I have an old set of space shuttle blueprints in case anyone is interested in reviving that product too.
Actually, design documentation is more valuable than a sample holder. The actual holder exhibits dimensional variation due to a variety of factors, and shouldn't be relied upon. Keith Canham recently fell into that trap when he measured a single Chamonix holder and built his whole plate camera back around it....the blue prints aren't any more valuable than having the actual film holder there in front of you. Any measurement, dimension, thickness or cut is plainly available and can be measured...
Any film holder or plate holder made today is going to probably have to be re-designed from the ground up, and manufactured in a much different way than they did with the hundreds of thousands of film holders made by Fidelity over the years.
In any event, it's unlikely that wooden or plastic holders will ever again be manufactured in any quantity using the original techniques or materials. Nowadays, custom 3-D printing would be the likely approach. As Holmburgers notes, blueprints would be superfluous, as any existing examples could simply be scanned and copied.
I see the problems you hinted at in this case. But there are a variety of 3D manufacturing technologies with different materials. And 3D printing is used in índustrial final-product production meanwhile. Even for components for aircraft turbines. In same cases 3D printing is the only way to make that part, in other cases it is the most economic.
Whether this technology can be a manufacturing alternative at the moment for our fim holders I am not sure, as it should end in a part made of ABS or similar, with high dimensional quality and good surface finish. But technolgy is close to it at least.
But they also could be produced in conventional ways other than moulding.
Also could 3D printing be combined with conventional means.
As much as the blueprints are valuable, and will be required eventually to continue production, the production injection molds are the most valuable right now. With the blueprints I can make new molds for the injection molding machines, something that I will eventually have to do as the molds wear out.
From what I've seen in other situations, I'm guessing the molds are/were sitting in storage at whatever injection molding contractor they were using for production, and that once the storage fees stop being paid it's a pretty short time before the molds are sitting in the mud at the nearest scrap metal yard. All that work down the tubes.
So even with the blueprints, you'd need to get new molds tooled, and nobody is going to see the cost-benefit of that, what with the fairly infinite supply of existing holders.
I made the seller an offer of $50, explaining that I simply wanted to digitize all the stuff for the historical record, since *nobody* was ever going to tool up to make film holders in quantity ever again. Amazingly enough, they turned down my offer ;-)
Duncan
Someone having pride in their work and wanting to make a high quality product can do so just as well in a completely digital manufacturing setting as in a hand crafted work place. Inspecting the final product and being willing to tweak it to make it better or to fix a machining issue, such as a small burr, is possible within a digital environment as well. But it takes pride in what you do regardless of the technology used
I take it that the Fidelity film holders that B&H is currently selling have been at their warehouse for a while now...
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