At this price point this seems potentially doable. Some ideas in the order I’d try them:
There is a person that has Kickstarted similar projects and you could contact him to see if they are willing to do a custom one-off. They’d probably be willing to just give you advice if you asked, too. Given that their entire Kickstarter was only $7000, at your price point this seems pretty likely.
You can download a 3D model online and find a local machine shop to CNC you one. For example, just googling “tungsten machine shop san francisco” turned up http://www.acmanufacturing.com/ which will probably mill tungsten from CAD.
Same, but find a 3D printing company that can make one for you. There are a few online (https://www.wolfmet.com/ e.g.), and you’d have to request a quote, but it may be a better option if the feedstock for CNC ends up being cost prohibitive. I’m not sure if this kind of place will do individual retail orders.
This is a pretty fun format. Actually, I really like this gomboc idea and briefly considered doing a Kickstarter on it after reading your post. But then I realized that Kickstarter would only really make sense if everyone were willing to pay $800. The market is so niche, that it would have to be a passion project to be worth the hassle I think.
It isn’t perfect, and it probably won’t actually work as a Gömböc either, because the shape is reported to be very sensitive to dimensional tolerances. But I spent quite a bit of time and energy on this and thought somebody might use it as a starting point for improvements. Or better yet, that it would persuade the Gömböc discoverers that it is time to finally publish the details of the commercial Gömböc shape in the open literature.
There’s a design patent on the particular Gomboc shape, but that doesn’t apply to mono-monostatic shapes in general, and it expires in a few years anyway. I’ve added a bounty on creating/finding a working 3d model of a mono-monostatic shape.
At this price point this seems potentially doable. Some ideas in the order I’d try them:
There is a person that has Kickstarted similar projects and you could contact him to see if they are willing to do a custom one-off. They’d probably be willing to just give you advice if you asked, too. Given that their entire Kickstarter was only $7000, at your price point this seems pretty likely.
You can download a 3D model online and find a local machine shop to CNC you one. For example, just googling “tungsten machine shop san francisco” turned up http://www.acmanufacturing.com/ which will probably mill tungsten from CAD.
Same, but find a 3D printing company that can make one for you. There are a few online (https://www.wolfmet.com/ e.g.), and you’d have to request a quote, but it may be a better option if the feedstock for CNC ends up being cost prohibitive. I’m not sure if this kind of place will do individual retail orders.
This is a pretty fun format. Actually, I really like this gomboc idea and briefly considered doing a Kickstarter on it after reading your post. But then I realized that Kickstarter would only really make sense if everyone were willing to pay $800. The market is so niche, that it would have to be a passion project to be worth the hassle I think.
Thingiverse doesn’t appear to have a working 3D model, nor does there appear to be one elsewhere. See this link: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:10190
There’s a design patent on the particular Gomboc shape, but that doesn’t apply to mono-monostatic shapes in general, and it expires in a few years anyway. I’ve added a bounty on creating/finding a working 3d model of a mono-monostatic shape.
Whew, glad I didn’t invest more time in this. Seems there is lurking complexity everywhere.