Le 15/03/2012 08:09, Michael J. Mahon a �crit :
David Schmidt wrote:On 3/14/2012 8:19 PM, mwillegal wrote:For what it is worth. I got a quote of $4000 for tooling for a reproduction dome power light. :-)I had to look up your web site to know what you meant by a "dome" power light. Dome lights are what light up the interior of your car. ;-) So, yeah, it's interesting - a keyboard light that is itself another key. It's like the local DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles in the US) - what do they use for signage? Whatever they have easy access to. Street sign production. The signs out front, the signs inside, look just like regular street signs. They use what they have available to them. Same with the keyboard light, shaped like a key - because that's what Keytronics or whomever had available to them. What used to be throwaway - now apparently costs dearly to set up for.Such switches (with built-in lights) are still made, and generations of them are still available on the surplus market. Or there's always the option of using a "3D printer" to make a plastic replacement part. Tooling of the type discussed is for runs of thousands of parts. This has been largely dispensed with by using rapid prototyping methods, like 3D printers. -michael NadaNet 3.1 for Apple II parallel computing! Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon/ "The wastebasket is our most important design tool--and it's seriously underused."
If you have one unit, and it's no more available anywhere on the market, and depending on what you are aiming exactly, you can make a mold with silicon, then make new parts from it with resin. That require some experience with the process but the result can be very nice and cheap.
Cedric