THOTCON 0xD Badge — Part 4: Enclosures, Tariffs, and the Grind of Production
Fentanyl tariffs and supply chain disruption
Enclosures, Tariffs, and the Grind of Production
If firmware is where the badge comes alive, enclosure design is what gives it a body—and manufacturing is where things get real.
This post digs into the physical side of the badge: the acrylic enclosures, the headaches of international part sourcing, and the logistics of getting hundreds of units built and into hackers' hands.
Enclosure Design: Acrylic > Injection Mold
Back in Part 1 I mentioned our early enclosures were laser-cut from standard Glowforge acrylic. We doubled-down on that approach for production because:
- Cost-efficiency – acrylic came in at roughly one-third to one-fourth the price of injection-molded plastic.
- Speed & flexibility – no tooling lead-times; we could iterate with every new laser pass.
- DIY aesthetics – a badge that shows its guts through clear acrylic just looks right.
Fastening: we chose M2.5 bolts (matching typical PCB drill sizes). They started at 12 mm length; production dropped to 10 mm after test fits.
Why Only a Front Plate?
The plan was a full clam-shell (front + back), but reality intervened:
- Tight timeline (tariffs delayed parts)
- Volunteer labor limits
- Extra screws per unit doubled assembly time
So we shipped a single front face. It still looked slick and protected the PCB while providing a finger guide for the capacitive touch wheel.
Ponoko, Samples, & Last-Minute Lasers
- Supplier: Ponoko (NZ-US distributed maker service).
- Timeline: Samples months out → final run two weeks pre-event.
- Assembly: boxes of acrylic + bags of screws landed at THOTCON; volunteers armed with hex drivers did the rest.
Tariffs, DHL, and… Fentanyl?
Our screens arrived on a bill of $6 k—then customs classified them as televisions → $10 k tariff. After two days of calls with DHL we got a creative re-code and knocked the fee down to $4,500 of fentanyl tariffs (of all things). Ridiculous, but it cleared.
Screens then shipped to Absolute Electronics (Mount Prospect, IL), our turnkey assembler.
Final Assembly & Cost
- PCB fab + population: Absolute Electronics
- Enclosure: laser-cut acrylic, M2.5 × 10 mm bolts
- Unit cost (all-in): ≈ $25 per badge
Not bad for a fully custom PCB, display, acrylic faceplate, and bespoke firmware stack.
Up Next
Part 5 will wrap the series with lessons learned, what we’ll change next time, and principles for community-driven hardware at scale.
Questions? Ping us or find me on Twitter—always happy to talk shop.