Now do you understand?
'Plating doesn’t stretch copper does. Car bumpers are not copper.'
Car bumpers are steel, which are first copper plated, then plated with chrome, nickel or a combination of both.
JMF has given a detailed explanation, no need for me to explain further.
We are people with practical experience, I have no idea about your background.
There is a bike muffler (and till recently wire wheel type bike rims) factory right next to my factory.
I have visited the entire plant. Seen raw material to finish stage.
And in my line of work, some molds are hard chrome plated, the surface is prepared, then chrome is directly plated to the base.
The result is dull, and it is polished, I can get 48 RC hardness easily, and most plating shops do buffing, I do my own polish, ask them not to do buffing.
Some cheat, use cupronickel, that comes off later sometimes.
Elongation does happen, but in normal weather, -20 to +50, it is not significant enough to cause damage to properly plated surface, car bumpers have been around for decades.
There is a process called electroless nickel, read up if curious.
Here we are talking of a metal enclosure to be used as a housing and a proper noise shield for audio, no need for exotic stuff, unless you need bragging rights, and have excess money.
Nobody has given circuit details (or actually tested the thing) it seems, and as we all see, capacitors and cables somehow cause a lot of anxiety in audiophools....
'Plating doesn’t stretch copper does. Car bumpers are not copper.'
Car bumpers are steel, which are first copper plated, then plated with chrome, nickel or a combination of both.
JMF has given a detailed explanation, no need for me to explain further.
We are people with practical experience, I have no idea about your background.
There is a bike muffler (and till recently wire wheel type bike rims) factory right next to my factory.
I have visited the entire plant. Seen raw material to finish stage.
And in my line of work, some molds are hard chrome plated, the surface is prepared, then chrome is directly plated to the base.
The result is dull, and it is polished, I can get 48 RC hardness easily, and most plating shops do buffing, I do my own polish, ask them not to do buffing.
Some cheat, use cupronickel, that comes off later sometimes.
Elongation does happen, but in normal weather, -20 to +50, it is not significant enough to cause damage to properly plated surface, car bumpers have been around for decades.
There is a process called electroless nickel, read up if curious.
Here we are talking of a metal enclosure to be used as a housing and a proper noise shield for audio, no need for exotic stuff, unless you need bragging rights, and have excess money.
Nobody has given circuit details (or actually tested the thing) it seems, and as we all see, capacitors and cables somehow cause a lot of anxiety in audiophools....
Juan,
I am just about astounded at the level of detail that you go into to build your products.
I did ask my backline guys about Fahey and they have not yet had any inquires for one.
So I am curious about what it would cost to put one into inventory here in the U.S.? Which model would you suggest?
I am just about astounded at the level of detail that you go into to build your products.
I did ask my backline guys about Fahey and they have not yet had any inquires for one.
So I am curious about what it would cost to put one into inventory here in the U.S.? Which model would you suggest?
Capacitors do make a difference, yes, but at times people can be obsessive, like choosing between Elna Sinic or Nichicon (I forgot) high end versions.
And those with hemp or silk fibers..
Cables, we see so many threads off and on.
And those with hemp or silk fibers..
Cables, we see so many threads off and on.
N
Steel must be plated with copper or the chrome plating will not attach well. Direct chrome plating does save a step and some money, not sure if anyone direct plates small parts.
The discussion was about plating a copper chassis. Yes you can chrome plate it but the plating will fail as soon as you bump it.
As to thermal failures not sure but suspect you might have an issue with tube gear.
I have run my own metal treatments decades ago. Now I use the local metal finishers. Everything from bright and shiny to black oxide on steel. Aluminum in lots of colors, but mostly light black coatings. Not to be confused with weather resistant black coatings, thicker but not as black.
As to metal fabrication I stock steel. aluminum, and copper sheets. Steel right now is hitting $.08 per pound, Aluminum $4.00 a pound, but Copper is way expensive!
If you want to build a ludicrous priced copper chassis milling it out of solid copper is the way to go. If you make it out of sheet metal, punching and bending would be the process.
The copper alloy used would determine the bend radius for a given thickness of material. I do stock an assortment of rams and dies for various needs.
A precision die for forming high end audiophile chassis can run a few thousand dollars versus only a few hundred for most dies. I only own one precision die. It is used for safe processing of structural elements and pretty much assures no hidden fractures. Most bent metal has fractures in the outside of the bend.
Steel must be plated with copper or the chrome plating will not attach well. Direct chrome plating does save a step and some money, not sure if anyone direct plates small parts.
The discussion was about plating a copper chassis. Yes you can chrome plate it but the plating will fail as soon as you bump it.
As to thermal failures not sure but suspect you might have an issue with tube gear.
