Formify
Formify, a Canadian start-up dedicated to producing custom 3D printed gaming mice, is already being used by professional gamers, but is now available for everyone, after the company launched its Kickstarter campaign. The company aims to improve player performance in Esports competitions with products that are created from a scan of a customer’s hand.
Formify Co-Founder Will MacLaughlin told TCT: “After almost 3 years of working on what started as a project, I am proud to get our Kickstarter off the ground! It has been a long road that is likely only just beginning. We are excited to keep innovating the additive manufacturing and mass customisation spaces. A huge thanks for all of the support from so many different parties.”
MacLaughlin also told TCT in a conversation for TCT Magazine earlier this year that the company had hoped to get its Kickstarter off the ground towards the end of 2022, but had to delay the launch.
As the company gets ready to launch the product, it revealed that it had created over 100 prototypes to fine tune the design parameters and shape of the mice in the three years since the company began during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Formify
The process for creating the custom mice begins with a simple photograph of a customer’s hand in front of a piece of paper, which is then analysed to get the dimensions of the hand, the details of the bone structure and joint structure. This information is then put into a tech stack, which gives a clean data set of the hand with a masking image.
Formify’s product features a tracking speed of 650 IPS, a resolution of up to 16,000 DPI and an average weight of 55g according to the company.
The start-up initially got going after working with 3D printing company Hubs, which helped it to bring the mouse designs to the prototyping stage and perfect the product. In October, Hubs CEO Alex Cappy said: “Gaming is an enormous market that’s intrinsically tied to consumer electronics manufacturing. However, personalised design is still not an essential part of manufacturing for gaming. This presented an opportunity to the Formify team to bring unique, custom products to an industry solely in need of such hardware innovation.”
The Formify Kickstarter campaign went live at 11am EST on March 21, 2023.
