with one of the sons running the business... they bought out two of the competitors who were only looking to make a few bucks off the parts rather than looking to lower their bottom lines.... The lowered bottom line houses still stand... the houses that couldn't see this fell.... Edited December 22, 2015 by _The Doctor__ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 (edited) When looking all the way to what started the thread.... Al was basically looking to get a run of carts shells made with everyone to get a large enough run to share the costs... just like what we are wishing for.... Let us work together to come up with a cart shell that has the support posts in it that can be snapped off to handle different pcb configs... the posts would be present for known pcb types and spacings with a few auxiliary posts for generic pcb's A pair of flush nippers to remove the ones each project does not need and your golden... pass thru slot in the top with tabs like orion/sparta but no lip or ledge If you don't need the pass thru, nip the tabs, a light file or sanding and cover with label... now every cart type is covered... no more mus or fuss.... universal cart shell.... everyone wins! Edited December 22, 2015 by _The Doctor__ 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_The Doctor__ Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 Al what do you think of the above cart idea in the above post number 72 in oxford blue.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bryan Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 The internal configuration isn't really a problem. A new run of PCB's will be much less than the shells. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peteym5 Posted December 22, 2015 Share Posted December 22, 2015 (edited) I will ask Video61 if he is interested as well. Edited December 22, 2015 by peteym5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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