Well done on shipping. Reading this gave me PTSD of shipping our first hardware product at a similar scale. It was a tough experience but you'll have learned a huge amount and be much better equipped for the second time (if you choose to keep going). I found the biggest takeaway is planning for things to go wrong in advance and building enough slack into the process so that you can accommodate some setbacks.
GT Flexa was super fun to work with. The numerals on Altar I are, as you can imagine, the widest and thinnest that Flexa would go! I also added a custom Egyptian "I", rather than the default "I" since it reads less like a lowercase "L".
As @yeutterg says below it is possible to self certify CE.
For prototyping the body, I initially 3d printed it, then moved to 1 off cnc milling. For this I mostly used Geomiq (geomiq.com), which farms it out to various countries (mostly china from what I can tell), then they make it and send it to you. I plan to have the case manufactured in the UK — I found contacts for this because I happen to work in the automotive industry in the UK currently. The most difficult part of the case will be anodising which will require a lot of trial and error.
For the plastics, they are all 3d printed for prototyping, and will be injection moulded in the UK for production.
PCBs are printed in China for prototyping. Not sure where the production PCBs will come from yet.
In theory the board works with Linux, but it has not actually been tested. If it is tested with Linux and is confirmed working, I will specify that in the specs.
Thanks, I'm so happy you — and lots of others — like what I've been working on. It means a lot, it's very fulfilling.
I don't find the criticism demoralising. Quite the opposite, it means people are engaged, which I love. I tried to create a product with a strong design and as a result it's quite divisive. That's okay. Good, even.
I put this thing up on the internet and asked for peoples opinions... and that's what I got. Lots of opinions! Many of which are valid, and I will take back and work on.
At the end of the day the site got a lot of traffic, lots of people expressed interest in the product and I got lots of feedback. It's a win-win and I am very happy.
Yes you are right, it is hard to get a sense of the materials from these CGI renders. Getting hold of recycled aluminium in small quantities is proving difficult so hence the hedge to say recyclable* not recycled* on the website. I will try hard to make it some % recycled aluminium though.
The grain on the videos is poor and I'll work on that.
The finish of the materials is not finalised but to give you an idea, the case will be a semi-satin anodised aluminium. It will likely be more matte than, say, a Macbook. The plastic will be a matte PBT type hard plastic.