I have run my own metal treatments decades ago. Now I use the local metal finishers. Everything from bright and shiny to black oxide on steel. Aluminum in lots of colors, but mostly light black coatings. Not to be confused with weather resistant black coatings, thicker but not as black.
As to metal fabrication I stock steel. aluminum, and copper sheets. Steel right now is hitting $.08 per pound, Aluminum $4.00 a pound, but Copper is way expensive!
If you want to build a ludicrous priced copper chassis milling it out of solid copper is the way to go. If you make it out of sheet metal, punching and bending would be the process.
The copper alloy used would determine the bend radius for a given thickness of material. I do stock an assortment of rams and dies for various needs.
A precision die for forming high end audiophile chassis can run a few thousand dollars versus only a few hundred for most dies. I only own one precision die. It is used for safe processing of structural elements and pretty much assures no hidden fractures. Most bent metal has fractures in the outside of the bend.
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I always use the best capacitors available locally, Panasonic, Elna, Keltron, Daewoo, whatever is available at the counter.
But in some (6.3V, 16V) computer caps, only Chinese are available. Got around that by stripping a blown Gigabyte board as needed, those are Nippon and Nichicon.
This amp is made of standard parts assembled in a certain way, by which I mean production tolerances and component testing may be better than average for this field.
But those are available from the makers themselves, if the quantities are large, or the buyer is willing to pay a higher price.
For example, LEDs are tested after production, and are stored in separate bins, and the buyer pays more for parts from the same bin, which are more consistent in terms of color rendition, power consumption and so on.
The best ones go to high end products, regular goes to commercial, junk ends up in retail here, and other countries.
This uses tubes, which are inherently less consistent than solid state components.
In my opinion, over priced bragging rights stuff.
Look at B&O, they never made their own components, only the housings were fancy. Now out of audio.
Same for Hasselblad and Leica, they could not make a good digital camera.
As for audiophile, at 2 watts, not much difference between my Sansui, Kenwood or Philips.
Or a valve McIntosh, driving studio grade JBLs.
But in some (6.3V, 16V) computer caps, only Chinese are available. Got around that by stripping a blown Gigabyte board as needed, those are Nippon and Nichicon.
This amp is made of standard parts assembled in a certain way, by which I mean production tolerances and component testing may be better than average for this field.
But those are available from the makers themselves, if the quantities are large, or the buyer is willing to pay a higher price.
For example, LEDs are tested after production, and are stored in separate bins, and the buyer pays more for parts from the same bin, which are more consistent in terms of color rendition, power consumption and so on.
The best ones go to high end products, regular goes to commercial, junk ends up in retail here, and other countries.
This uses tubes, which are inherently less consistent than solid state components.
In my opinion, over priced bragging rights stuff.
Look at B&O, they never made their own components, only the housings were fancy. Now out of audio.
Same for Hasselblad and Leica, they could not make a good digital camera.
As for audiophile, at 2 watts, not much difference between my Sansui, Kenwood or Philips.
Or a valve McIntosh, driving studio grade JBLs.
Hard chrome plating is used for molds because it is a thing which will be handled by trained people.
It has advantages like better release. And corrosion protection of course.
And compared to the mold cost, it is not significant at all.
The alternate is to oil or grease, and removing them before production has its own issues.
But it will not get bumped except by accident.
We use diamond polish down to 1 micron, then 20 microns hard chrome, the shop people need to know the alloy to do preparation.
So alternately, we get electroless nickel, it is more tolerant if alloy is not known.
Tools are expensive, and a big investment for small runs. Better to mill from solid, or 3-D print.
🤔
New wrinkle?
See, I got the latest 3-D printed fancy chassis!
It has advantages like better release. And corrosion protection of course.
And compared to the mold cost, it is not significant at all.
The alternate is to oil or grease, and removing them before production has its own issues.
But it will not get bumped except by accident.
We use diamond polish down to 1 micron, then 20 microns hard chrome, the shop people need to know the alloy to do preparation.
So alternately, we get electroless nickel, it is more tolerant if alloy is not known.
Tools are expensive, and a big investment for small runs. Better to mill from solid, or 3-D print.
🤔
New wrinkle?
See, I got the latest 3-D printed fancy chassis!
I have some experience in press tools.
Leaf spring cutting and trimming tools, of course.
I have friends in Bangalore who used to make the brass bases for miniature (car etc.) lamps.
Thin brass, then thread rolling.
0.3 to 0.5 mm at times.
Tools had to be perfect, 1980s, wire EDM was exotic.
Ordinary EDM, about one in a hundred tool shops had their own, work used to sent to EDM service shops, and instructions to use the right current...
And sometimes mistakes happened, and ALWAYS on the rush jobs!
Chain drilling, filing, polish, shrinkage due to heat treatment...been there, done that.
Even the brass had to be within best thickness tolerance, and best alloy purity.
