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

[Bob Weigel]

I know I've seen some of the facilities.  It's still stupid that they 
don't have (since they have all the materials there) a much WIDER range 
of things they'll accomidate for more reasonable prices.  For example 
they might actually make a better hourly rate quoting someone on making 
20 crude knobs like these on the ARP quartet for ya know.  Say somebody 
just wanted the plastic form and they were willing to drill the holes 
for the shafts and goop them on.  All those people would have to do is 
take a clay that is designed for this...lube a part and jam it down in 
them 20X.  Take a device made to dispense the plastic and pour it in the 
holes.  Let it set up. Hand it to them in a bag and get the 80 bucks.  
I'll bet that would take them all over  5 minutes to make the mold, 5 
minutes to pour....!!!  WHY are people so freaking dumb is I guess what 
I'm asking! :-)  Why don't they want to make 400 dollars per hour when 
the have the gear right there instead of wasting time talking to you 
about ordering 4000 of something that they know you aren't going to go 
for at a cost of 3400 dollars or whatever?

hehe.  I guess I'm more accomidating in my business.  And if I did that 
kind of business I would actually probably do a run like that for 34 
dollars for someone if it is as easy as I think it would be.  Then a 
person whose lost all their slider caps like one I have here right now 
could go in and get them at ar reasonable price.  Bore them and paint 
them in another hour and have 80 bucks into a set of knobs you can't 
get...but which would look identical to stock pretty much and would 
increase the value of the instrument 140 dollars.    There are just tons 
of things like that an innovative person could do if they had a facility 
already set up to do bigger tasks.  Why not when it takes less time to 
do it than to talk to someone about not doing it? :-) -Bob

Ben Lincoln wrote:

>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
>>    
>>
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Synth-diy mailing list
>Synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
>http://dropmix.xs4all.nl/mailman/listinfo/synth-diy
>
>
>  
>