It’s pretty easy to get overwhelmed by all of the stylus options out there. But just as a chef might search for that perfect knife year after year, a designer might undertake a similar quest to find the smoothest / best-weighted / most ergonomic digital drafting instrument. Dominic Peralta, the lead industrial designer at Speck Products, and Jon Corpuz, Lead Industrial Designer at Nook Media/Barnes & Noble, have entered the fray with Timbrr, a new stylus based on the iconic pencil silhouette and designed to be produced locally.
But before we get to all of that pencil-making and local sourcing, let’s start from the beginning. “Timbrr’s story actually started with a simple game app that took over all the iPhones at one point of time," Peralta says. “We were absolutely obsessed with Draw Something and wanted to have a stylus that said ‘I’m playing!’ So, we ran to the shop, grabbed some dowels, drilled holes through them (don’t try this at home!), inserted a thin stylus, sanded it and painted it pencil yellow."
While the inspiration remained the same, it was obvious the duo pair needed to rethink their materials if they were going to be making these for more than just themselves. After testing about a dozen different wood varieties, Peralta and Corpuz decided to go with an incensed Western Cedar. While many designers turn to wood for its aesthetic or trendiness, a functional criterion informed the Timbrr team’s material selection: “It has a high resin content, meaning that a natural resin that grows along with the tree is impregnated into the wood," Peralta says. “This resin helps to transmit static electricity from your hand, through the cedar wood, into the copper core and down to the touch screen device." Other wood varieties with a lower resin content don’t hold work as well with touch screen capabilities. Luckily, it turns out that one of the largest cedar mills in the United States is located a mere three hours from their studio in California, anchoring their local sourcing efforts.
While Timbrr 2.0 might have followed true pencil form by sporting a bright yellow coat, the duo chose to go with a more natural aesthetic for the production version. “It was when we machined our first husks of cedar that the realized how beautiful and unique the grain was and decided to ditch the yellow paint," Peralta says. “Keeping it natural also brought out the aroma of the cedar and most importantly encourages the wood to patina over time, so that each Timbrr is unique and special to its owner."
The team used Shopbot to bring their design to life—which seems like a completely natural choice, except for the fact that neither of the designers had any experience using a CNC mill on their own before. Peralta and Corpuz had seen the machines in action at many a Maker Faire and wanted to find a way to forgo expensive classes or costly memberships to tech shops. Peralta shares more on the decision:
We learned lots of skills in a traditional woodworking style shop and had a little experience using a basic hand operated mill… but nothing like this. Early on in the process, we made it a goal to teach ourselves CNC’ing. We decided to go with a Shopbot because they are the tried and true company in that space. The team there has lots of working tribal knowledge of CNC’ing and after talking with them several times on the phone, it made me feel really confident that this was the right direction.
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