Stylus ideas


Grench

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An option I've thought of would be to use a 2 part hollow plastic stylus with a solid metal rod with bulbs on the end and two springs inside the plastic ends. It all snaps together

Plastic point

spring

Rod

spring

plastic butt

When removed from the Pyra it would automatically 'spring' out to length. When reinserted it would collapse down and be held in by the stock retainer clip.

The drawback would be that if tripped, it could leap out of the Pyra a meeter or more in the air.

/*************/

My main thought, though, was to get a stock Pyra stylus and go to a machine shop to have it 3D scanned and milled out of solid stainless steel with a hollow threaded point to add tips to - but where to get tips?

/************/

Then I started thinking more - which is usually a bad thing. A resistive stylus is pretty much a rod with a plastic tip. So are mark darts. They make 'supper short' 2ba tips for mark darts - and they're cheap. Like couple pennies each.

http://www.amazon.com/Viper-Tufflex-Super-Points-1000-Count/dp/B003ZZ1E4I

So - if we were to find some very narrow barreled tungsten darts - like these for example:

http://www.stlouisdart.com/catalog/product-model.asp?mcate=SOFTDART&mmanu=LASERDART&mtype=&mmodel=ESE

May need to put some short shafts on them and no flights.

But how about narrow pencil tungsten barreled, short nylon tipped, short shaft mark darts as stylus?

All of these will have to wait until the Pyra ships and we can delve into what the critical dimensions are.
 
As I care little of the touchscreen features of the Pyra as physical controls are the most luring feature of the device, I will support the stylus that's the most economically feasible. My guess this would be just be a solid plastic stylus made from the case material as it can be produced in mass along with the cases.

Nvm, I have seem to misinterpreted your post as another voting/argument discussion on the stylus, not something that you plan on doing yourself... so carry on..  I need to read more carefully.
 
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I can see the headlines now - "Man shot through face by gadget" or "Child loses eyer as stylus ejects itself from computer game" or "Testicles nailed by rogue stylus" 

That last one especially brings tears to the eye! :p

I can understand a telecopic expandable styus but a spring-loaded one is probably asking for trouble. I actually fired an SD card out of my Pandora a while back when I hadn't inserted it fully - it leapt across the room. I was amazed at just how powerful a simple spring can be. I know in all seriousness that my headlines are highly unlikely, but the loss of a stylus (or an eye) as a result of a spring-loaded incident is something I'd rather not have to worry about, but I'll be interested to see if you pull off your idea :)
 
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if we were to find some very narrow barreled tungsten darts
Tungsten sounds good, but expensive.  If it fit in the Pyra stylus slot it would be awesome.  Although they are cheap to replace, how durable are those tips?  It would suck to be out somewhere and have the tip break and not have a replacement.

I will have to look into these darts a bit more, but if it is feasible to have them expand only the back needs to expand, which can keep it from jumping out of the slot if something goes wrong.
 
Fantastic idea.

I found out that tungsten is regularly used with steel to produce darts. Harrows darts are made exclusivly in the UK. For a pack of 3stems it cost something like 3 pounds, and thats retail and they have the 1000 packs of soft tips.

Amazing value preposition if it works, id much rather pay 1 pound for a stylus that doesnt break and can have replaceable tips than the nds type.

Harrows also offers customization. They have been making darts for decades, so they probably have a batch or two of things that didnt turn out to be aerodynamically functional.

Dont know how well a ready made one will fit in a hole, but the case could easily be altered to accomodate something that clicks in from below (instead of slides)

Was going to buy some, but then there was too much to chose from, carbon fibre, titanium, aluminium, brass etc
 
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Compared to that, my old idea with an simple, replacable stylus tip sounds suddenly pretty sober and doable. :D

post-3044-0-56426600-1410805237.png


 
 
Mmm.. That particular product looks like it has large diameter brass barrels. The barrel is the heavy part between the nylon point and the lighter weight shaft that then holds the flights.


I was thinking that we should use the narrowest barrels available with very short tips & shafts. Looking at Harrows products, something more like this?

http://www.harrows-darts.com/catalog/soft-tip-darts/assassin-85-16gr-softip/


That way it comes closer in size to the stylus slot.


Those mini darts you pictured would be a good cheap theory test of mark dart as stylus though. Give them a try on your Pandora and let us know?
 
I was thinking that we should use the narrowest barrels available with very short tips & shafts. Looking at Harrows products, something more like this?

http://www.harrows-d...85-16gr-softip/

That way it comes closer in size to the stylus slot.
I really like the way that one looks.

Does anyone know the widths of the Pandora stylus?  I measured it a while ago when looking at some options, but have forgotten the dimensions and don't feel like measuring it right now.  I only see this as a viable option if I don't have to make major external changes to my devices.
 
So the search is on then for the narrowest diameter plastic tipped mark darts barrels.

These are 6mm:

http://www.dartscorner.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=49034

The target is 5mm.

The 2BA thread that the replaceable tips screw into requires a 4mm hole that then gets tapped for the threads. On the 6mm example above this leaves a tube wall thickness of 1mm. SO - I don't know if we will ever get down to the diameter of the Pandora stylus (5mm) as that would bring the tube wall thickness down to 0.5mm prior to threading to 2BA.

So - who can find a 5.5mm diameter mark darts barrel?
 
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Learning more about darts than I knew I wanted to. Apparently there is a new design called the 'M3' that reverses the barrel to be male threaded. Points and shafts then screw on around the barrel thread instead of into it.

http://www.dartguy.com/m3.html

Apparently M3 darts can be as skinny as 4.6mm?

New technology though so the barrels are rather expensive. BUT if we could find a dart mfg who could make them out of cheaper stuff (stainless instead of tungsten)... THere wouldn't be any reason that these couldn't be made in quantity with cheap replaceable nylon tips at exactly the desired length.
 
Interesting ideas with the darts.  My main concern though is that all the tips featured in the linked pictures are far too long.   If I held one of those with my normal stylus grip I'd be holding it by the tip, not the barrel.

- Neelix
 
^ my plan was to cut off the excess if I used a dart.

Grench, I am now sifting through stuff trying to find something that would work with the Pandora stylus dimensions.  I would still like something nice on the back that would allow for it to slide in and out as easily as the stock stylus, which I don't think will be too hard to come up with, even if it isn't as fancy as using a high end dart as a stylus.  For the Pyra maybe we can convince ED and the case company to give us an extra mm or so in width (which would be nice even for the stock stylus).  If that would cause more hassle for them then pretend I didn't say anything about it.
 
*blinks*  Wouldn't cutting off the tip kind of defeat the purpose of using such a tip in the first place?

- Neelix
I'm guessing he means the other side of the tip -- the one that goes into the dart casing. 

-Glyph Reader
 
*blinks*  Wouldn't cutting off the tip kind of defeat the purpose of using such a tip in the first place?

- Neelix
Not if you only cut some of it off, then round it off, which is not too different from cleaning up the Pandora stylus.

You can't have the tip both long and short at the same time, so pick which you prefer and go with that.
 
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