showmans lost wax castings !!!!!

You will know from reading the letter that came with the belly tank kit that we were experiencing some delays with the lost wax casting. Well, not the castings themselves but the rapid prototypes used to create the wax mould.

Rapid Prototypes are made directly from our 3D solid files. Normally, they use a sophisticated ink jet printer to build the item in very thin layers using an ABS plastic. Dean and I went to the Mach show in the NEC earlier this year and came across a printer that used a plaster powder rather than plastic. We were both very impressed with the surface finish. It was much cleaner than the plastic masters that we have used so far. Each plastic master can take several hours of work to get them to a state suitable for LWC. The plaster ones hardly needed anything.

So, we decided to give them a trial and asked them to produce the masters for the belly tank tank kit. We placed the order, straight after the show in early June, they promised that we would have the samples in a couple of weeks. Now bearing in mind that the company was potentially looking at selling us one of their printers you would expect a reasonable amount of contact and a quick supply. After countless phone calls, promises to return calls, emails etc the rapid prototypes turned up yesterday. One of the items requested had not been produced, three items were produced 10 times the size that they should have been! Photos are shown below.

We now gone back to our original supplier of the rapid prototypes. Thankfully they've agreed to get them done quickly for us, and we should get them delivered sometime next week.

Regards

Steve

Vapor wrote:Well if that's "Hinge" just think how big "Bracket" is going to be, I'm sure there must be some people out there that will understand