>One small correction Michael, that'd be acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, >or more commonly ABS. Oh, you also forgot to mention what happens >to listmembers that correct the listowners spelling publicly. fjm
Well, usually we send a team right out to go and kick your dog! However, in the case of ABS, there is a special injunction allowing us to carry on our research into the actual spelling of the substance ;-). I have a suspicion you are correct here, - although I got my spelling from a very interesting man in platics who ran into Jimmy Gordon, David Fairweather, Rodrigo Eberienos (sp again?) and myself at the airport on the way home from SPAH. We talked "shop" and a few things about where plastics are good in harps.
>From the "scientific" point of view most of the harp material needs to be smooth, very accurate, relatively "dense" and thus highly reflective. Density isn't really important, byut smoothness and reflectivity are and many dense materials fit this very well. A quick description of the science of free reed physics led this individual to a similar conclusion. So, there are a lot of parts on the instrument that can be plastic. Perhaps the reeds and plates are the only parts that "couldn't" be feasibly made out of a plastic. However, he did say that some plastics can be "springy" and the actual theory behind it isn't impossible to construct in plastic - but not anything of the size we require ;-).
One thing that caught me was that he felt that slides could be easily injected or molded at a hardness and thickness that would be well within our tolerances. This didn't surprise me because John Infande showed a few instruments with custom plastic slides. I do think that the slide is one are where plastic could not harm the sound, but might very well ease the problem of stickiness by getting a smoother, or better "flatter" surface than a stamped piece of metal and providing a non-metal barrier between the metal slide channels. According to the plastics man this could either be injected as a complete part or later have the playing holes "burned" out with great accuracy (1/1000 of an inch being easy to accomplish). Pluse he assured me that hardness would not be a problem either providing a slide that might even be less destructible than the normal slides ;-).
Anybody working on something like this or interested in getting more ideas from him? He seemed like a nice guy and I bet he would be happy to provide information. The plastics industry is apparently always looking for "converts" from wood, metal or other substances ;-). I would be happy to get in touch with him and continue our conversation. let me know if anyone has some ideas or questions.
