CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[Nashou66]

[Nashou66]

I asked the Original company I talked to if Nitrile would be cheaper and the price per pice went down to 25-30 dollars each as skip said they should be, however the tooling cast would remain high. I will call today the Local company and take the bellow to them if I can make an appointment and maybe talk buisness

Athanasios

[draganm]

any news on these yet? Has a company come back with a quote for thermoforming new ones.

[Nashou66]

draganm, I got so caught up in the C-element project i didnt get to take the bellows to the local company here yet. I will call them on Monday and set up an appointment.

Athanasios

[Nashou66]

Reviving this thread as I went to visit the rubber company here in Western NY after CJ rekindled my interest about the bellows with his venture to have them made.
If he can not get then made we have this option as this company is top notch. I met with the original contact from august and also the head of the tooling department. Very nice a knowledgeable guys. They kept the bellow I gave them to put through an analyzer to find out what the material used is and also said they will find something with less porosity to use. They said it be very easy to make with injection process. The High cost would be the tooling but the mold would be of steel so thousands of mould could be made. we would not own the mold but we'd own the rights for it to be used, so they could not have someone else use the mold for the bellows with out our permission.
They will draw up blue prints for the bellow and make an exact copy, the only thing that would be different is the texture of the rubber as it will cost more to polish the mould for a nice smooth bellow, i don't think that will matter.
The tooling cost total with reverse engineering , blue prints, and machining of the mould would be 2200+/- 300 so no more than 2500, much less than the 5000 i thought earlier on in the first post. I told them I would need to find out how many would commit before i gave them the go ahead, I also want to wait to see how CJ's quest pans out as well, Maybe he'd want to join in on this one as well if the guys doing his wont work out.
From seeing the facility here i am sure this company can do it, they have over 4000 molds of product on hand from all types of industries and shapes and materials. they have in house chemist also for custom formulation. I thought it was going to be much higher in tooling but to me this is not bad at all, considering VDC wants 450-600 dollars a tube to re bellow and flush the glycol plush the cost of shipping to VDC and back!!

Athanasios

[AnalogRocks]

[AnalogRocks]

[Nashou66]

they said another 500-800 i think for a nice smooth bellow, but to be honest why? you really don't need it, especially on the outside, I could see how much for the inside to be smooth only.

Athanasios

[zGman]

Very Nice Work - what a great investigation...! Thanks!

I can't 'see' any advantage to having the bellows be polished smooth, especially
not for the inside. The best thing the inside could possibly do is absorb as much
stray light as possible - this will increase contrast.

The trickiest, and in my view, most important part - besides of course the low permeability,
are the sharp concentric sealing ridges around both sealing surfaces, at the c-element
and the housing. (the earliest bellows did not seem to have this feature)

Another thought, is that if they can analyze material - I can provide a Barco LC housing,
they seem to never sweat or leak or swell with water absorption, and its a big, thin, rubber
bellows, just superglued to the aluminum on each side.

You can also see inside the Barco housings they use a black anodized concentric fine pitch
'stairstep' pattern to absorb stray light.

G

[Nashou66]

well it looks like we can move forward of more people want to get bellows, i was hoping some of the rebuilders/resellers here would want a nice supply to have around. i figure if we get 100 for sure that would put it at $25 per bellow for the tooling cost, then what ever the cost to produce each bellow. then after that each bellow could be cheaper, we could still sell them on the site at a higher cost ad keep track of who put up the money at first and refund them the tooling cost once the sales catch up. Or I could do it all and try to sell them or with another investor, CJ showed some interest. we could split the profits until the original cost are recouped. then the cost would go down to the actual cost of the production plus a small fee for shipping out the bellows and soforth. not here to make a killing just to keep the marquee parts supply alive a bit longer.

Athanasios

[Nashou66]

[CRT_Ben]

Nashou!! You're the man! Let me know, depending on the cost I'd be in for at least three, maybe six

[Nashou66]

Just got this E-mail from Dale.

Tom:(Athanasios)

The heat transfer fluid information is helpful.

The lab scanned the elastomer material and it turned out to have a 99% match to silicone. Initially, I didn't think silicone was the best choice for chemical compatibility with Ethylene Glycol and Glycerol. However, silicone has a higher operating temperature than most other elastomer choices. It could be possible that the silicone was chosen because of the high temperature environment. Can you verify the operating temperature? We just want to be sure we select the best material for your application.

