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

[Ben Lincoln]

I imagine that for mass-production, the maker is actually machining metal
to create an injection mold. I assume they're using CNC, which means
having a CAD/CAM engineer model the mold and then transform it into
instructions for the robot. So it's time-consuming *and* requires skilled
labour.

It does mean that once you have the tooling, making individual parts is
very cheap, as the listed prices attest. The results are also much more
consistent than garage-molded parts, as much as I like garage work.

On Tue, December 9, 2008 11:47 am, Bob Weigel wrote:
> I don't know why mold make is so expensive for some parts.  Especially
> if you have a pattern and it's a tapered part that can be jammed into
> the clay w/ a little silicon on the surface...and pulled out.  The two I
> poured last night...one was pretty good and one had a major bubble but
> that was because I was using epoxe and it was hard to 'knead' it into
> the holes :-).  But I think I got a useable one when it dries
> completely.  Overnight it's still pretty plastic feeling.  When it
> hardens to where I can machine it I should be able to just drill a shaft
> hole and goop it onto the shaft and nobody will ever know the different
> unless they tear it off :-). -Bob