ok we haved the wooden ones sused thanks to
CruzThs

now how about a affordable Aluminum one peese
lets generate some interest, whos interested?

CruzThs has already done this.

Sounds intriguing - I have a 2001 Eclipse with "silvery" accents in the interior, so an aluminized Empeg might be a heck of an idea. It would certainly keep me from being tempted to spray paint my current one, which might look like crap anyway.

However, I think it would have to be CNC made or something similar to reduce costs. I would not be interested in paying $100 for a custom made one myself. Make it around $20 - $30 and I'm in.

The ones being worked on are CNC made. They take 6 or 7 hours to cut and cost at least 150 dollars.

If you could get one made for $20-30, I'd buy from you and throw in the towel.

The ones I am attempting to make take about 2 hours of setup time and 14 hours to cut on my machine. The raw material costs about $15 each and I've invested about $2000 in tooling and software (not including the $4000 for the mill - but that was purchased for other reasons). I never expected to make all the money back but I really wanted to make some cool fascia's for the worlds best car stereo. It turned out the aluminum fascia's were much harder to make than I originally expected. It can be done, but for me to make each one myself it would be a full-time job (and I'm alerady very happy with my real job).

I'm currently reseaching other techniques for making the metal fascia's including outsourcing to a production machine shop or creating a mold and having a foundary cast them.

Right now the biggest chance I have is having a production shop cut the fascia's since a friend of mine manages a big machine shop.

I may be able to help on the facia thing. I have machines at work capable, and have contacts with casting companies, and other machines shops.

If I can get the drawings (1 person already working on it) I can check on getting it cast. I also have a source for rapid protoyping, which could be used to make a mold for casting.

Lots of options...

Why would painting it look like crap?

Calvin

I liked Beakers design. Maybe he could send you the design files.

- Neil

2 x Empeg mk IIa