Mentioning bending radius tells me a lot about you.
Takes one to know one, and so on.
Leaf spring cutting and trimming tools, of course.
I have friends in Bangalore who used to make the brass bases for miniature (car etc.) lamps.
Thin brass, then thread rolling.
0.3 to 0.5 mm at times.
Tools had to be perfect, 1980s, wire EDM was exotic.
Ordinary EDM, about one in a hundred tool shops had their own, work used to sent to EDM service shops, and instructions to use the right current...
And sometimes mistakes happened, and ALWAYS on the rush jobs!
Chain drilling, filing, polish, shrinkage due to heat treatment...been there, done that.
Even the brass had to be within best thickness tolerance, and best alloy purity.
Mentioning bending radius tells me a lot about you.
Takes one to know one, and so on.
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Thanks, it´s very kind of you.
Have been offered/asked many times about sending amps to US (and Europe) but the deal killing barrier is shipping/customs/paperwork/certifications, all add up big time.
Killing being an understatement. 😱
Given I always strived to make "everything" or at least as much as possible in-house (a.k.a. "vertical integration) always invested in machinery, dies and processes.
Each and every investment typically took one to 2 years to self pay, worst case, and then it becomes a cash cow, if starting from raw materials production cost is nil, in general my production costs are "Chinese", simply because I bypass a lot of dealers in the middle and their cascading markups; now multiply my price by 3 or 4 because of freight, duty, paperwork and in general nuisance costs and I am not competitive any more; even less in the cut throat saturated and ultra competitive US market.
Oh well.
But thanks for asking 🙂
@MarcelvdG: It's all a matter of input versus output, isn't it?
My father used to eat two hot meals a day with lots of fat and carbs, yet never had even an ounce of overweight.
But he was a manual laborer.
Jan
My father used to eat two hot meals a day with lots of fat and carbs, yet never had even an ounce of overweight.
But he was a manual laborer.
Jan
I thought it was virtually impossible to mill copper - one of the gurus here on the forum mentioned this a few yrs back on the blowtorch thread.
Or am I getting confused with some other metal/alloy?
Or am I getting confused with some other metal/alloy?
Copper is very gummy and will jam up bits. But with the right bit and a lubricant pump keeping the cutting fluid in a constant stream you can mill a thin bit slowly. That is why I figure two days to make a small case.
Although some folks will prefer to do it dry! My experience is specialized cutting fluid works best. Although the toughest copper project was grounding buss bars. Tapping 6-32 holes was a B!
Copper buss bars for grounding audio systems used to be standard in the specifications from many consultants copying each other’s work. While it lasted I found silver plated brass would impress them and it machined like candy! Of course adding a second ground path to audio equipment is a bad idea!
https://www.fictiv.com/articles/copper-cnc-machining-design-finish-requirements
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Copper was machined using lard IIRC.
Cutting angles, linear speed, feed rates are all different from steel.
Tends to stick, so a lighter cut is best.
Like I said earlier, use a plain sheet metal case, no useful purpose for this material in audio use except bragging rights.
Cutting angles, linear speed, feed rates are all different from steel.
Tends to stick, so a lighter cut is best.
Like I said earlier, use a plain sheet metal case, no useful purpose for this material in audio use except bragging rights.
I can build you a superior preamplifier to this. Problem is, it would cost much less money.
Does that mean that its perceived audio qualities would suffer proportionally?
(LOL)
Does that mean that its perceived audio qualities would suffer proportionally?
Darn it! I just wasted three months' salary on a bottle of ultimate grade double-virgin snake oil to use when I cloned this preamp.
(LOL)
The whole case against tone controls is based largely on ignorance. It's true there's been some terrible tone controls and we're much better off without them. And it's not that cheap to build a good set of tone controls, but it sure is worth it.
It's nice that you have speakers that don't need correction but we both know how impractical that is for almost everyone. The listening room has to be dedicated to ideal acoustics and that doesn't work for the vast majority of people. Plus truly flat speakers (all the way down to 20 or even 40 Hz) are enormous and expensive.
I've been using the Doug Self precision bass/treble controls since the 1970s. They're as good as you make them (parts quality) and versatile. I also use a relay controlled hard wired equalizer that's easily reconfigured. It gives 4 dB boost @ 40 Hz and 3 dB boost @ 10 kHz with a sixth order high pass filter @ 20 Hz. Obviously all these parameters are easy to change. It's just a few op amps and a relay on a board. Its effect is very subtle but it makes it possible to get the last undistorted dB out of my speakers. It complements the tone controls perfectly, making them much more effective.
I know it's heresy but that's what I'm doing. It works and I know I'm not the first person to do this. Now I'm working on variable Q higher order high pass circuits (change the Q by just changing a couple resistors) to acheive the same control with fewer parts. I'm getting somewhere with it.