[nfbmi-talk] FW: [Writers] Made In America.

[Fred Wurtzel]

-----Original Message-----
From: Writers [mailto:writers-bounces at explorations-in-creative-writing.com]
On Behalf Of lana
Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2014 11:30 AM
To: Explorations In Creative Writing Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Writers] Made In America.

        This sounds really interesting. Keep us posted. Congrads on your
efforts.

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Hofstader
Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2014 7:39 AM
To: Explorations in Creative Writing
Subject: Re: [Writers] Made In America.

Hi,

Our new company, 3 Mouse Technology (3MT), is actively doing a 3D printer
project. We're building a blue tooth braille keyboard that we'll sell for
$150, hundreds of dollars less than the closest competitor. On or before
February 1, we'll have two working models. The plastics are built with the
3D printer and the electronics and software are all off-the-shelf. In
February, we'll be recording a video and launching an Indie Go Go
crowdsourced fundraiser and, if we raise $15,000 or so, we'll call the thing
a product and start selling it. If we don't raise the money, we'll have
already released the plans, software and schematic (including parts list) to
the general public so anyone with access to a 3D printer, a soldering iron
and an electronics parts store can build their own for around $50 in total. 
Our goal is to sell some of these things in the "free world" and make a few
dollars on the effort but, at the same time, to invent and release
technology that can be built "locally" in poor nations where access to such
is impossible today.

We chose a braille keyboard as our first hardware product because they are
really easy to design and build. For us, the cost (on top of time which we
give freely in hopes of doing something great in the long run) is about $200
to design, test and build the first two models. We can obviously (among the
20 of us) afford to spend this money out of pocket as ten bucks each isn't
going to break anyone's bank. We also hope to demonstrate to the world that,
indeed, access technology can be designed, built, shipped and so on for very
little money. At FS, the standard multiplier for hardware is more than 10X,
if it costs them $150 to build something, they'll sell it for $1500 or more.

At 3MT, we have chosen to build our business model around 3X margins so a
keyboard that costs us $50 in raw materials and manufacturing labor can be
sold profitably for $150.

We chose a braille keyboard for one very special reason on top of the cost
factors. Blind students are often allowed to skip passed their high school
math classes as providing braille books and/or a braille display with
keyboard costs thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, algebra has been
demonstrated to be the most important subject a student can study. Allowing
blind students to skip out of their math classes cripples them. So, because
Apple has added support for math in iOS/VoiceOver (it's expected on
Macintosh later this new year), we're providing the only way currently known
today for blind kids to type equations. It'll work out of the box with iOS
and probably Android too. I'm not sure if we'll ever try to make it work on
laptops or desktops but one never knows as it's open source software so
anyone in the world can add features if they like.

Happy Hacking,
cdh


The beauty of 3MT
On Jan 1, 2014, at 8:59 AM, Pranav Lal <pranav.lal at gmail.com> wrote:

> Imagine, printing my own technology! Those 3d-printers are becoming 
> affordable fast.
>
> Pranav
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Writers mailing list
> Writers at explorations-in-creative-writing.com
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> xplorations-in-creative-writing.com


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