Figured I’d post this here, as there seem to be at least a few folks on this forum with a bit of industrial design/manufacture/marketing saavy…
After 30-odd years of DIY’ing large format cameras…I created the L-1 4x5, designed on graph paper followed by cardboard mockups, and finally to cutting flat phenolic templates for my router table cutter heads to follow - with the final product being crafted from resin impregnated, highly compressed plywood:
With this design I applied for and received a patent, and also a couple of industry awards, and was briefly courted by Linhof (Munich) for a possible buyout (which ultimately fell through).
A bit later, I brought my design into a high-tech computer assisted design environment (shepherded by Leon Fang, general manager of Timken Aerospace at that time, who’d predicted a three mil. valuation in three years), utilizing 3-D Solid Works for modeling, some pretty fancy machinery (up to 5-axis), and hard plated 6061 and 7075 aluminum with a bit of stainless here and there…to create five prototypes of the L-45A:
This model also garnered industry awards and magazine write-ups, despite its prototype status…and I was then courted by Sinar (Zurich), for a possible buyout. But, as with Linhof, this deal also fell through.
Thing is, while these companies basically inhabit the same stratosphere in the arena of designing/manufacturing ultra precise large format cameras, their design/manufacture DNA tends to be somewhat entrenched…and my product, while very well received by each company, would have diverted too much from the look and feel of their existing product lines, as well as requiring them to gear up with some new machinery and programming protocols, aspects which can be hugely expensive for companies such as these. A bit of irony here, as it is generally much less expensive for a “little guy” like me to do this…but lesson learned!
And so, after spending a few thou. more to create a new set of design drawings and CD’s for production (incorporating over 100 “tweaks”)…I looked around for someone to do a production run. Very expensive here, so I looked to China but quickly (and wisely) backed out.
Out of cash by this time and unable to secure enough via. loans…and with VC at the time (yup, I pitched!) mostly supporting multimillion, big tech/telecom projects with solid exit strategies - out of the blue comes a very talented CNC guy, who offered to have his company build my cameras with essentially nothing upfront, with my agreement to pay him back as I sold cameras. But then, more than halfway through a production run, this guy up and died (hang gliding accident), and I was again out of luck, now left with lots of gleaming but un-plated aluminum parts and blanks, plus production drawings and CD’s (which communicate with the machinery during manufacture).
The lesson here (I think) was that I was under capitalized (and too front loaded) and bit off more than I could chew - in creating a truly high end product which proved to be too expensive (for me) to bring into production, exacerbated by the fact that I’m basically an unknown entity living in the sticks of northern Vermont (no longterm brand identity/reputation).
Then again, whenever anyone knowledgeable in this (large format photography) arena actually gets their hands on this camera, the response is pretty much “cats pajamas,” so there is that, plus the fact that film photography in general, and especially that involving large format view cameras, has for some time been undergoing somewhat of a renaissance, and I sometimes wonder if I want to jump back into this project.
But to be honest, I see myself more on the design/creative side of things, and feel somewhat ill equipped to handle the larger arena of industrial product marketing (albeit in this particular market the numbers are not that huge…but still). Also, I’m now, at age 67, more or less retired, and really want to place my energies into my family and property, my “personal” photography, and into other interests, like wrenching on my 944.
Sad perhaps…considering that what this has cost me, in addition to the time and legwork, is the equivalent of a decent house - that I have in fact moved on from this project. But the thought that all of this has come to naught, that all of those parts, and the effort, will go to waste, and that a truly wonderful product will never reach its intended market, does tend to keep me awake on more than a few nights.
At any rate…keeping in mind that I have lots of production ready parts and blanks, complete sets of engineering drawings and CNC manufacturing software/CD’s for both the existing prototypes and actual production - if there is anyone here (or if you know someone) who might be interested in giving this a go (trade for a 911?) - let me know and we’ll talk!