[Lloyd 1985]

You have done a fantastic job of making those wooden knobs! I have a little lathe in the workshop (Micro-lathe II), but I lack the skills to make anything complex on it yet. I have used it to turn some wooden back plates for an old bakelite light switch though! It would probably help if I had more than one tool for it, and a better chuck.

I have made silicone moulds of knobs before, and successfully cast replacements, the difficult part being matching the colour and surface finish. All the knobs on my black and chrome Ekco AC76 are resin replacements, unfortunately missing the chrome inserts! For the resin I used 'David's Fastglass' from Halfords, you can buy the resin and hardener separately, on it's own it sets a sort of translucent pink colour, but you can add colouring to the mix.

A place I used to work had a 3D printer, it worked by building up layers of support material and some sort of plastic resin that it cured with UV light as it printed it. You were then left with the part you want encased in the support material which you had to clean off. The thing used to stink awful whilst printing! We would all have headaches by the end of the day being stuck in the same room as that... The parts that came off it were quite good, it all depended on the setup, if you wanted it quickly, you compromised on the finish quality. It was mostly used for making prototypes, and the occasional production parts that were hidden inside the main products (cable clamps being a favourite!). The major downside to the machine was the cost! it was about £16K, and the cartridges of material were stupidly expensive too, and they had a use by date.

Regards,
Lloyd