making you own knobs

[Dave Wilke]

In my other life I am a fanatical plastic model builder (i.e. when I'm not 
trying to electrocute myself or burn down the garage I amuse myself creating 
noxious fumes and ruining perfectly good clothes...).  I make my own parts 
from resin all the time.  I mostly use SynAir products available on-line 
through Bare-Metal Models (http://www.bare-metal.com).

My first thought looking at your idea was, "Is he NUTS???"... then I got to 
thinking about it.  You're looking at three problems:
1) Casting is expensive.  Unless you are making *lots* of knobs you will 
probably spend less if you just buy cheap knobs.
2) Resin will produce an absolutely accurate copy, but it will be brittle.  
I would strongly suggest you do this only for friction-fit knobs.  Trying to 
tighten a threaded set screw would only strip the hole long before it was 
tight enough to last.
3) Any paint you use will, over a very short time, tend to wear off.  Be 
prepared for a knob which will be flesh colored most of the time.

If I haven't discouraged you yet ;-) I would suggest taking a two-part mold 
approach.  If there is sufficient interest, I would be willing to try to 
write a short tutorial on mold making and casting.

Anyone interested?

dave


>Hi!
>
>As a sat around looking at the real TB-303 i thought
>about how bad i want to have the same knobs and buttons
>on my 303 replicant. So I said to myself: Why dont you
>make your own knobs in epoxy. And then I asked myself
>now how am I going to do that. So after thinking some
>making up some crazy ways of producing them I thought.
>Hey lets ask the DIY guys if they have any suggestions
>or maybe even seen s wacky site with a tutorial for
>that crazy shit your trying to pull of here.
>So if you do please share with me.
>
>/ Andreas
>

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