After you verify the operating temp, I'll check with John, our materials guru, to see what would be the optimum choice.


Dale Cielinski

Any one know for sure what the operating temp should be on this.

Athanasios

[Nashou66]

[cmjohnson]

My thought on what VDC would think of this is, simply, WHO CARES? If they won't sell the part to the CRT market because we won't pay
the INSANE price they want to refurb a CRT assembly, then there's no harm in filling the need they refuse to deal with.

I like VDC and the people working there, believe me. But if they don't want to sell parts that can be sourced from another supplier, that's
their problem, not mine. Personally I think it's bad business practice to turn down parts sales. Money is money and just selling parts
should be profitable provided they're efficient about getting the order processed and shipped.

I'm actually willing in principle to chip in to help with the cost of the mold tooling, except that I've just spent a lot of money on a milling
machine of my own for my growing hobby machine shop. The irony here is that with this milling machine, I could probably MAKE a
set of molds with which new bellows could be molded. IF I knew the way the mold has to be made to work in a specific molding machine,
that is.

I'd certainly commit to buying a set of the bellows made from the new parts. Which is ironic as I once had a big supply of them, which
I sold. (And made quite a nice paycheck off it, too!) But I didn't keep but a handful of them and I used some of them. I've got one
set on hand for spares, that's all. Another set would be good.


CJ

[zGman]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Just got this E-mail from Dale.

Tom:(Athanasios)

The heat transfer fluid information is helpful.

The lab scanned the elastomer material and it turned out to have a 99% match to silicone. Initially, I didn't think silicone was the best choice for chemical compatibility with Ethylene Glycol and Glycerol. However, silicone has a higher operating temperature than most other elastomer choices. It could be possible that the silicone was chosen because of the high temperature environment. Can you verify the operating temperature? We just want to be sure we select the best material for your application.

After you verify the operating temp, I'll check with John, our materials guru, to see what would be the optimum choice.


Dale Cielinski

Any one know for sure what the operating temp should be on this?

Athanasios

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Yes...

Observed operating temps in the Marquee chassis are not high at the tube mountings, that should not be
a major concern. After hours of operation they are not warm to the touch, eg. not over 100 degrees F.

The real issue is not the resistance to the glycol/alcohol mixture - it is the resistance to osmotic transfer
of water vapor from the atmosphere into the intensely hygroscopic glycol/alcohol mixture. This is why
the stock bellows swell with time and increase in pressure, and begin to "sweat" - and why I suggested
earller that it would be a good idea to see if we could figure out what Barco used, since they don't have
this problem.

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osmosis for a concise explanation of the phenomenon.

G

[draganm]

[Nashou66]

[CRT_Ben]

If they're less than or right around $100 I will commit to 3. If we get enough that the price drops around $50 I might go for 6.

[Nashou66]

I really want this to happen, I have three tubes of need of new Bellows , so for now I have to take them off a set of mint 8500LC tubes that i was going to sell, i still could sell them to a person in need of new tubes for their LC but i'd rather get an AC marquee user over to an LC tubbed set up. the poll above only shows 6 commitments, 4 of which are for three bellows the other 2 are quantity unknown. so its safe to say we have 14 bellows wanted so far. I would most likely take another 3 for myself so its up to 17. I should start a list like we did for the C-element Group Buy.

maybe I can scare some people into buying them If you have sweating bellows change them out now!!!!

So right now we are out of the ball bark for the amount we need. This may take time but it could get to the point that Maquee owners switch to Digital ! and its too late !! If i didn't need the cash I'd go for it on my own and sell bellows for 50 bucks each and hope that eventually I get my original investment back. I still have to get back to Dale on the material. thanks Galen for the temp Info and Osmosis info.

I really thought there would be more interest in this, lets hope in the coming weeks we can get more Comitments.

Maybe one of the MODs can make this a temporary Sticky so it doesn't get lost in the pages.
Once i feel its going to happen or its not they can take it down.

Athanasios

[CRT_Ben]

Oops! I never even noticed the poll

I threw in my "3+" bellows vote.