Is the Travelwide still going to happen?

[RattyMouse]

It seems that this project has fallen waaay behind schedule and so I'm wondering if it will still happen at all or not. I was not able to find out about it during the kickstart so don't even know if that camera will see a general release. Seems like a great idea, but it's been only a theory for quite a long time now.

Has the idea fallen through?

 

[winger]

They've run into some speed bumps getting the different pieces (which are made of different types of plastic) to work well together at a good variety of temperatures. But the last I heard on LFPF was that they'd gotten some important things figured out very recently. They still intend it to be done, though I don't know if it will be an ongoing product or not.

 

[Dr Croubie]

Yeah, the latest few updates have all pretty much focussed (!) on the focussing helicoid.
In short, they got prototypes made that were fine, then got 1000 more made that didn't fit. At first they thought it was heat-expansion or something (this was in their Summer). Then they realised that the manufacturing company had changed the type of plastic from the prototype to the production.
To me as an engineer (assuming their version of events is truthful), that's pretty open-and-shut that the manufacturing company cocked-up big time and they have to wear the cost of producing the whole batch again. They may very well even be doing this. But at the end of the day, all it's doing is just delaying it all further.
Not sure how you northern-hemisphere guys go, but down here a lot of businesses close mid-Dec to mid-Jan (1-week minimum, 2 is fairly common, 3 is starting to be more popular). So I don't know how much work is being done by the manufacturers over Dec/Jan to fix it.

In a worst-case find-a-new-manufacturer and re-run prototypes and production scenario we could still get them in our hands by March. But they may not have the cash to do that and let the lawyers recover the money from the original supplier afterwards, and I think that they're still working with the original guys, so it might take a bit longer than that to sift through contracts etc and decide who's going to pay for the cock ups.

 

[Newt_on_Swings]

I've seen people mock up and 3d print things way faster. A metal focusing helical in size 0 copal can be bought online for pretty cheap too. I am surprised no one has leap frogged them and made their own version.

 

[Nodda Duma]

I've seen people mock up and 3d print things way faster. A metal focusing helical in size 0 copal can be bought online for pretty cheap too. I am surprised no one has leap frogged them and made their own version.

If it was easy everyone would be doing it. 3D printing is fine for prototyping, but it's just not smart for a production run.

As an engineer it seems to me that theirs is a pretty typical schedule for a development project.

 

[Steve Goldstein]

I've seen people mock up and 3d print things way faster. A metal focusing helical in size 0 copal can be bought online for pretty cheap too. I am surprised no one has leap frogged them and made their own version.

Ben and Justin 3D-printed prototypes to debug and refine the design, but injection molding is really the only way to go for production. They've had a number of challenges where the mold had to be modified to avoid light leaks, or the supplier screwed up (as happened with the helicoids). There's a very comprehensive thread with many hundreds of posts on the Large Format Photography Forum.

 

[EdSawyer]

Versions of this type of camera have existed for decades so they are not doing anything really new here, conceptually.

 

[Dr Croubie]

Versions of this type of camera have existed for decades so they are not doing anything really new here, conceptually.

True, for the market.
But not true for these two guys themselves, they've never before released a camera, so it's a huge learning exercise for them too, taking it from idea to mass-production. But then that's the whole point of kickstarter, to give the little guys a chance to get up on the big stage...

 

[mgb74]

Versions of this type of camera have existed for decades so they are not doing anything really new here, conceptually.

Can be a long, hard road between concept and production. Saw this earlier today: http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=127133&d=1419445557

A critical component that is clearly more difficult to produce properly than anticipated.

 

[snay1345]

I am not an engineer but I am wondering if they type of plastic changed why would that change how things fit? Wouldn't the piece still be made to the same dimensions etc? Just wondering. Thanks.

 

[Dr Croubie]

I am not an engineer but I am wondering if they type of plastic changed why would that change how things fit? Wouldn't the piece still be made to the same dimensions etc? Just wondering. Thanks.

It's probably because it's injection-moulded, different plastics expand and shrink differently when they're heated and cooled. So they would have made the mould the size it needed to be for whatever plastic they first used, then when they've put in a new type of plastic it's obviously set in a slightly different shape or size.
None of that would have happened with milling down from a solid block, but milling is a lot more cost per item with less tooling cost (ie for low-volume and prototypes, injection moulding is the only way for high volumes like 1000).