Quote:
Originally Posted by Explorer
It sounds like you're trying quite a few possibilities.
I'm wondering... is the plan still to produce one perfect prototype before getting distracted?
Over time, you've devoted some words towards the issues you've run into when attempting to make a carbon fiber mold and casting. You also talked about how you needed tools/materials/money to really get past that initial problem.
And now you have the money, tools and materials to make that perfect proof of concept.
I've known people who didn't have money for fancy tools and materials, but who invested the time and concentration, and wound up building amazing instruments. As they progressed on their later instruments, they eventually bought things which built upon the initial successes and upon their mastery of the processes.
You've noted that you are fortunate to have gotten the funding for tools and materials before building that perfect proof of concept. Now that you have those, knocking one out should be a piece of cake.
Why not finish the mold first and get a perfect casting, instead of moving on to other things when you still haven't mastered that basic and fundamental part of your instruments' construction?
|
The mold is the first thing in this whole process, so i don`t think i understand the question. The very first prototype i made was the proof of concept guitar and there is no casting involved in this process. You can not do perfect composites with time and concentration, a composites guitar operation is 3x more expensive to setup then a wooden guitar building operation because its additive manufacturing and not subtractive like wood. I feel like we`ve been over this subject extensively up to the point where i recieved warnings from a mod but you keep bringing it up and still seem to be under the impression that you can do composites without funds. I sacrificed 10 years for this and it still wasn`t enough to make the leap from prototype to consumer quality. Vacuumleak detector 153 Euro (no detector = 1000s of pinholes), heating blanket 850 Euro (no heat = lower quality), vacuumpump 300 Euro (no pump = lousy resin / fabric ratio), scisors 100 Euro (no scissors = you can`t cut carbon), reusable vacuumbag 232 Euro, if 100 grams of Titebond woodglue is 10 dollar, 10 grams of composite glue will be 30 dollar, but you cant use it because you dont have the 80 dollar gun, and the list goes on and on and on. The material costs per guitar are TEN times higher then a wooden guitar. You blink your eyes 3 times and you have dropped 10000 euro on composites for a small home building operation. I loaned 10000, this is barely enough for 8 guitars at home, if i want to turn this into a small company in a space with just me and no employees it will cost 100000 Euro. that is not an ammount that i would like to have, but an actual calculated ammount that i would need to do it. The only reason i can make this work now with just 10000 Euro is because i am used to live on 75% welfare for 10 years and i am good at creative solutions.
First i will start with making mold, then i will make 2 guitars as "standard" as possible to represent the basemodel. Basicly identical except one has a spruce soundboard and one has a cedar soundboard. I think that is what you mean with the perfect prototype. All other things will be done after this phase is completed succesfully. I will only start making these first 2 units when the carbon bodies come out of the mold flawlessly. I have factored in enough material for test bodies and bodys to build jigs with, like a baseboard that holds a body to glue linings in without scrathing or damagind the real body. I expect that the 4th body that comes out of the mold will have the quality level for the first of 8 guitars, only then will i start making the first guitar.
Experimental stuff like a curved armbevel is a sideline experiment that might get worked into the model starting from the 3rd guitar.