CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

I've heard that you can't buy bellows for Marquees anymore from VDC.

I haven't investigated that to see if it's true.

It's very possible that I will soon have an alternative available.

I have established a working relationship with a company located near where I work, that is in the business of molding
articles via a copy process, using urethane and silicone as the molding materials. They do it every day and it's pretty
easy for them so copying a bellows would be a pretty simple and quick task for them, I think.

I am going to talk to them and bring a Marquee bellow as a sample and see about getting them to make them.

It won't cost me anything to do that.

Actually I'm in a position where they'll be paying ME some money, but I may opt to take products and services instead
of having them pay me.

Please watch this space for further updates as they come. I will let you know of any progress that I make.

CJ

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

Sounds Good, I was going to also look into it but they would want a tooling fee. I am not sure of the Urethane and silicon material though. it night not be a strong over time as the material the bellows are made from now. I guess you'd have to test one to find out. let me know and I can do a test for you.

Athanasios

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

If this works out I'll be more than happy to send out some samples for testing.

The current bellows are silicone rubber, but there are many grades of silicone rubber. My connections at the molding company will probably
be very helpful in finding a formulation that doesn't allow water or glycol to diffuse through it.

What color do you want them in? Their molds and products are usually blue, black, or pink. Do you want pink bellows? Very Happy

Of course, black is best, to absorb stray light and keep it from lowering the contrast ratio. But samples to check for seepage may be in any available color.

CJ

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

Black of course Wink

, it also shows up leaking glycol well.

Athanasios

Elaine Benes · Joined: 25 Apr 2006 Posts: 1416

zGman · Joined: 22 May 2006 Posts: 599

Gee Paul - It's been a long while now, and it's a new year - let's give the guy a break
about the tube thing....and just let bygones go by the wayside...

The bellows issue is a serious problem for Marquee owners long term, any progress
at all will be nice to hear about. I sure don't have any resources to address it, can't
machine rubber anyhow, at least not here...!

G

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

Some things I've done, or TRIED to do for this group, have worked out fine. Ever heard of FrankenYokes? MY idea. And I GAVE that idea to the world. I never asked for a penny for it. And it's one of the most sought-after performance upgrades.

I had no success with Thomas Electronics because the prices that their engineer was talking about turned to have no resemblance to
the prices that their salesdroids were talking about. The "promised" cost savings never came to pass.

I bought the Vision One cover molds for cash out of pocket and sent them to Derfla. He found them to be impractical to use to create
a finished product, and that's fine. We tried, but it wasn't worth doing. Nobody wanted to pay a reasonable price for a set of covers
in light of the amount of work needed. So that's that.

I have the only remaining stock of brand new Marquee sheet metal covers in the world outside of VDC's inventory and I've sold a few
sets at very fair prices. I have lots left over to sell and would like to move them on. I'll entertain reasonable offers.

I offered a bunch of very nice, lightly used CRTs (as noted above...but that looks like more than I remember shipping out!) and some sold and others did not, over concerns about very light pattern burns. It's hard to believe that nobody wants to buy a P19LUG green
with an extremely faint pattern burn on it for just 100 dollars, and my blues and reds are even better, but that's how it is.

The idea of getting aftermarket bellows made, now that you can't get them from VDC, apparently, seems like a pretty good idea, and
it's a very simple thing to do if you know someone who owns a molding company and they owe you money...which is the case for me.
This would be an easy project with rapid results, if ever any of my projects worked out. It should be pretty cheap to get this little
project rolling, and with results coming in pretty rapidly, I hope. I expect to be able to offer bellows for a target price of 25 dollars
each, after successful testing.

What it comes down to is that I've done a hell of a lot more to try to help out the CRT enthusiasts out there (Marquee enthusiasts, to
be precise) than damn near anybody who isn't a full-time professional in the industry. And what happens? While most people are
appreciative of my efforts, there are always a few (censored) out there who seem to find pleasure in putting down my efforts, while
those people have themselves never lifted a finger to make the slightest effort to contribute something useful to the CRT community.

I find that rather amusing, in a dark way. People who do that are cursed to have extremely small minds, in my opinion.

There's very little that's more pathetic than the do-nothings who criticize those doers who try very hard to contribute something useful
but don't always meet with success. But who's better? The guy who tries and sometimes fails, or the guy who never tries at all?

CJ

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

CJ you rock.

Athanasios

waterlily · Joined: 29 Aug 2008 Posts: 44

Thanks for all your efforts! ... and above all for posting to share them with us! Very Happy

You rock!!! Thumbs Up

You, Curt and many other contributors are the pillars of this great community!

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 1:59 am Post subject:

Cool new parts! We allways need more sources for parts!

No if we could just get some C-elements

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

I'm fairly sure I won't be able to do much about C-elements. Is USPL even making them anymore?

Maybe there needs to be a final group buy of them, enough to last for the foreseeable future.

CJ

Nashou66 · Joined: 12 Jan 2007 Posts: 16171 Location: West Seneca NY

MikeEby · Joined: 24 Jun 2007 Posts: 5237 Location: Osceola, Indiana

I can see CRT's parts are going to be like Mad Max car parts, people are going to be killing each other over tubes, bellows and C-elements.

I can hear someone telling a cop...But officer he bought a LUG out from under me. I had no other choice then to kill him.

Mike

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

**AnalogRocks** · Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 5:17 am Post subject:

Have at it CJ. You should emboss your intials in everything.

Look for the CRT part's by CMJ. Smile

draganm · Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 8990 Location: Colorado

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

Yes, the bellows that have been in use since the Marquee was first made has been silicone rubber. Two different formulations of it, to be exact. If I can ascertain the exact type in current use, I'll try to get that specific type for the new parts....presuming I'm successful in
setting up a supply chain to make them. Urethane is also a possibility, as there are hundreds if not thousands of different types of
urethane for innumerable different applications. But there are three factors in play here: Flexibility, long-term stability under exposure
to the chemicals involved, and permeability...or lack thereof.

I'm not worried about the nay-sayers. Why should I be concerned about people who've done nothing to advance the hobby or help keep
the supply lines open, whose only contribution is to criticize those who DO try...with mixed results?

I take my failures in stride but can only grin when I point at the Frankenyokes concept, which has been successful enough that it's getting
hard to find a Sony 1292 that hasn't been robbed yet. Very Happy

I've never made a dime off of that but I don't care...it's a fact that using the
prototypes I was able to boost a lowly 8000 to resolving 2048x2048 at a meaningful MTF value at about the SAME TIME as TSE did the same thing with the 8500HR with its special tubes. Smile

And where else can you get brand new Marquee sheet metal that has no dents or scratches in it without paying an arm and a leg for it,
but through me? Very Happy

CJ

nomadII · Joined: 16 Jun 2006 Posts: 252

I for one am happy that you & Derfla put the effort into the Pininfarina molds.

They are a bitch even for the end user to deal with but they do look so much nicer!!

thanks, nomad

cmjohnson · Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s

Update: I spoke to the company that does molded products and they're not optimistic that their mold technologies will work well to duplicate
the bellows. I brought samples, of course. But they're willing to help me give it a try, provided that I do as much of the work as I'm able
to do. My personal belief is that it'll work. But I'm an incurable optimist. Smile

As an alternative, I may end up machining out my own set of molds from aluminum and casting my own. The resulting bellows may not
be identical to the factory ones but they would be correct in every IMPORTANT feature and dimension. But that's nothing but an idea that
I wouldn't be able to take to reality without a fair amount of machining work. I think I could make the mold in three pieces.

I'm still in ideas stage, and that's that.

CJ