Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Heibges
Someone could start a business, making these and selling them to other kaleun's.
Hint hint.
Nudge Nudge.
|
A few people have mentioned or hinted at this.
I'm not going to do it for several reasons.
First, it's
Hitman's artwork. I would no more sell his intellectual property for my profit than he would mine. If I were to manufacture them, part of the money would have to go to
Hitman. He has graciously given us permission to use it for ourselves, but he didn't give us permission to make profit off of it.
Second, while it is not a difficult process to build one, it is tedious if you want to do it so that it will last (ie., if I were selling them, I would insist on quality). To do a full KM wheel with both sides, double thickness on cardstock and double laminated takes
at least an hour. You could make a useable one yourself in less time.
Third, I would probably have to shift from self-stick lamination to thermal (which means I would have to buy a machine), and I'd also have to use a better way to connect them together, something like
klh's bolt and nylock nut.
All these things add cost. I can't guess how much
Hitman would think is fair for creating the thing, but the cost for manufacturing and shipping the thing for me is up to 20 or 30 bucks. Most of the material costs are pretty low (except for the ink!), but I'd have to either buy a thermal laminator or have them laminated at a local office supply store. That means I have to either spread the cost of the laminator among perhaps 10 or 20 wheels, or add in the cost of getting 7 pieces laminated at least once, perhaps twice. Then you have to add in my time, which generally is in short supply, and that supply is getting shorter as I get older.
So you are looking at $30 - $40 for something you can build yourself by going down to Wal*Mart and buying cardstock, inkjet transparencies, and some lamination. It would cost you all of about $15 for enough supplies to make up to 10 wheels.
One possibility might be to have a company manufacture a bunch of them. Concise in Japan still makes circular slide rules:
http://www.concise.co.jp/eng0731/slide.html
My guess, however, is that the number that would have to be purchased for them to manufacture a batch would have to be in the several hundred - several thousand range for them to consider it, at a unit cost of at least $30.
I can't see us as a community being able to support that. For instance, I probably wouldn't buy one: I already have two (well, four if you include the US SACF/IS-WAS, and even more if you include my linear and circular slide rules). If you are hardcore enough to want one, you already have one, and many if not most of the people who play SHIII don't bother with manual targeting. My brother occasionally plays, but he didn't want me to make him a KM wheel because he doesn't want to bother with manual targeting.
So, at least for me, the short answer is no, at least for now.
If you want to use one, make it for yourself. If it seems a daunting task, just make the one side (the one with the small wheel with the eagle, marked 'Zeit'). That is the actual calculation side that gives you the speed and AOB, depending on the method you use. I only use the other side occasionally to resolve AOB past 90 degrees (ie., solution gives 45 degree AOB but I'm to the stern of the ship, AOB is then 135 degrees). It's pretty simple: You print them out, cut 3 circles, and pin them together.