Some Sluicing & the Blue Bowl in action

Reed Lukens

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Then here is a picture of Frank Sullivan who has the Blue Bowl patent and who makes the Blue Bowls at his workshop taken yesterday.
F & M.jpg
 

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2cmorau

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Reed your back, u have a vid on rigging], which is really good, laughed on a couple of comments ya made
 

Hoser John

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YAHOO ol'Frank REALLY looks retired now---sooooo cool but was such a great business,we lost a monument to mining when Pioneer closed-John
 

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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

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Yea Frank retired but Pioneer is still open and being run by his daughter Heather and her husband John. It just moved up the street into a smaller shop after the mining economy was destroyed by the green cronies.
 

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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

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Reed kinda the same concept with a second stage to catch any fine gold that exits the blue bowl as what i built.

Looks nice AZ :) I should have the finished video in a couple weeks with the vibration, hopper & everything in operation.
 

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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

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Hey Reed....ya mean to tell me frank has the molds and is doing the injection molding in his little shop? Tough job???

He doesn't do the injection molding himself but he owns the mold that costs around $10,000.00 and has the blanks made. He does the drilling, tapping, sanding, cutting, waxing, polishing & finishing along with mounting the legs and valve in his shop. It is a lot of work bringing the finished product to market.
 

Oakview2

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Reed sorry to hear of the accident, but with all bad comes something good, congrats to you and your new bride:thumbsup:
 

AzViper

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He doesn't do the injection molding himself but he owns the mold that costs around $10,000.00 and has the blanks made. He does the drilling, tapping, sanding, cutting, waxing, polishing & finishing along with mounting the legs and valve in his shop. It is a lot of work bringing the finished product to market.

Reed that sounds like a lot of work to finish even one bowl let alone hundreds of bowls. Hope at the end of the day there is a good profit margin. With the new 3D printers that are out these bowls could be made with no machining but the cost to build them would be out of this world. 3D printers can print in metal or high impact plastics. The photo below is a 3D printer that prints a very smaller layer from the bottom up and continue laying layer upon layer. The gears you see on the left were all made within a 3D printer and were made as one entire unit that cannot be taken a part, but the gears all rotate on the axles. The bicycle frame was made in a much larger 3D printer and the frame is made of space age metals that are very strong.

Maybe some day the speed of these printers will allow for production but right now they are used for modeling and prototyping. As for the Blue Bowl this would be a very easy build as the threads for the water inlet are printed. As I said no machining period.

3D.jpg 3D bicyle.jpg

 

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Hefty1

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He doesn't do the injection molding himself but he owns the mold that costs around $10,000.00 and has the blanks made. He does the drilling, tapping, sanding, cutting, waxing, polishing & finishing along with mounting the legs and valve in his shop. It is a lot of work bringing the finished product to market.

Well Reed...My father used to make his own molds and get about 10-12 bowls out of a set of molds...then he finally had the set of molds made Frank bought...after his death in 92....I myself built many of these bowls...any bad bowls that came from the vender that needed mold trimming or bad color, or just anything wrong were sent back to the vender. My father made a jig to hold the bowl in a drill press so that the tool my father made drilled, tapped and cleaned the thread start all in one shot. Then flip the bowl onto another jig to drill the 3 leg holes, take a valve and screw it in, take 3 leg wires and squeeze them together to fit the holes. Done Im sure Frank has these jigs. As the orders went out they were heat stamped with the date and # of bowl. So I don't know what sanding, cutting, waxing, polishing and finishing needs to be done, unless he has a different vender injecting them for him and he his just dealing with the bad ones himself. I think it was AZViper that told me he had got a bad one.
 

AzViper

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Well Reed...My father used to make his own molds and get about 10-12 bowls out of a set of molds...then he finally had the set of molds made Frank bought...after his death in 92....I myself built many of these bowls...any bad bowls that came from the vender that needed mold trimming or bad color, or just anything wrong were sent back to the vender. My father made a jig to hold the bowl in a drill press so that the tool my father made drilled, tapped and cleaned the thread start all in one shot. Then flip the bowl onto another jig to drill the 3 leg holes, take a valve and screw it in, take 3 leg wires and squeeze them together to fit the holes. Done Im sure Frank has these jigs. As the orders went out they were heat stamped with the date and # of bowl. So I don't know what sanding, cutting, waxing, polishing and finishing needs to be done, unless he has a different vender injecting them for him and he his just dealing with the bad ones himself. I think it was AZViper that told me he had got a bad one.

Hefty1 I did tell you that. Bought my Blue Bowl off of eBay in March of 2013 and arrived very unfinished. Lots of fine hairy polyurethane fibers and some mold seam to be worked on. You were very surprised when I told you my bowl was new due to the molding on the top edge said D.A.M Industries of which you said this was your fathers business and you were not aware this name was still be used. The video in this thread I posted is the Blue Bowl I received. Looks okay now but was not what I was expecting in quality on arrival. No clue who the vendor was or the name of who I purchased the bowl from.

D.A.M..jpg
 

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Reed Lukens

Reed Lukens

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Yep he still uses the same jigs but I think he told me many years ago that he has them made in bulk and got 50 at a time shipped in but that could be from a vendor anywhere and I think he mentioned China back then. Then he said the other day that he trims, polishes & coats them, and that if they are in too bad of shape that he sends them back. We didn't talk too much on it because we were talking about everything else as usual and Karen, my wife was there and we were all having a good time. I still use one of the old blue D.A.M. bowls that I was given many years ago at times :)
 

NeoTokyo

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Nice to see Jack Black working in the first video at 4:15 down on Hollywood Blvd. :D

Thanks for posting the vids and glad to see you back at it.
 

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