Chimera Industries Cerberus: The 18L, mATX, USA-made enclosure

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,943
4,952
This is going to be amazingly well done. I like the red shirt, it reminds me of the color I want my Cerby in.
 

Big Kate

What's an ITX?
Feb 28, 2016
1
0
cross-post of reply to your contact page and your request page
two issues
Dust and Noise reduction
I have not seen anything about shielding for dust and sound (because I haven't been looking hard enough probably)
Could you look at getting a custom design set from someone like http://www.demcifilter.com/default.aspx and either stock it yourself or link to their product
Equally a set of custom shaped sound deadening pads that allow people to trade space for noise and weight would be very very useful
I am sure you could crowd research what people would want from the boards.

But more importantly for me:

Fulfilment in Europe
Europe is lots of different countries with different import duties and Sales taxes. There are three basic options

Option 1 - give up - price everything for USA only and quote ship rates to Europe. Leave all the import duties, shipping charges, bond costs, and service charges to your European customers.

Option 2. Fulfilment by Pitney Bowes or Amazon Europe. Pitney Bowes runs the global ship programme for Ebay. One of the easiest ways is to simply link to a buy-it-now on ebay.com and let Ebay add the costs. There are a bunch of companies that can handle all of this, these range from the solutions offered by Pitney Bowes for Ebay, through alternatives to Alibaba through to full stack companies who supply the shop software and handle everything such as Amazon Europe
http://is.gd/cOjkCf Amazon gives you an easy presence that everybody knows in multiple markets across Europe

Option 3. Second source Build
This is by far the nicest option for your customers but would require some work to deliver. It could also be a stage 2 following a fulfilment by company solution using US production. Knowing something is built in the US rather than China doesn't endear you to your customers in Europe.
But built in the EU does as its inside fortress Europe and thus we know the price advertised is the price paid (its often illegal to advertise sans Sales tax) and support is likely to be better.
Finding engineering companies who could do this for you used to be hard but the growth of the hackspace movement across Europe means that their are lots of people with good knowledge of fabrication companies who could build this on
So for the UK I would suggest asking on uk-hackspaces@googlegroups.com
The advantage of the UK being that we speak similar languages to you
Across Europe there are also a wide range very good engineering companies with low cost production from the UK through Germany to Poland and other eastern European countries.
Finding out where is likely to be an effort in crowd knowledge from the boards you use.
In my case most of the local engineering companies are focused on formula 1 racing and worldwide motorsports, otherwise space industries etc basically high tech advanced engineering, not the bend and brake engineering you I suspect need
but if you think I can help do ask

either way thanks for building Nova - so I don't have to!
the market for such a product became obvious when 18 months ago I was looking to build a portable VR system*. i eventually ended up with a compromised solution that works but not as well as I had hoped. up till now it increasingly looked like I would need a custom solution and now I don't have to.
thanks very much for all your work
Kate

PS * my current portable VR solution is built in a Silverstone SG13 using a 500w SFXL and a printed adaptor plate. I have water cooled GTx980 and water cooled I7 and went through hell to get that to work and its still way to Noisy,
 

Horstprott

Caliper Novice
Feb 5, 2016
23
0
I'm so excited it's nearly time for the next big reveal and the crowd funding options. Fortunately I get paid tomorrow.
 

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990

A lot of your questions will be addressed at least in part once the crowdfunding campaign launches, but let me go through item-by-item:

1. Regarding filters, we'll probably have Demciflex offer ones that are custom-fit to Cerberus, if they're interested. NCASE had a similar thing, and we'd just have to provide them with the proper dimensions, essentially. That said, I think most people would be better off with fan-sized filters on their fans, and a positive-pressure cooling configuration (good practice for nearly all builds) that would ensure that dust doesn't enter where hardware isn't mounted.

2. Regarding sound-deadening panels, it's simply not something we're able to provide, nor is there likely enough demand to make it anyways. Cerberus will be as loud as your components - which, save for enclosures that are specifically over-built to reduce noise, is true of all cases for the most part.

3. Regarding fulfillment, we can ship internationally and have a partner we're working with to do that. Shipping costs will be visible once the campaign goes live, and we have granularity on that down to individual countries. Import duties and other such charges are (as always) the responsibility of the buyer.

4. Regarding building enclosures in Europe, it's simply outside the scope of the crowdfunding campaign, but we're considering such a setup for future projects, if we get there. We've actually been approached by a few third parties that have expressed interest in doing this, or in doing everything from manufacturing through to fulfillment (in essence they'd be licensing the design). But we want to control everything for now, to ensure that Cerberus is as well-made as possible.

Thanks for the questions!
 

EdZ

Virtual Realist
May 11, 2015
1,578
2,107
3. Regarding fulfillment, we can ship internationally and have a partner we're working with to do that. Shipping costs will be visible once the campaign goes live, and we have granularity on that down to individual countries. Import duties and other such charges are (as always) the responsibility of the buyer.
For Europe, due to harmonised customs & excise, check with your fulfilment partner if they can pass things through customs at point-of-entry in bulk rather than deferred to recipient. Being able to pay duty & tax up-front makes receiving shipments faster, and it also is cheaper for customers (as the processing fee is spread out across tens/hundreds of packages rather than an individual fee for each).
 

Pat-Roner

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Feb 18, 2016
140
103
cross-post of reply to your contact page and your request page
two issues
Dust and Noise reduction
I have not seen anything about shielding for dust and sound (because I haven't been looking hard enough probably)
Could you look at getting a custom design set from someone like http://www.demcifilter.com/default.aspx and either stock it yourself or link to their product
Equally a set of custom shaped sound deadening pads that allow people to trade space for noise and weight would be very very useful
I am sure you could crowd research what people would want from the boards.

As for sound, I'll try to custom order sealed panels from them, so that I can add sound insulating myself.
Should not be that hard since the case is fairly hand made.

Two back panels, and a solid top panel, and I think it's going to be a fairly silent case.
 

jeshikat

Jessica. Wayward SFF.n Founder
Silver Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
4,969
4,783
For Europe, due to harmonised customs & excise, check with your fulfilment partner if they can pass things through customs at point-of-entry in bulk rather than deferred to recipient.

Thanks, I'll check into it.

As for sound, I'll try to custom order sealed panels from them, so that I can add sound insulating myself.

After looking at the planned schedule we won't be doing a pre-production run, it just adds too much time. Instead we'll be doing a smaller run just for testing and maybe have a few cases for review units. You could maybe get a second solid panel since the back panel will be solid and they're interchangeable from left to right but probably not a solid top.
 

PlayfulPhoenix

Founder of SFF.N
Original poster
SFFLAB
Chimera Industries
Gold Supporter
Feb 22, 2015
1,052
1,990
So much to do, so much left to do...

 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,943
4,952
If you look closely, you'll see multiple sets of eyes staring back at us. Illuminati ?

Nice work there Phoenix, even a storyboard with sketches !