Carbon fiber is known for being incredibly light and incredibly strong, which is why it has found a home in industries ranging from aerospace to high-performance automotive. It is also extremely expensive, but thanks to years of interest and research that cost is being driven downward. Once reserved for aerospace and choice supercars, the composite is now making its way into vehicles like the new Corvette Stingray.
Now a Dallas-based company, DFWComposites, has taken to Kickstarter in order to offer backers the chance to lay claim to carbon-fiber cases for their Mac laptops. Their aim? To offer more protection at a similar price point when compared to other laptop sleeves on the market.
During our market research we were surprised to see how flimsy most cases really are. They either didn’t offer any meaningful protection and were designed to just add some color or show off a brand name, or at best were bulky and ugly pieces of neoprene with a cheap injection molded plastic outer cover. Somehow, many of these cases still managed to retail for upwards of 70 dollars even when the most elaborate probably had manufacturing costs of less than 10 dollars – including both material and labor – and some are probably worth less than a buck (seriously… injection molded plastic is cheap). Our cases are designed to offer real protection.
The cases are available for reservation from $85 to $250 depending on what type of MacBook the backer is carrying and how customized they want their case to be. The $250 version includes a tinted clear coat that will still show the attractive carbon fiber weave underneath. The team suggests these could be produced to “match your car,” so you get an idea of what the target market for this type of product might be.
The carbon we use is an aerospace certified class with a tensile strength of over 625,000psi. The carbon case takes the brunt of the impact and then the foam padding on the interior distributes it evenly over your laptop, allowing for the slowest possible deceleration rates of your device. This means that the g-forces your laptop is subjected to – the ultimate determinate of whether your expensive electronics survive – are significantly reduced.
The team states that they have already completed tooling for the retina MacBooks and will use a portion of the funds to complete tooling for other models. The cases are hand-made and the team has a goal of getting creation time to below 90 minutes per case.
The campaign is behind in funding at the time of writing, having raised under $5,000 of a $40,000 goal with 18 days to go.
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