OS Film status update from proprietor Alan Cohen. Please propagate.
"For those that have followed the saga of this product, you know that acquiring this film is always fraught with adventure. Contacts retire or otherwise become unavailable and new relationships need to be formed. Since this film is not a standard DuPont product, whenever I request .5 micron film the reaction is inevitably, “we don’t make .5 micron film”. My reply is, “yes, you do”. Documentation is forwarded followed by the obligatory, “huh, who knew” and the reconnection process begins anew.
The last couple of orders have been eerily uneventful. So much so that a steady supply was almost taken for granted. But as the current supply of OS Film was dwindling over the past few months, and an order was placed to secure more, the honeymoon seemed to hit a snag. Thinking all was well when I placed the order; I waited and waited for the air shipment to arrive. But instead of crates of film, I received an email from the Operations Manager of Thin Films overseas:
We have received an inquiry for 0.5 micron film (Mylar 0.5CW02) a few weeks
ago from you and I am contacting you because I have a few questions about
your quality requirements.
Could you please give me some general information about the final
application and could you please also inform me about your requirements of
the winding quality of the rolls. In fact, the rolls we have in stock at
the moment have some wrinkles, so that there is a slight deformation of the
single sheet where the wrinkles are. So, the question is: is still
acceptable for your application or not?
We are checking the rest of our inventory to see if there are some rolls
without wrinkles, but if there are some, the quantity will be lower as the
one agreed. The other point is that the 0.5CW02 film is not a standard film
and we do not plan a production in the near future.
I emailed back a detailed explanation of what we use this film for including pictures and videos as well as the set up I use to transfer the film to smaller rolls. I told him that since most indoor modelers pre-wrinkle the film anyway, as long as I can transfer it without issue and it is not defective, only wrinkled, then it should be OK.
He replied:
We have checked the film we have in stock based on your comments.
We have now selected 2 rolls, both with wrinkles (but it is possible to unwind the roll without tearing):
- one with a length of 3000 m and a weight of 0.8 kg
- one with a length of 5000 m and a weight of 1.3 kg.
Unfortunately all the remaining rolls in our stock have wrinkles, but if
you are able to use the rolls above, we should be able to supply you more
rolls out of these remaining rolls in future.
Please tell me if we can send you the rolls mentioned above.
So the bad news is that future rolls of OS film will have some wrinkles. The other bad news is that it is unclear as to when or if they will be making another run. They are doing us an enormous favor; so digging for details is inappropriate. If I had to guess, I would say these wrinkled rolls were not acceptable to the only other customer that buys this film and placed aside.
The good news is we have another batch to last for a while. Better news is that we seemed to have made a friend sympathetic to our cause who works directly in the factory that makes it. That’s big.
While I have your attention, another issue has arisen. Previously, the cost to mail a tube of OS Film overseas was $4. Then it became $5. Then USPS has changed their classification of these tubes and it now costs $12.75 to ship a 5oz tube out of the US. That’s a big hit for a $35 roll of film.
Mike Woodhouse of
http://www.freeflightsupplies.co.uk/ http://www.freeflightsupplies.co.uk/ is distributing it in the UK, but I’m not sure what shipping costs are from there to other parts of Europe. In an effort to minimize shipping costs, if there is someone that lives in a strategic location that wants to be a distributor, feel free to contact me and we can discuss the details. It would mean buying 50 rolls of either 25’ or 50’ or mixed and then reselling it.
Best regards,
Alan Cohen
alan_at_hobbyspecialties.com
Received on Mon Jul 14 2014 - 08:33:08 CEST