Ar9Jim

Welcome to TCS, Sir.. Enjoy!

Here is a link to a calculator. These speeds would be under ideal conditions imho.. Solid mounted to the machine, peck drilling, flood coolant, etc.. I seldom run tools as fast as they say unless in a CNC machine. http://www.vikingdrill.com/fdspCal.html

Hi Dave, Welcome, Sir.. Enjoy!

It depends on the drill diameter. A Bridgeport mill like this has a 2 speed gear box. They can go from about 50 to about 2200 rpm. Very versatile machine. An old one like this can be purchased for about $3-4K.

The work holding tooling is done. The fixture will work with a variety of chassis and faceplates. The chassis has blue tape to prevent the chips from scratching it. The aluminum face plate material has a solid stop for locating the blanks in position. The pocket the blanks set in, had the inside corners relieved with a dovetail cutter, so the plates will rest flat on the locating surface. The counterbored holes are for 1/2 socket head cap screws. Tomorrow the prototype parts will be machined. This fixture fits in the CNC mill for production runs.

Sorry for the sideways pictures. Started on the SH tooling today. The material is 1018 CRS. This project doesn't require heat treat The material is 1 x 6 x 17 inches. This fixture is for use in a milling machine vise, like the blue color Kurt vise in the picture. The vise jaws will be replaced with the fixture for holding the chassis and faceplates in the same fixture. Today the stock was milled to get it flat and then located on the magnetic chuck of a surface grinder to grind the material flatter yet. Tomorrow I'll square up the edges and add the dowel pin holes on location. The counterbores for 1/2" Cap screws will be added. Should be done tomorrow. Made chips in the AM and sparks in the PM.. Note the chips on the milling machine.. Normally chips shaped like 6s and Js are what you are after with amber/light blue color. When the speeds and feeds are right, the heat is transferring to the chips instead of the part or cutter.

Heading to the machine shop this morning to make a work holding fixture for machining the chassis and face plates. Pictures later today.

We had 2 Carver dealers within a reasonable distance. One would steer you away from Carver and toward more expensive brands. The other would just give auditions and didn't steer much. They sold a ton of Carver letting the gear and the value do the selling for them. It's how we sell Bob's products today.. Once in the customers system compared to others, they sell themselves.

Solid state relays.

The power transformers meet specs. B+ is just under 700 volts. These are pictures of serial #1 getting its wiring sorted. It's been 14 months from Bob's design to this point.

Hi Jeff. Welcome to TCS.. Enjoy!

Great 3M. I'll show the raw material and pictures as it becomes SH tooling that will save time for years to come, keeping the cost down. If the volume justifies the expense we can make a punch and die for stamping the chassis for switches, RCA's, IEC jack, Etc.. There is an old saying with hydraulic press builders. "drill for oil, punch for profit." The process is scalable.

Tomorrow or Tuesday, machining of the work holding fixture will be done. This will enable quick changes between parts to keep the machines producing most efficiently. This is simple 'soft' tooling made on a milling machine from 1018 cold rolled steel. In higher volume, higher precision work, the same tooling would made from A2 tool steel, heat treated and precision ground after heat treat. Milling is accurate enough for this work. Pictures to follow.

Good point halfbaked. Can you imagine a point in audio history, when telling the truth would send Carver sales through the roof and also piss off most your other paying magazine advertisers at the same time. Magazine circulation of print was more important to income at that time, than living on advertisers money and selling their products for them, as today. We get customer reports of a competition against other brands with every sale we make. I trust those reports. We should capture the details on the brands we have faced on a level playing field.

I learned the hard way. I had 2 -M400s and a C1 in the late 1980s. My brother in law hooked me up with guy selling them used. I loved that Carver system. It was out of my budget if not for finding a crazy good deal from a (once) wealthy guy with a coke issue, selling cheap. Sad but true. Had that system a couple years and kept reading audio magazines and specifications like they are a science of their own.. Resistive load test numbers. So the Adcom GFA 555 had better numbers than the Carver. If I could sell the Carver I could get the new Adcom that should sound even better.. I sold the Carver gear, went to Columbia A/V and bought a new GFA 555 and Adcom preamp I don't remember the model # . Damn that was one of the biggest disappointment of my life.. I sold the Carver and was stuck with the Adcom.. I couldn't afford to get the Carver back again for 20 years, while raising kids and living the dream. Every time I turned on that Adcom, I kicked my own ass for 20 years. This is why we sell with the in-home Carver Amp Challenge. People have to hear Bob's work. Reading test numbers and reading audiophile magazine reviews of the "special" amp of the month, bit me in the ass to put it bluntly. The media in my case was more harm to my enjoyment of the hobby than good. The GFA 555 review was worse than worthless for me. It cost 20 years of enjoyment. You have to hear audio products for yourself because the media is not in the business of looking out for you.. If an audio company won't let you hear it without charging a restocking fee, if the sonic value is not there. I walk away. Why pay a $1000 restocking fee on a $5000 product. We want customers to compare with no restocking fee. Its best for Bob Carver and the great customers.

