Harald Welte wrote:
There are big machines for professional/industrial ID-0 card punching, I've seen them on alibaba.com and other chinese trading sites a number of times. Unfortunately a bit too large for our purpose.
i think there were 'pliers' like cutting tools when we moved from fullsize to id-0 size. currently i could only find the kind of pliers to 'put 2 sims into a dualsim-adapter'
As for a laser cutter solution: Roh, I believe your Berlin hackerspace Raumfahrtagentur now has a laser cutter. Is this one capable of cutting through the smartcard plastic? If yes, that could be an inexpensive solution at least for the German OsmocomBB / OpenBSC hackers...
we could cut through it without any problems i guess, but such plastic cards are usually made from PVC which contains chlorine, which sadly is a really bad idea to use a laser cutter on (generates chlorine gas) since it can not only damage humans but supposedly also the machine.
but if we cannot find a source for the 'cutting pliers' style equipment.. we got a cnc mill also, and could use that to make some kind of metal stamp kit.
what do you guys think? i would say: lets have some working sim code first and use some pair of scissors for cutting the sim till we need to stamp out volume ;) just print out some alignment-help on paper, glue it to the back of the chipcard with doublesided tape or spray-on and use paper-scissors. its only thin pvc and gives nicer edges than the cutter only. just be careful not to bend the chip but the rest of the card.
regards
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roh