[sdiy] Reproductions of Vintage Synth Parts (how are they made?)

[Tom Arnold]

On Mon, Dec 08, 2008 at 09:37:35PM -0500, Ken Elhardt wrote:
> I'm wondering how it appears so easy for the Technology Transplant guy
> on ebay to make reproductions of vintage synth knobs, buttons,
> switches and so on.  I was under the impression that getting some
> custom plastic part fabricated from scratch was expensive, but he's
> got all kinds of stuff.  Does anybody know the process a private
> individual would have to go through to make a reproduction of a
> Jupiter-8 knob in quantity for example?  Are the costs reasonable?

I went through a lot of trouble when I was working on getting reproductions
of the Davies 1900H knob made.  This is the knob used on a lot of stuff like
Modcan gear.

Anyhow...

Best price I found was via Taiwan Knobs.

Tooling charge was quoted at $2900
Per Part  15cents
Min order 3000 pieces

30% Deposit, 40% when samples are ready, 30% when samples approved.

To get decent pricing you have to order at least 10,000 or sell them at
greater then $1ea.    These prices are from 5 or so years ago.   The numbers
just never worked out for me to be able to do it.  Note that my goal was to
get them well below $1ea in decent quantities.

Tooling for phenolic is much more expensive then for regular plastics like a
lot of more modern knobs are made from.  Found a US supplier that could have
done the knobs in a modern plastic for a tooling fee of $1600 or so and if I
remember 25cents/ea but in this case it wouldnt have looked right.

-- 
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 - Tom Arnold       -  Free Synth DIY webspace http://www.sdiy.org 
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