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].
> 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?
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.
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.
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