Need a part?

[Charlie]

Are you looking for a pencil box for your CT-100, or a yoke cover for your Motorola? Now it looks like we can produce one by pushing a button. Sounds like the replicator on Star Trek TNG, doesn't it?

I was just watching a story on the CBS Morning News, and they demonstrated a 3-D Printer and produced various items with great detail. Apparently an item is scanned, and then the "print head" draws it out layer by layer.

Just think what this could do when it comes to duplicating a hard to find part. You would never have to look for a knob again. Just get a good one from another VK member, make a scan of it, "print" a new one, and send the original knob back to the owner. Maybe make a copy of the "Deluxe" or "Special" letters that are on the front of your CTC-5. I recently broke one of those little convergence magnet sticks... it fell apart due to being cracked in several places. No biggie... just print a new one. Same goes for an escutcheon... just push a button and print one up.

What do you guys think about this? Do you think these would produce quality parts? What other commonly needed parts do you think would be a good to make copies?

BTW... these 3D printers cost a few thousand bucks.

[N2IXK]

3D printers might be just the ticket for small plastic trim parts or other items that don't see much mechanical stress. The printed parts I have seen have been somewhat flimsy, but the process is capable of fine detail. Knobs might be a possibility, if you had a metal strengthening collar around the shaft hole (like many originals did).

Of course, if the "Intellectual Property" crowd gets its way, they will try to strangle the whole concept in it's infancy, by forcing 3D printers to "clear" any design against a master database of "forbidden shapes" before allowing them to print:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/1...to-3d-printers

http://torrentfreak.com/3d-printer-d...-a-car-121012/

[Sandy G]

Why not just get it to whup out a WHOLE CT-100 ?!? (grin)

[Charlie]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Why not just get it to whup out a WHOLE CT-100 ?!? (grin)

Sandy, that could actually be a possibility down the road as the technology improves. I suppose if you had a rather large printer, you could spit out an entire cabinet... then cover it with wood-grained laminate or just paint it. There would be the question of whether or not the material would be able to deal with the heat build-up with the set operating.

N2 mentioned parts being flimsy, so there would be the issue with it dealing with the weight as well.

I know the idea of creating a cabinet sounds crazy, but really, it just goes to show that the possibily exists.

In any case, replicating small plastic parts would certainly be an interesting experiment. Now I just need a few grand to blow on such a crazy idea.

[N2IXK]

Even if we had a 3D printer that could print a 15GP22 (or any other CRT), you would still have to evacuate it, activate the cathodes, and flash the getters before you could use it.

The sheer number of exotic materials that go into vacuum tubes make them an unattractive prospect for 3D printing, at least until the technology advances enough that we can simply reload the printer with stocks of individual chemical elements, and the printer makes the materials it needs from them.

A machine like THAT would be the ultimate "disruptive technology". I can't imagine that any government would ever allow such a thing to become widely available. Hell, being able to print whatever structure you wanted using only 4 elements (Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen) would completely undermine the War on Drugs. Add in various metals, and gun control becomes impossible.

[miniman82]

To make an actual pencil box, you would need to take the plastic part from the 3D printer and have a cast taken from it. Then you would have to cast a metal die, and stamp parts from that. While it's cool, it's not quite as simple as spitting out repro parts.

[Charlie]

I was not suggesting we could make a 15G or any of the other electronic parts involved in a set... we sure aren't that far along yet. I am mainly talking about plastic parts. My post above, while somewhat far fetched, was talking about dupilcating a cabinet for a CT100.

But still, the idea of duplicating simple parts does show how far along we are getting in technology. As far as complex parts, you never know. Twenty years from now, we just might be able to duplicate something such as a 15G.

[Phil Nelson]

With current technology, it's practical to make (comparatively) simple, lightweight things like plastic knobs.

To know what to create, the printer needs an STL (stereolithography) file that describes your object in three dimensions.

That is the rub for the shade-tree 3-D printing enthusiasts. I'm not expert in using CAD software and I don't have a 3-D scanner lying around my workshop, so if someone handed me a free 3-D printer today, I wouldn't be equipped to use it.

Perhaps years from now, the cost of all this stuff will come down enough to make it practical for hobbyists. It might simplify life for the guys who make lots of repro knobs. Instead of shelves full of molds for casting knobs, your computer has a folder full of 3-D description files. Send the right file to the printer and load it with the right colored goo, and then press the Print button.

The difficult part, as I understand it, is making the 3-D description file in the first place. I think today's cheap printers are also limited in what sort of material they can squirt out. Fun to think about, anyhow.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

P.S. I doubt that copyright would pose any problems. Nobody has a stake in protecting the design rights to 60-year old plastic knobs, etc. There is no real money to be made by fabricating them (hobbyist markets are meaningless in the larger business economy) and selling repros does not threaten anyone's current business. You are in no danger of being sued by Farnsworth-Capehart if you fabricate a 1948 661-P knob.