Hi, friends!

Thank you so much for fully funding LUNA so quickly! It has been a thrill to see how many of you are backing, sharing, and talking about this campaign. We at Great Scott Gadgets (@gsglabs) are truly grateful to all of you for supporting us and our dream of making USB accessible to everyone.

Throughout this campaign, and after, we will post updates on the LUNA project so you can learn more about the hardware you will be receiving and the development work you are funding. For this first update since our launch, we’ll be giving you a peek at our current progress on the case for LUNA.

Background

Initially, we planned on creating a laser-cut acrylic enclosure for LUNA. We had started sketching out a design when Michael Ossmann saw the beautiful design work Timon of Diodes Delight did on the milled aluminum case for Glasgow. Mike contacted Timon right away to ask for his design help as we knew a milled aluminum case would be a high quality option, more durable and protective than our original layered acrylic idea. Soon after, Timon accepted our request and started working on a case.

Progress

We have worked with Timon on the case design over the past few months, which has been a delight. He did a nice job of shaping the interior to maximize mass and give the case a comfortable (yet light) weight while still accommodating all of LUNA’s components. Timon even found light pipes that suit LUNA’s tightly spaced LEDs, which are less than 2 mm apart! Recently, Timon sent us the following 3D renders, and we knew we had our design.

A little over two weeks ago we approached our manufacturers with the case design to get the first prototypes made. In the time since the campaign launched, we have received pictures of the freshly milled top pieces of the enclosure.

Once milling is finished, these prototypes will be sandblasted, anodized, and laser etched. Sandblasting will remove the tool marks from the interior of the cases, anodizing will coat the aluminum and turn it black, as shown in the 3D renders. Laser etching will add the labels, GSG markings, and other symbols to the case.

Next Steps + Contest Announcement

We really look forward to receiving these prototype cases soon, testing them, and uploading pictures/updates for you shortly after! For now, the Great Scott Gadgets team would love to see what you would etch on the bottom of your own LUNA case (as shown below) if you had a case in hand and a laser etcher.

If you are creatively inclined, you can compete to be the one (1) person who receives a prototype LUNA case etched with their design. Here’s how:

• Download the image of the empty case base (above)
• Add your design to the image (within the lines)
• Post your updated design to Twitter before 2021-07-30 and tag (@gsglabs).

Within two weeks after the end of the design period, some of the Great Scott Gadgets team will get together (online) and choose our favorite entry. Once chosen, we will announce the winner and send them a custom etched case by the end of the campaign. Good luck and see you soon for another LUNA project update!