Just had a major stroke of luck.

[Tony Smith]

I've just bought, from a guy on the FB Airheads list, a pair of pods fitted with working clock and voltmeter, and all wiring for $AU100 including postage.

It's going to be a good day!

[wilcom]

seems fair to me.............. 8-)

[Tony Smith]

seems fair to me.............. 8-)

Well for once my well known tendency to "lollygag" has worked in my favour. Often when I am working, particularly when working on something I am not overly interested in I have "distractions" open on the 2nd screen.

This morning I saw the post about the pods, thought about it for at least 5 nanoseconds and fired in a PM to the seller. He responded quickly as he had just finished typing his ad.

Before anyone else had time to react I'd confirmed their condition, got his bank account details and transferred funds to him.

There were a lot of disappointed Airheads facebook group members.

[skippyc]

Now that is the sort of luck that doesn't come around every day.

[Tony Smith]

Well, just unpacked these.

The pods are in perfect condition which frankly is the major battle.

The clock is broken (which the seller did not fess up about), but I am unconcerned as Lionel Otto Instruments can either fix it, or put the bezel on a modern instrument.

Sharp eyes will note that the pods are already mounted on R65 specific mounts. I did say I was not going to use these and simply use them as trade goods - I am weakening.

In other news my friend with the plastic casting plant is expanding and will be making a new line of microwave specific food containers - the plastic to be used seems very strong and highly durable, although (from our point of view ) an unfortunate "sand" colour. He still has the dies we made up for instrument pods and and will cast me a couple during his pre-production testing.

The dies/moulds we made were good (if somewhat infringing in terms of IP) but the thermoset plastic he uses for blow moulding bottles and jars just simply didn't cut it and the pods we made were more than a bit "floppy" and got worse with sun exposure. When I get the new ones I'll leave them outside in the sun and see how they fare - if after one summer season they are not weakened I'll make them available on the QT to forum members here. Alternatively I might just change the dimensions and shape slightly so that they do not infringe BMWs design and sell them more widely.

[Justin B.]

Slick!

[Billmc]

Those are very cool and am glad you found them. Great Catch!!!
Is it possible to CADD up the dimensions and use them as guides for a little 3D printing exercise? I have seen a fellow on my Alfa Romeo forum do the same for us on hard to find or nonexistent parts. Just a thought....

[Tony Smith]

Is it possible to CADD up the dimensions and use them as guides for a little 3D printing exercise?

Probably, but I would not know where to begin, I have very limited experience with CAD and none at all with 3D printing.

From what I understand of the 3D printing process durability would be the main problem and the printed product would be used to make moulds for casting. However, i readily accept that my limited knowledge is probably out of date as I read only a few days ago that there are now 3D printers that "print" in metal.

I did once consider using my existing moulds to cast up some pods in Z12 (80%zinc, 20% aluminium)  which would have been not much heavier than the "stock" items. The thing is even though I've always had something of a case of the hots for accessory instrument pods, they were never a hot seller back in the day and if there really was a world-wide unsatisfied demand someone would have stepped up - my experimentation suggests that it isn't rocket science.

[BPT]

I'm not an expert on 3D printing but looked into it a while back.  There are a wide variety of materials available now, some supposedly pretty durable. 
Also, as part of the printing process, you can choose different densities for what you're making.    It can look like loose honeycomb, scaffolding type of structure to solid so that will make a difference in the durability.

I have access to a printer at one branch of our local library. I was trying to take a class on a software program at the same place but the guy who was teaching it left.  Coincidentally, I was just going to contact them this week to see if they'd gotten anyone else to do them.  I played around with the software but really need some basic instruction on it if I want to do anything with it.

There is also a website where people post things they've made and include the files.  I didn't see any pods on there about 6 months ago but I'll have a look again.  There were a lot of BMW things on there though.  I was hoping to find side covers and a few other thinge but never saw them.

There were also some posts on ADV and a couple of guys there were printing things but the posts weren't super current.  One guy was really good at the design part.

Additionally, there is a way to produce things via photography.  There are cameras that will do this but the good ones are very expensive, the consumer level ones are not so easy and are a lot of work.  That was another thing I tried but couldn't get decent results and thought about looking into again to see if there have been any advances in the last 6 months to a year.

[twocyl]

I went to a swap meet in Mass. a couple of weeks ago and one guy had a box full of those pods. I already have a pair for my bike, so I didn't inquire about them.

[Burt]

One of the blokes I work with is playing with a 3D printer and has so far made stuff around the 60 mm x 20 mm sizes with grooving, etc.  I will inquire about pods. 

The steel bits would be easy to bash and bend up. 

[Burt]

As per my previous post, manufacturing pods would be no problem.