Bobbin manufacture

[rhoads]

I need to get some humbucker bobbins made, which are slightly longer than the standard trem spacing. Probably a couple thousand to start off with.

Any recommendations??

[Mystic]

An injection mold die costs about $30,000...

[ShannonH]

I know a guy who machines his bobbins on a small CNC router. He has made itty bitty ones, and could probably do this for you too. Not sure what the cost would be, but not 30K! I'll e-mail him and see if he is interested.

[rhoads]

That would be cool if you could. I sacked the company doing CNC stuff for me earlier this year when they stuffed up way too many parts, and took way too long to do them.

I figured tooling up would not be cheap, but I had $10,000 in my head, not $30,000.

Ultimately I need maybe 25 sets (50 bobbins) to get me going, with more later on. Pole piece spacing is 59mm roughly. The lower plate of the bobbin needs to extend about 6mm past the top plate, on the ends only.

This is the best picture i have of the prototypes, which were made from Wenge and forbon. Im sick of carving these by hand The revised specs call for grub screws rather than filister head adjustable pole pieces, so the two bobbins will be identical.

[David Schwab]

I figured tooling up would not be cheap, but I had $10,000 in my head, not $30,000.

I got a quote once of between $3,000 and $8,000.

[belwar]

molder

Well I just got off the phone with a molder about 10 minutes ago and showed him a picture of the finished product. There were several factors which can make the mold expensive. The center of the bobbins may aparently require some mechincal parts be created in the mold to push and hold it together. I asked him to ballpark the costs for me and he indicated that I was looking at a mold in the 6000-9000 range. That's for an aluminium mold and not steel. He was telling me that if you are not doing 10's of thousands of parts then aluminum is just fine. I'm going to give another molder a call today and get a quote. I'm also contacting a Korean company but they are hesitant to use Butyrate so that may be a non starter.

belwar

[TGD]

Rhoads,
A small CNC stars to be a popular and unexpencive tool. In order to cut professional bobbins it's perfect, only problem is you have to study how to program the GCode starting from a vectorial draw. It means some learning time to spend.
I use it since a couple of years and I' ve not limit in building pickups in any sizes and shapes. Please take a look to this custom Music Man Stingray pickup.

This units is 100% CNC cutted, as you can see.

my own 2 cents. and sorry for my poor english.

[Phil m]

That would be cool if you could. I sacked the company doing CNC stuff for me earlier this year when they stuffed up way too many parts, and took way too long to do them.

I figured tooling up would not be cheap, but I had $10,000 in my head, not $30,000.

It would probably be easier to buy a small CNC and cut them yourself out of forbon. On top of that, that $10,000 could buy you a decent CNC that would help you build your necks and bodies too.

Check out k2cnc.com You can get one big enough for guitars for about 7k and they'll ship it to you in a container to Perth. If I remember correctly the shipping isn't that expensive either.

If you only want a tiny tabletop CNC dedicated to cutting forbon you would probably get away with 2-3k. There is a learning curve for the software though...bobbins aren't that hard to draw up in CAD anyway. You just need to learn to operate Mach3 and the machine.

[David Schwab]

I'm also contacting a Korean company but they are hesitant to use Butyrate so that may be a non starter.

There's no reason to use butyrate. Unless you are trying to do a historic replica of an old pickup, I don't see the point. Even Gibson stopped using the stuff.

[Possum]

....

Its the SMELL. Without that smell you can't recreate accurate PAF tone. Personally I think the stuff looks better than modern plastic. It ages nicer and doesn't turn all matte and ugly, stays kinda glossy. Big drawback is you can't pot it without risking the pickup turning into a melted glob....

[rhoads]

It would probably be easier to buy a small CNC and cut them yourself out of forbon. On top of that, that $10,000 could buy you a decent CNC that would help you build your necks and bodies too.

Check out k2cnc.com You can get one big enough for guitars for about 7k and they'll ship it to you in a container to Perth. If I remember correctly the shipping isn't that expensive either.

If you only want a tiny tabletop CNC dedicated to cutting forbon you would probably get away with 2-3k. There is a learning curve for the software though...bobbins aren't that hard to draw up in CAD anyway. You just need to learn to operate Mach3 and the machine.

CNC is coming, but i kinda need the bobbins first. I'll probably just get 25 sets cut on cnc and see how I go for now. At least then im not stuck with one design.

[David Schwab]

Its the SMELL. Without that smell you can't recreate accurate PAF tone. Personally I think the stuff looks better than modern plastic. It ages nicer and doesn't turn all matte and ugly, stays kinda glossy. Big drawback is you can't pot it without risking the pickup turning into a melted glob....

It's nice stuff. I just think it's more of a headache than it's worth.

The potting thing would be a big problem for many.

Just sell the pickups with a pineapple air-freshener.

[RedHouse]

...Without that smell you can't recreate accurate PAF tone....

WTF?

[SkinnyWire]

WTF?

The bullshit trains pulls into the station here regularly. However, he's probably referring to the SD Shop Tour video where the guy goes on about the specific "aroma" of Butyrate. ;-)

[kevinT]

relax fellas........i am sure possum was only kidding...

what the hell....I'm going to trademark scratch 'n' sniff bobbins....I really like the ones that smell like bubble gum. ...DiMarzio probably beat me to it.