I just got off the phone with Alec Jeong and I thought I'd pass on some info.
He says that if we all get together to mass-order film, he'll give us the bulk discount, but ship each part of the order to it's respective order-erer. One person will have to collect all the money and send it to him, but he can split shipping addresses.
Also, he has some old PFG-03M which he's willing to sell at a substantial discount. He didn't say exactly how much but figures of 50% were mentioned. These films are about a year old and may be fogged at the edges.
Anyway, here's the site: http://www.integraf.com/
I was at laser reflections and they were laminating film to glass in order to make their large masters. The would laminatie it before exposure and processing. What adhesive and laminator would one use for something like this? It would be nice to use film for masters to save money but I hate index matching.
I've got an email from Bernadette that describes what they were doing about eight months ago. Based on her input I started laminating film to glass for my transmission masters but haven't gotten good enough at it for the copies. I've been very happy with the masters though. I've been using this method for all my masters since late July.
I'll dig up her descriptions and some method notes I wrote several months back and post them here. I posted some details here but the search isn't working for me right now.
Colin, still doing some cleanup on the notes I've got (turns out that I hadn't done a full writeup yet) but since search is working at the moment here are some of the threads where I've written about kapco
Thank you for the links I did not yet have time to find them myself. As a side note it would be nice to have a google search window on the archive page. I can't put one on this page because of the way network54 works. Or at least I have not been able to get it to work correctly. Perhaps I should try again.
Also, when you import the forum to the archive, how do you do it? I need to make a program to download the forum into a database. Would it be possible to adapt your code and would you have time?
I've found that the reason the forum archive isn't googled is that google attempts to strip out forum posts when caching pages. Those types of pages tend to change frequently and would bloat their cache.
I'm slowly learning enough perl to adapt a script that will take the archive pages and turn them into google friendly versions (by stripping out all but the final messageid number that each page has).
Once that's done it will only take a few weeks for google to catch the change and at that point searching the archives will be as easy as using google (my intention all along).
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If someone says it can't be done but they haven't tried it, don't believe them. http://www.dragonseye.com/Holography
Also, when you import the forum to the archive, how do you do it? I need to make a program to download the forum into a database. Would it be possible to adapt your code and would you have time?
Unfortunately I use some commercial software (Teleport) to such the forum to my hard drive, so I wouldn't be able to modify it to go directly into a database.
I wonder if it might be possible to use Perl to post-convert it though. Perl is capable of a lot although I personally don't know it (yet).
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If someone says it can't be done but they haven't tried it, don't believe them. http://www.dragonseye.com/Holography
Let me know how your progress. I plan to have the forum in phpbb within 2 months but I have not yet figured out how to include all of the old posts. I ran into a programmer today with the necessary skills and I am going to show him some holograms and try to work out a trade. I think he is willing to work on trade.
You do not think he would extend this offer outside the U.S., do you? I'd gladly pay for my personal shipping costs separately if I could get in... or maybe someone could buy this for me at this bulk price, and then ship my plates/film to Spain at my expenses!
I've had a further talk with Alec with an update.
Apparently the film itself doesn't matter - PFG-01, PFG-03 etc. He says that normally they (Integraf) give a discount of 10% on orders of $1000.00, and possibly going higher for higher orders in increments of $500.00, ie a greater discount for orders of $1500, $2000 etc.
Each order needs to pay their own shipping, but he can take a credit card and charge to that. Arturo, he can ship to Spain if you give him a UPS number or a credit card number he can charge to.
He said this was an idea in progress. While he's willing to give a break to people on the forum, he obviously did not want to make this offer to someone who was going to re-sell the film, just to benefit hobby holographers. I think this is reasonable.
I think it would be a little unfair to me to join this since, as a professional holographer, I'd have an economic advantage by getting cheap plates. I'm willing to make the order and act as a central "billing" center if people want this, but I'm kind of hoping someone else will...
I think it would be a little unfair to me to join this since, as a professional holographer, I'd have an economic advantage by getting cheap plates.
Why? You're an end-user. I didn't see a limitation saying that pros couldn't take advantage. If anything, have a pro or two join in on an order helps the rest of us as well.
Taking advantage of an economic advantage is part of capitalism and isn't inherently a bad thing.
Lower supply costs = higher profits. That's one way a business succeeds.
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If someone says it can't be done but they haven't tried it, don't believe them. http://www.dragonseye.com/Holography
"Taking advantage of an economic advantage is part of capitalism and isn't inherently a bad thing."
I guess I must not be a true capitalist. Now that I'm free! free, at last! I can say: "Holographers of the World, Arise! You have nothing to lose but your PFG's!"
I'm joking. Seriously, This whole thing arose because I called TJ to ask about the PCG meeting. While I had him on the line, I also told him about needing more film. His son, Alec, called me back about the film order and we got to talking about the forum. At that time he mentioned the idea of having "forum members" get film on a discount basis. It was a half formed idea, but I mentioned I'd throw it out and see if anyone was interested. If so, Alec felt the idea could be formed more coherently. After several people responded, I called him back and I believe he and Colin are now talking. The point is the whole thing started as a way of helping hobby holographers who may not be able to afford the fairly high price of a holo studio and film. I've seen several posts saying that experimentation is limited due to cost of film. I felt it was somehow an abuse in principle if I participated since I'm not a hobby holographer and would be taking advantage of an offer that doesn't really apply to me, simply because I can. I suppose one metaphor I can give is if an organisation lays out food, clothing etc as a charity inside an open building and I walk past and looked in, there's nothing preventing me from entering and helping myself. For me, that would feel wrong. In fact when Alec mentioned that there should be some mention of the fact that the film was not intended for resale but use by genuine hobbyists, I'd never even thought of that aspect. So I guess it's even worse, I'm just a naive idealist!
I certainly understand your position and would probably feel the same way if I were in your shoes.
The only trouble is that your analogy doesn't work unless Integraf is willing to give a seriously steep discount rather than normal bulk discount that's been mentioned before.
If it's the normal discount, your participation actually helps us and might be a good reason for other pros to get involved if Integraf needs to increase their sales.
If (as I guess from Colin's response) the discount is steeper, that would change the equation although it's possible Integraf might get some nastygrams from their regular buyers.
In any case, I hope it pans out in a way that's beneficial to all involved.
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If someone says it can't be done but they haven't tried it, don't believe them. http://www.dragonseye.com/Holography
Is he just saying he'll give the normal bulk discount (10% and up for orders of $1000 or more) on a group order or is this somehow a different arrangement? I understand the shipping arrangements, it just not clear what his minimum for this is.
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If someone says it can't be done but they haven't tried it, don't believe them. http://www.dragonseye.com/Holography