Call Bob Carver Company. 815 985 3557. See https://www.bobcarvercorp.com/ for more details or to purchase on-line.

Agree totally. The variables are too great for making any assumptions from outside your system at home. Words and reviews mean quite literally nothing. Actually, the pay to play reviews are worse than nothing, as every month has something supposedly better than the last in some "special" way. Choose your propaganda wisely. Hear for yourself with any brand. As far as I'm concerned, being involved in this industry myself, should make my works suspect merely by association . Don't believe me or anyone else. Hear the product at home and compare. The differences are obvious at home. Many in this industry make used car salesman look like Mother Theresa. Then there are the industry "well connected" "insiders", that have a line of BS longer than the great wall of China. If the industry can survive the covers being pulled their old school, snake oil, BS, something good will remain. Not to mention the limited value of resistive load test, some chose to promote as relevant to how a product actually sounds when reproducing music through loudspeakers. Forgive me for a rant. Someday I might vent about what I've learned in the last 4-5 years. It will not be a pretty picture.

Sure. We talk almost every day. I gather and propose ideas, but Bob's has his own ideas and final approval throughout the process.

Now I'm designing a single work holding fixture for machining the chassis and the face plates. The X - Y pickup point for zeroing the machine will be machined into the fixture itself. I'll show pictures of the tooling. This tooling will allow the parts to be removed and replaced in the machine quickly while locating them properly. This is key to keeping the machine running and reducing cycle times. Reducing cycle times reduces cost and keeps the USA competitive. I'll show you CAD, then show pictures of tooling in real life, then prototypes on manual mill and then production on a CNC, metal finishing, laser, silkscreen. assembly etc.. Hope its fun to see what it takes and how the process evolves.

Hey Chris, Ok here are the concepts. The Bob Carver signature will be in white like the rest of the script. The chassis is deep enough (8) inches to allow stacking. Its also deep enough to accommodate the tube buffer option with tubes sticking through the lid with copper cages similar to the Ram 285.. We are thinking about using the same hole pattern on the chassis, regardless if the buffer option is selected or not.. This way the buffer could be added at a later date if desired, with minimal modification. Those without the buffer will still have the switch installed. Faceplate will be radiused to match V12 and 285 . The button recesses and buttons match the V12 buttons. Some items from your request. 1) Power button on the face. 2) Gundry filter (switchable). 3) Can be purchased with a switchable tube buffer showing glowing exposed tubes. 4) Can be purchased without a tube buffer with a flat top surface suitable for stacking. 5) Make it deep enough to be stackable. Radiused to match the Ram 285. Smooth and modern. This is old CAD software but plenty capable for this type work.

That brings another topic to the thread that is not very well understood in the audiophile realm. Would you believe that the impedance dips were allowed remain in the Kappa 9s because they were intended for tube amplifiers. The Kappa 9s can be ran on fairly small tube amps. At the time, the Kappa nine was recommended for use with "vintage" (tube) amplifiers. "Nice wide voltage swing and lots of headroom" B. Carver, is the answer. Actually a Black Magic 25 would power Kappa9s way better that many people could even comprehend. A search for Kappa 9 / tube amp has a lot of info.. People running smaller tube amps after burning up solid state. Not intuitive but true non the less. Paul talks about tubes and Kappa 9s in the video. This is also not intuitive to the common audiophile beliefs in solid state, about an amplifier needing to double its output from 8 to 4 ohms in order to run difficult loads. Tube amps don't double as the impedance is reduced by half. Usually 8 and 4 ohm output is not much different. Bobs DC restorer makes them even better.

Sure was John. Have asked Bob about that. Also used null testing when investigating MQA he writes "Null test, she don't lie".

This is an interesting point of view on a subject. Musicians use dummy loads with their amplifiers for doing recording without driving speakers to high volumes. Resistive loads are known to make an amp sound flat and terrible. Reactive loads can simulate the sound of the amp sounding sweet, as if driving speakers during recording. Consider that the common test in Hi Fi audio magazines and blogs, celebrate the best amplifier in resistive load measurement test. This is why some of the best measuring products in test, can sound flat and sterile. It's about what sounds good. This is also why the 275 test poor running resistors, but performs great with loud speakers. "Why not just use a resistor for recording music"?, "Because the resistor sounds like garbage". You may ask why hi fi companies are building for best resistive load measurements, while that is not the products application. Its a good question. Why optimize a design to perform to a load standard so far removed from it's purpose? Any thoughts?

It may be incomplete for someone wanting to run a multi channel system. Bob drew this for 2 channel use. I'm betting there are enough 2 channel guys remaining to justify it's production. We get calls for the C9 often, even after all these years. Many were disappointed that the V12 didn't have SH included. This is for them.