Help to get Tube Amp sheet enclosure to production STEP/IGES

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TheTubeDude
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Dec 26, 2022 10:01 pm

Help to get Tube Amp sheet enclosure to production STEP/IGES

Post by TheTubeDude »

Hello!

I am working on a hobby project to make a small prototype series of tube preamplifiers - for that I am making a sheet metal chassis. I started making a 3D drawing and played around with the sheet metal plugin and sort of got it working, but feeling i I am doing it in a far from "best practice" way and I have never produced "complete" files for sending to a overseas (China) manufacturer before.

I am pretty handy with Kicad and LibreCAD 2D and wayback P-CAD and Autocad (v3-12) :D but there is a lot to think of here with FreeCAD and it seems to change a lot between versions so "the right way" seems a bit fluid.

So I would love to find someone to work with that can take a "rough draft" and convert it to a prod ready design and also check my work and/or suggest improvements for payment or donation. I have a few more amps in the pipeline so it could be a repeat thing.

Are there any HIFI tube enthusiasts lurking here? If so even better! The design I am working on now is one I plan to try and sell, but I also have some other designs that I could "open source" and where plans could be shared on this forum/internet. Just getting one design "all the way" would serve as a useful template and make it a lot easier to make others.

For instance, the sheet metal plugin seems a bit one way? How do you make revisons, update sizes, move a hole? I am used to "layers" but what do you do here? Multiple sketches and/or parts? Also how do you make a "good" easy to manufacture design with a lot of air holes, tube socked holes, connector holes etc. without knowing the manufacturers tooling? Certainly with circuit boards some are a lot easier to make and making a "good" design requires experience which I don't have with sheet metal and 3D CAD.

Hope to get a reply!

PS The last time a made a small run (10) of amplifiers was in 1990 and then I found a local company (Stockholm). That involved a hand drawn sketch, a (literal) piece of cake and a small amount of cash. And from that came some super-nice boxes. Now the building they used for their shop is luxury apartments and all local leads here for manufacturing have lead to closed companies... and the ones that seem promising are in China and require STEP files and a finished design. Strange world!
chrisb
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Posts: 53939
Joined: Tue Mar 17, 2015 9:14 am

Re: Help to get Tube Amp sheet enclosure to production STEP/IGES

Post by chrisb »

Hi and welcome to the forum!

If you don't get suitable responses here or by PM, please return. We have done such things before as community projects and the payment was a donation to the FreeCAD project.
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miguel osorio
Posts: 7
Joined: Thu Oct 05, 2017 10:06 pm

Re: Help to get Tube Amp sheet enclosure to production STEP/IGES

Post by miguel osorio »

Hello TheTubeDude!

I am also an HIFI enthusiast and have an hobby project of omnidirectional loudspeakers.

I make all the 3D drawings with freeCAD, using python in a parametric approach and build the speakers in MDF.

I would like to work you. Please PM me.
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