In article .com,
K7ITM wrote:

Good point about other tooling methods (laser cutting not the only one
available), but the question remains, how many people would actually be
interested in buying plates, at what cost levels? (At the time I was
making the other parts, soft tooling was cheaper for very short runs,
but the shop that did the punch/die was set up to make such tools at
very low cost and easily beat the soft tooling for modest runs. You
just need to decide how many of your parts you want, and go shopping.)

At the price you suggested (a couple of dollars per plate), the cost
of putting together a good-sized air variable is going to be fairly
fierce. It may be somewhat less than the cost of a new, commercially
manufactured AVC, but it's probably not competitive with the cost of
used-but-serviceable air variables at hamfest/fleamarket prices. You
might find that it was appealing only to those who needed a fairly
specific size/capacitance/standoff-voltage combination, not available
used.

You might find it attractive to specialize a bit. One not-uncommon
application for large air variable caps these days, is people who want
to make a magnetic-loop transmitting antenna. In this application,
keeping resistive losses in the cap to a minimum is very desirable
to help keep the Q and efficiency as not-terribly-low as possible.

One way to do this is to use a welded rotor/shaft assembly, and welded
stator plates, to reduce resistive losses. This is beyond the
capabilities of most homebrewers, I think. An alternative is to use a
soldered construction, which can't be done easily with aluminum but
which is relatively easy if your shaft and spacers are brass, and the
plates are either brass, or PC-board material (double-sided would work
best).

Hence, you might increase the demand for such stamped or laser-cut
plates if you were able to offer them in materials other than
aluminum. The materials cost for brass would probably be higher than
for aluminum, but you might be able to offer plates in double-sided
FR4 for prices no more than aluminum.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
Hosting the Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
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