The Minutiae...

[Manoet]

of everyday life or Olde World (read OCD) Craftsmanship.

Today I will place my last order on internal Devialet fasteners. These are for a few screws made from T304 stainless that I put off ordering, hoping I could find them in T316 SS or aluminum instead due to just an ever-so slight hint of magnetic attraction... about 90% less than plated nickel but there it is; my nemesis and it drives me nuts as I came so very very close to zero magnetism in fasteners. These screws can't be picked up even with a hi-strength Neodymium magnet but they can be jiggled & moved around slightly on a smooth surface with a Neo.

All new board stand-offs are aluminum. OEM standoffs are nickel-plated brass on 18mm stand-offs or 12mm nylon. Nickel is magnetic so it has to go. Nylon isn't magnetic but is over 800 times slower to shed heat than aluminum. Not a typo... "over 800 times!!" .25 W/mk for nylon compared to 205 W/mk for aluminum. In comparison brass is half as thermally conductive as aluminum 95 W/mk vs 205 W/mk.

In every case I had to give up Torx for either hex socket head, phillips or blade but EVERY part is unplated and non-magnetic save for those pesky 4 T304 screws. I came so close grrrr!

Once these last few parts are here my parts list is wiped out. Nothing new to order that I know of but there's always surprises. Aside from prep costs like stripping, anodizing etc I would've been done with this project for under $150 out-of-pocket then those fretfully spendy thermal pads reared their beautiful lil heads and I knew I couldn't live without em. But even now I'm looking at just at, under or slightly over $2k all-in. But won't break my heart if it eclipses $2.5k and sounds like a million bucks and runs cool as a cucumber... ok, ok tepid leftover pizza.

While Its not over I can't help but feel that all-in-all its been fairly easy with few surprises and none very worrisome or worse; insurmountable. Whereas I've had FAR simpler projects that were a constant and relentless PITA! If this continues along this path I'll have gotten off pretty easily all things considered. But don't wanna risk jinxing myself so a hearty knock-on-wood accompanies that last statement!

[Music or sound]

of everyday life or Olde World (read OCD) Craftsmanship.

Today I will place my last order on internal Devialet fasteners. These are for a few screws made from T304 stainless that I put off ordering, hoping I could find them in T316 SS or aluminum instead due to just an ever-so slight hint of magnetic attraction... about 90% less than plated nickel but there it is; my nemesis and it drives me nuts as I came so very very close to zero magnetism in fasteners. These screws can't be picked up even with a hi-strength Neodymium magnet but they can be jiggled & moved around slightly on a smooth surface with a Neo.

All new board stand-offs are aluminum. OEM standoffs are nickel-plated brass on 18mm stand-offs or 12mm nylon. Nickel is magnetic so it has to go. Nylon isn't magnetic but is over 800 times slower to shed heat than aluminum. Not a typo... "over 800 times!!" .25 W/mk for nylon compared to 205 W/mk for aluminum. In comparison brass is half as thermally conductive as aluminum 95 W/mk vs 205 W/mk.

In every case I had to give up Torx for either hex socket head, phillips or blade but EVERY part is unplated and non-magnetic save for those pesky 4 T304 screws. I came so close grrrr!

Once these last few parts are here my parts list is wiped out. Nothing new to order that I know of but there's always surprises. Aside from prep costs like stripping, anodizing etc I would've been done with this project for under $150 out-of-pocket then those fretfully spendy thermal pads reared their beautiful lil heads and I knew I couldn't live without em. But even now I'm looking at just at, under or slightly over $2k all-in. But won't break my heart if it eclipses $2.5k and sounds like a million bucks and runs cool as a cucumber... ok, ok tepid leftover pizza.

While Its not over I can't help but feel that all-in-all its been fairly easy with few surprises and none very worrisome or worse; insurmountable. Whereas I've had FAR simpler projects that were a constant and relentless PITA! If this continues along this path I'll have gotten off pretty easily all things considered. But don't wanna risk jinxing myself so a hearty knock-on-wood accompanies that last statement!

Did you look at: http://www.fastener-express.com has metric, Al and some torx!

[Manoet]

Thanks for the heads-up but probably 70%+ of my small fasteners came from Fast-Ex. They and AAA Metrics here in Denver are my go-to people for small aluminum/titanium fasteners as I forgot to mention yesterday I'm using Ti fasteners on my belly pan for additional strength. I also got the last 4 screws I was looking for in aluminum yesterday instead of stainless. Just bored out a smaller Dremel collet to 3mm and used it to hold the screw near the bottom of the thread while cutting it from 6mm to the 3mm thread length I needed with a super-thin diamond cut-off blade. Worked perfectly and zero magnetic attraction compared to 'slight' attraction with the stainless. I'm now at original target of 100% non-magnetic fasteners for Devialet reassembly!

[rwjr44]

When you are done with all of your modifications, please estimate what a factory built Devialet would cost with them incorporated.

[Manoet]

When you are done with all of your modifications, please estimate what a factory built Devialet would cost with them incorporated.

It would be silly-cheap since they're buying em en-masse and have to use 'some' fastener so their only increases would be the slight percentage from a standard to a specialty fastener... pennies on the dollar. The one H-U-G-E big-ticket item is the thermal pads. While I paid over 10X what I could've bought the OEM blue for I'm sure if someone brought Alpha-Cool wheelbarrows of cash to trade for their thermal pads they'd get downright cheap... maybe on the order of 20-30% more than Devialet pays for the blue pads now. Then there's places where things would be dramatically less $ than OEM. Take a standard IEC inlet instead of a PEM filter. It won't be a F'tech of course! All told I would guess their cost-of-goods might increase by single digit percentages if they incorporated this on EVERY unit that goes out the door. But you also have to factor in they're making these at far less than half of their suggested retail pricing scheme. Probably less then 35%. I personally believe they are out-of-pocket near or less than 30% of what a 200 sells for on the unit. I don't find fault with that number in any way. They're out huge amounts in tooling, marketing, design, engineering and tens of millions of dollars upside down in debt. They NEED to make money or they'll go away very quickly and we'll all be left holding a bag.

And while doing these mods on every 200 might add 2-3% ($60-$70) per unit they could easily absorb it but my bet is they won't. Tho I don't see them offering a special edition for something like this either. I believe they'd either do ALL of em this way or none and that they'd NEVER admit the idea came from outside Devialet and I understand why. Arrogance is served straight-faced at this particular little French hi-fi bistro.

*UPDATE*
Couple things I thought of overnight that didn't make it into this post yesterday. Anodizing is roughly 20% the cost of 4 layer chrome plating required on aluminum and avoids the necessary hand-polishing required of chrome which reduce costs further and significantly. However the WBT binding posts need to be added on but not at the prices 'we' pay. WBT is a large company set up to offer both wholesale and OEM pricing tiers to manufacturers. S'why you see them on so many high-end speakers as delivered from their manufacturer. Convection cooling inlets could already be handled via the footer and optical ports. Clear bezel viewing ports could be replaced by die-cut SS mesh for less cost than acrylic viewing windows w/screen-printed annular rings and typography. The robots have to drill outlets at the front... a near one-minute/one tool machining operation for Devialet. Near as I can tell these last few add-on items are likely a near 'wash' price-wise and don't significantly add or lower above costs but needed to be mentioned in this thread. All things considered I still see this as raising Devialet's costs at/near $60-$70 per unit on the 120, 200 and 400 machines if incorporated at the production level and included on every machine.