skinned the backplates from my friend's machine shop. forgot that i compensated the drawings for the big factory's loose bits because they refused to take normal feedback. I didn't remember the changes I'd made before we started so we ended up accidentally making plates where the 5k boost is flipped upside down, which is hilarious. but look at the consistency! this is 10 measurements! That's insane! The only differences here are spacer (plastic) and tension related. the plates are identical to within like 2 micron. i have NEVER seen k47 plates this consistent. i am so excited to move to "in-house" (well, closely supervised) parts. it would be fun to make a video tour of the place and show off the machining
(K47V in red)
We did a few different styles of rings too, machined, as benchmarks. Here's 1 capsule with peek rings with recessed screws and another with FR2 rings like the second gen K47 from the 60s:
to my knowledge, the only replica k47 with fr2 rings ever. i wanted to see if it would take a CNC milling easily. it's a bit smoother than real fr2 k47s though, since it's actually machined and not just a raw sheet with holes punched in it.
These are way, way, way, way way comically more expensive to make than the current capsules. Like twice as expensive at least, but honestly it pays for itself in the lower hassle, way higher consistency and having more control over the supply chain. right now we're messing with different ways to insert the plastic center termination into the plate. We tried traditional press fitting (unstable), refrigerated press fitting (plug falls out if acrylic at freezing temps, but more stable with a low expansion plastic, but it's difficult to dry the condensation out of the plates after) and now just for fun we're on tiny threads with like the ck12. we'll probably end up doing traditional press fitting with epoxy or something. i'm having a lot of fun messing around with exactly how to do this.
my friend has admittedly never done mass production before. he's used to under 10 unit orders of high precision tungsten tooling. he's not quite sure how he'd do making 100 brass plates, so we're doing a lot of brainstorming to try and bring efficiency up. the good news is that unlike the mass production factory i was using that makes all the plates for alctron etc, he can definitely do a ck12, He's crazy, so he'd probably find it fun. Now that my friend is on board, a CK12 is way more viable, probably assembled in the US.
Right now, we're brainstorming ways to achieve the flatness in bulk. It wasn't too hard for him with his precision grinder with a few units, but making 100 would be tedious. he, certifiable lunatic that he is, asked me what's stopping us from making a flat honing machine that runs as an attachment on a milling or lathe engine. I told him that would be extremely hard, and that we'd have to be- and he said "An ultra high precision tungsten carbide tool shop" and that shut me up and now he's in a cave somewhere trying to build a lapping machine from scratch. this guy is nuts. he is sure that he can make gears and have it do both sides at once and everything. perfect energy for this project.
