automotive tail lights

[toneV8]

Paolo: which material is on pic1 and pic2. Can you make sublimating aluminium or silver in high-vacuum chambers proces - chromed. How much cost to you produce tail lamps.

[pavel59]

hm ... I missed more than one message.
c-c-cncboy you're absolutely correct, electro-forming is an excellent method to produce replicas from hard to find items and it's still widely used in the aftermarket for historical or rare models.
Only the metal of excellence is Nickel and it's often back-supported by copper (quicker to grow and much cheaper).

BTW, this same technique is also being used to produce the catadiotrics (prismatic diffusers), there's a major manufacturer in Canada producing the diffuser plates which are then inserted into the molds.
They're very expensive.

Electro-forming could be a good way to replicate the lenses, but I would suggest a different approach for the reflector.
A quick aluminium mold would work well.

Paolo

[pavel59]

the materials used on Pic1 and Pic2 are machinable slabs (boards) commonly known withe the commercial name Ureol (I think it's from Ciba) or Cibatool.
It's - basically - filled urethane (casted and post-cured) that you can purchase from several suppliers.
The light gray is a low density (180/200 Kgmc), the other is a medium density (around 400 Kgmc) and you can get up to 2000 Kgmc.

It's supplied in boards (50, 75, 100 and 150mm the most common thickness) but sometimes it's also available in blocks (up to 500mm and more).
You can glue boards together with cyanoacrilate.

It's very easy to machine and it usually doesn't wear the tools.

The higher densities are also used for pressure-formng (prototyping or short runs) metal sheets. A supplier told me they were able to form a 20/10 (2mm) thick sheet.
You'll not be able to cut metal, of course, but a contouring laser will do.


About the second question, it would be possible to metalize some parts here.

And about the cost of those lamps, well, I don't have the final costs of those parts but I can tell you that the process is economically competitive (compared to other RP techniques) but due to the limited number of parts, to the big amount of manual labour, and to some other factors, the final cost of an assembled lamp set is quite high.
It's not comparable to market prices of course.

Paolo

[toneV8]

Can you tell me where you buy Ureol and how much cost some standard dimensiones like 500x500x50mm. Does this web page 1 for Ciba frim and can you tell me direct name for Ureol. I find much products for some industry. Can you put direct link for Ureol.
http://www.cibasc.com/
http://www.cibasc.com/pf/

Does it possible make mold from Ureol for fiberglass and carbon fiber method with vacuum bagging.