Replica Parts Made in Milwaukee

[ohohyodafarted]

About a year ago I found a guy who runs a company here in Milwaukee that makes custom products for the advertising and sign industry. He has a couple of very expensive $200,000 machines. A 5'x10' CNC programmable flatbed router, and a huge flatbed printer that uses UV cure ink.

The first item I had him make for me was a replica back for a CTC4. He can do large stuff for big console sets, whereas the other company that makes replica backs only has a machine that will do small table top sized sets.

If you are in need of a replacement back, and if you are able to borrow one to use as an example from someone, this guy can program his CNC router to make a copy of the original.

If you need a dial glass or a glass front for a tv set that was reverse painted on the back (reverse silk screened) the flatbed UV printer can be programmed to reproduce these kinds of parts. John Folsom and I had some dial glasses made for our Wards Airline sets, and John had a front glass made for a GE801 and a Raytheon Belmont set.

This stuff is expensive. You not only pay for the finished parts, but you also have to pay for the one time charge to have the part programmed into the printer or Router. Time is money and this kind of time is not cheap. And this guy will only do this kind of "one off" work when he has slack time in his regular production schedule. It took us 7 months of patient begging to get these parts.

Below are some examples of the kinds of work we have had done. John Folsom had a large replica back made for his CBS205 color set. It took abot 90 minutes to produce this part on the CNC router because of the hundreds of holes. The CTC4 back took about 1 hour to make.

Here are some photos to give you an idea of what can be done if you need a part for a valuable set and you are willing to spend whatever it takes to reproduce a part.