In general one of the most difficult steps in designing a system or product is integrating components together especially for small footprint products like laptop computers or low profile items where unobtrusiveness is required. Nobody wants a portable product with large clunky hinge housings hanging off the ends, which can easily be crushed or broken. Concealed dampers are the norm. Usually in a rotary viscous damper I design the active damping section to be round or tubular with flats or tapped holes so that the damper can be constrained inside end connections to tie all components together. Sometimes these  adapting components can take on unconventional shapes which can be difficult to design and produce by traditional fabricating methods. Recently popular is the availability of 3d printed parts as adapters and also as rotary viscous damper housings. So no matter how strange the shape Mechanical Motion Technologies  can produce your desired shape so that you can get your initial prototypes to customers, internal and external, faster without sacrificing functionality. See us at mmtech.us for your next project.