Commission a company to design a new plastic facia for the empeg including transparent buttons and lense's.

or if we could get permission to get the original company that did the moulding for the empeg to do another run of facias (colored/Tinted) and buttons(transparent/Tinted) (I do remember reading the the original mould was not useable any more)

And what sort of costs are involved in producing say 200 of these.


Just a bit bored and thinking what if.

C.

I would imagine a run would have to be at least 1000

I would imagine a run would have to be at least 1000

Did you forget a '0'?

Stu

I've never done anything like that, but I do know that 200 is way too low. You're probably right. Of course if SB did that many, they have a load of them sitting around somewhere, because they didn't make that many mk2 and mk2a units.

Any of you empeg guys care to comment?

You could do it for about £25,000 including a soft tool good for around 3000 shots.

Fixing up the original tool would probably cost £15,000+ but I suspect it has been scrapped by now.

Rob

Actually, I thought you were referring to the cost of the run, $10,000 dollars. Your run can be whatever you want, it's just a matter of how much you are willing to pay per piece. Obviously, the more pieces the more you can stretch the costs of the molds and machine time (Injection molders?).

Stu

Oh, I didn't include the cost of an actual run. For 200 pieces it would probably be about £15 per set of fascia/screen/buttons - it gets a cheaper as the volume goes up.

Rob

ah...I speak as a fool...but the point is, mucho dinero!

Hey, but if we redesigned the face and went in on it together... Hm. New idea... Ok, time for a new thread...

Whatsa matter, the custom stuff the few of us are making isn't good enough for you?

It's always nice for the options to be plentifull. The more ways to modify the look of the empeg the better. I plan on using this for quite some time.

Well I'm still working on the idea of your own custom designed ones. It's just a matter of time to put in the project.

You know, it's been a while since I've done any prototype building, but I am a mechanical engineer, and did quite a bit of this at one point, so I submit this to the group for consideration. I'm sure that many of you are already aware of these processes, so forgive me if these comments are obvious.

There is a process called stereolithography (STL) which creates a plastic part in "layers" using a laser hardening resin. The resultant part is brittle, but (depending upon the machine) can have a very good surface finish that requires little or no work. These models are used frequently for mock-ups, but they can also be used to create molds for plastic parts.

Plastic resins exist that can be used in a silicone mold that is created on the STL part. Molds can also be built from the STL positive that can be used in a vacuum molding process for short production runs in polyuretheane resins. The polyurethane can be prepared in any color. The resultant part is typically not useful for all applications, but for a fascia that doesn't carry any load, I don't see why it would be an issue at all. A polyurethane fascia would be just fine, it seems to me.

Compared to spending upwards of $15-30k for a "soft" tool to be used in a plastic injection molding machine, these approaches can be very economical for low run (under 100 units, typically) model building.

Finally, there are processes that allow STL masters to be used (destructively) for aluminum or steel casting, resulting in a metal part instead of a plastic part. Another alternative is to create a silicone mold from the STL model and use it to pour wax, which is then used in a lost wax casting process to create metal parts. Imagine: a brass fascia for your empeg!

Jim

brass? heck, why not solid gold?

errm, some very rough calculations indicate the material cost alone for a GOLD facia is in the order of £3,500 or $5,500

(based on a facia having a volume of 25cc's, density of Gold ~ 20g/cc, hence weight of facia ~ 500g & Gold priced at £7000/kg)

Me, I suddenly quite like the one I've got.

Cheers all, Sim

errm, some very rough calculations indicate the material cost alone for a GOLD facia is in the order of £3,500 or $5,500

You could reduce the price somewhat by using something less than 24 Kt gold, which would be too soft anyway. 18 or 14 Kt would be harder and perhaps cost 25 - 41% less (18 Kt gold is 75% gold and 25% copper and other metals).

Stu

And it could also be gold-plated, too.

*tongue in cheek* That would look so ghetto-fabulous!

And it could also be gold-plated, too.

I thought about that too, especially since we have all the necessary chemicals and equipment to do gold and silver plating (cyanide involved).

Stu

I work in medical device development and we use SLA a lot. I actually used this process with an RTV silicone mold and made Handles for a proto device that were quite sturdy. Another route would be to use soft tool ALUMINUM molds which, given the simple nature of the facia could be made for a very reasonable cost (<$10,000) per part cost could be as low as $15-20 each. (We do this for many of our pre-production and pilot products)