The Liberal Gun Club Forum

Antiquus, did you work in prototypes, or some other aspect of product development by chance?

I'm a for hire guy when you want to measure something, and don't know how. ATM I'm doing a lot of gear work, much of it aerospace and being in Motown of course a lot of automotive as well. I've worked in product development, product analysis, reverse engineering, quality failures, lawsuits - including 2 wrongful death lawsuits won by our clients, and a shit ton of referee quality decisions where two companies can't agree how to measure something or whether something conforms to the specs. My company charges too damn much for my time, and I hate working overtime and weekends, but I do a lot anyway. It's a living.

Ah, cool. I was a prototype/Industrial Design model maker from 96-03. Technically, I can still call myself that, as I am prepared to do contract work, but haven't worked for a company in that capacity in years.

When you were talking about all of the projects you worked on, it got me thinking about my portfolio as well. I did a lot of work for aerospace and automotive too. Medical and electronic, also. Even did bit of work for Crimson Trace and Leupold & Stevens. Kind of fun to open up the Fry's Electronics centerfold in the paper and see five or six items you made prototypes for six months earlier. Nike had a 3D scanner, and we made a deal with them that they could store it in our stereo-lithography lab, provided we could use it. We didn't end up having as much use for it as we'd though, but the engineers had fun with it. They scanned a few things and then cranked out models on the SLA machines.

My area was finishing, painting, final finish work, RTV mold making and urethane/epoxy casting, but I also did a spell in rapid prototyping (stereo-lithography and selective laser sintering). I worked 60+ hour weeks, pulled a few all nighters. Got paid well to do it, but after a couple of years with few weekends, and lots of late nights, it got old. I still get queasy when I drive past a shop of some kind after about 6pm and the lights are still on.

I have been planning to take what I learned making grip prototypes for C/T and make my own for yeas, but it's messy and just haven't got around to it.

Funny coincidences. In '97 I was in Seoul working for a laser scanner company installing a machine in a Korean gov't facility. The scanner was used to make SLA models, and they had a regular vat of plastic resin type SLA and the laser sintering machine as well, and as I remember the models off the sintering process were more accurate. Some outfit out of Texas IIRC. While I was visiting the Korean distributor of the laser scanning equipment, in walks 3 guys from some division of Hyundai with a Reebok sole pattern to digitize so they could make a mold. The Korean distributor did service work on the side using the equipment, and we sat down and figured out how to get from a scan to a G code file.

I was involved when digitizing was just getting started, and helped develop techniques I see are now standard stuff in software packages like Polyworks and Geomagic. We did a ton of reverse engineering jobs, mostly for Asian outfits, tons more SLA projects scanning everything from artifical knees to snowmobiles.

And you are right, the hours suck.

I have several limb sections from a mock orange or Osage orange tree. It has been my desire to hand make some pistol grips for my black hawks. I am holding back, number one, because of fear of failure, and number two, because I have never done such a thing before. I will try and man up and take the leap. You are an inspiration even though I do not have that wonderful equipment. Thank you.

punkin (and anyone else),

I'd love to see some photos and read some writing detailing any efforts to make your own grips.

I have a few chunks of wood and phenolic around here that I'd like to start cutting on one of these days, right after I get to the range and finish the load development thread and chop down my '60 Army to 2" with a birdshead grip and replace the firing pin in my rolling block and and and....

I'll make a couple of sets of really nice grips for any of you machinist/designer/inventor types that want to take over my day job for a few weeks so I can do it.

The next time I make some more 1911 grips I plan on photo-documenting the process.

And some day I'll try my hand at a set for my 1873...

Awesome!

The Texas outfit was DTM. I was trained by them on how to set up builds on the Sinterstation 2500+ and how to maintain the machines, back in '00-'01. As I recall, 3D Systems, the major name in SLA, had a patent on dual galvos, which rendered on two axes, rather than one, so DTM's machine could only operate on on the one, and thus, they couldn't render as much detail. The parts were, however, almost as strong as machined parts, and with the turnaround time of SLA, and you could also run rubber and metal. In '02 or '03, DTM merged with 3D Systems and now the sinterstations have the dual galvo tech as well, so I imagine their parts are 10 times better. Really fascinating technology, but all that heat is a lot to manage, during a build. Very easy for the parts to de-lam, if the temps gets uneven, by just a little bit.

I did a lot of work for Nike. Shoe soles, but mostly watches, step counters and sunglasses. A fair amount of R&D for them too. SLA and SLS parts, and tons of presentation models.

RE: home made grips, I can post some pics of the prototypes I made for Crimson Trace I mentioned earlier, if anyone is interested. I can also explain how I made them, and more importantly, how anyone could use the molding and casting technology I employed to work up your own designs for rubber grips, or rubber/wood overmolded grips.

That would be great. I've done a good bit of that sort of work, but I don't know much about what would be good for rubber grips. I think lots of folks would get a kick out of it.

I'm interested in seeing what ever anybody here has made and how they did it. I would love to see some DIY projects using plastics and rubber compounds.