Control Knob Fabrication: Process Photos

Fabricating our own control knobs in house for our new generation of products was something we knew we wanted to do here in the LZX shop early on in development – adding our own touch to the part of your instrument you will be handling most has always been important to us – but the ability to customize it entirely is a creative freedom that thrills us. And it’s been quite a journey – we’ve tried everything from urethane castings to DIY injection molding, 3D printing using dozens of types of resin or extruder based plastics, and it’s been a lot of fun!

I will flesh out this thread with a more detailed overview of the process steps involved – please ask questions if you have them!

CAD design in Autodesk Inventor

The 81 knob array fresh out of our Form3 SLA resin printer.

Post-curing color infill using Markal Lacquer-Stik and a little elbow grease

Ready for installation

Important Note For 2021 Gen3 Module Customers
Our knob fabrication process is still maturing. A few demarcations and micro imperfections are going to be intentional and desirable! We want them to look and feel like the custom, hand fabricated parts that they are – it’s part of the product. That said, it’s possible some control knobs have an unacceptable number of finishing blemishes, such as scratches or pock marks, or embedded fibers from cleaning processes. Part of the intent behind this post is to show you what you should be expecting. If the knobs on your module have noticeably ugly blemishes that don’t meet the expectations shown here – please snap and send us a photo – we will promptly ship you a new set of knobs for your module and would appreciate the feedback in order to continue to improve our quality control procedures.

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