DIYing for Fraim — I

No professional equipment can be re-built with the hope of succeeding but in the case of an “absolutely passive” item the temptation is all too great. Contrary to most electronics Fraim seems to show up a clear and rational designing idea and though “the devil’s always in the details” one may hope it’s the CONSTRUCTION ITSELF that really work — even if the imitation won’t be in the same league with the expensive original. It won’t even be a DIY product, you can’t make it in the kitchen, rather you have to visit (many a time) 6-7 local craftsmen situated at the outskirts of town, preferably all in different directions. Naim gives away the manual with some drawings, and most geometric details may be observed at dealers and fortunate owners — but no part of the original design can be reproduced with 100% accuracy.

The crucial part is obviously the alu pillar. It’s cross section is in essence a rounded rectangle with a 3/4 circle inside, coupled by a short shaft. No available object shows any similarity to it so you have to design your own solution for the given function. The profiles available in my proximity were a rectangle of 80x40 mm, and 100x50 mm for the rear pillar, with a wall thickness of 2.5 mm and 3 mm, respectively. There were no suitable tubes to found, they had to be made by turning/bending. I got made several versions of all these components with different wall thickness and found 2-2.2 mm for the rectangle and some 3 mm for the tube optimal. The coupling item needed in this arrangement was an aluminum plate, a near-triangle with a hole in the middle. The three pieces were fixed only by pressure provided by the steel components: they were pushing the MDF plate (top) to the triangle (bottom), forcing the concentric main profiles tight. The triangle did not touch one side of the rectangle, leaving it free to resonate. (Not an elegant solution, I have to admit but Naim Audio must had tried some similar structure during the designing process, I wonder. Coupling the profiles by welding did not work, it lended agressivity to the sound!) While my 3-piece-arrangement keeps working, leaves plenty of place for some future improvement. I keep fiddling with wall thickness and I’m just planning a 2-piece-arrangement. The alu profil is the “soul of the system”, I understand. It’s central tube gives rigidity while letting the outer rectangle “sing”. (Vice-versa it does not work, treble resonances can’t go through the barrier of the rectangle!)

The steel components were made of ordinary steel (“blacked”) in the experimental version. The final one came with slight modifications and of stainless steel. In this second round I got done copies of Fraimchips, too. The “studs” were the usual threaded steel rods with zinc finish — beware of the iron variant, visually indistinguishable from the steel one. The socket for the ball had not only to be turned but fraised as well (“spark-fraising”) with regards to the triangle-like cut-out. The steel balls have frighteningly diverse sonic qualities depending of makes! My present ones came from SKF, Sweden. (May Naim Audio accept my efforts and send me a handful of balls as replacement parts, I wonder.)

Thickness of the hardened “smoked” glass plates was 10 mm. The 19 mm MDF plate came factory veneered with beech. The shelves were milled to a shape similar to that of the original but with the front corners cut by an angle of 10°. (Hence width of the glass plate could only be 450 mm.) They got veneered on the sides, and stained and lacquered. The final alu blocks were anodyzed to black. Appearance of the racks was very similar to that of the original Fraim and did meet with the visitors approval. There were some photos taken but I was unable to bring them under the 30k limit to send them to the Forum without a terrible loss in quality. Anyway, photos and drawings as PDF files are free for everyone who has the Acrobat Reader program in his computer.

That way I acquired two racks consisting of 1 base system and 2 levels each, with place for 6 items (presently I got only 5). They set me back by £400, or rather (if included the cost of the experimental metal variants) £500, the price of just one original Base. But let’s not forget the innumerable hours of the planning-deciding-redesigning process as well as the endless travelling to the craftsmen — and the in-built uncertainty, namely the result can never be considered final. So it remains an open matter, whether the re-built Fraim expensive is or not. In Western Europe you may come to the conclusion that the whole process is not worth of that big fuss. In Central-East-Europe’s confused economic situation, nevertheless, one may give it a try.

graphoman