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Manufacturing the Ambient Quickpole booms


TimoK

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A boom pole love letter   From a single carbon fiber string to one of the most used booms in the world

 

5b2042f2-7867-4996-bd6b-a3d3ec6ed2ea.png

 

 

Twenty five years ago, two production sound professionals working as boom operators and sound mixers decided to share their knowledge and gear. (Günter Knon & Chris Price) With their collective wealth of field experience, they set out to design better versions of the equipment they used  starting with their boom poles.



Applying great attention to detail, especially boom stiffness, handling noise and durability, they proceeded to implement their improvements. A short time later, the design was finalized and went into production, immediately becoming very popular.

Since that time a lot has improved, but not the idea that every detail matters.
 For the first time in 25 year history, we would like to offer a look behind the scenes, and proudly show you how an Ambient pole is produced today:

 

Video "Manufacturing the Quickpole"

 

Read the complete love letter.

 

Incl. a description of the details, leading to the final products,

how we produce the individual parts, and

why we decided to go for four seperate boom pole series and what seperates them, ... .

 

 

Step by step explanation of "Manufacturing the Quickpole"

TC 0:06

From a rack with dozens of carbon coils, single fibers are pulled into the production line.

TC 0:12

All strings are pulled through an epoxy basin over a steel bar to take off the excess epoxy, and into the pulltrusion assembly line. This proprietary and confidential machine now weaves, extrudes and bakes the fibers simultaneously to form a perfect tube (Not in the video).

TC 0:19

Aircraft aluminum blanks are pushed into the turning machine.

TC 0:21

Here different metal parts of the booms are milled out of blanks with high precision by the fully automatic, new, state of the art machine.

TC 0:38

Afterwards, the parts fall into a basin with water and special purifier to cool down and clean off microscopic particles.

TC 0:46

Every single metal part is examined for tolerance and finished by hand.

TC 0:48

Now, we are back in the carbon factory to show how QS tubes are made. The special grinding machine polishes the QS tubes after each carbon layer.

TC 0:58

A new layer of carbon fiber is pressed onto a stainless steel bar and afterwards reeled up under high pressure by a special machine. Afterwards the pole with the new layer is baked and ground again. This process is repeated until all layers we designed are added and one tube is finished.

TC 1:01

During the anodizing process the aluminum parts are cleaned in a huge acid bath and afterwards immersed into different anodizing basins.

TC 1:20

To ensure the perfectly smooth action of the QS segments the quality control measures the tubes with a tolerance of only 5/100 mm.

TC 1:24

The final assembly is done by hand in our small manufactory close to the German city of Passau.

 

 

 

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