Rick, as far as I have been able to determine, after two decades of searching the same question, everybody makes their own cam locks-- an expensive proposition, since injection molds typically run several tens of thousands of dollars. This is an example of how the self-imposed isolation of metal detector companies prevents them from cooperating on matters of mutual interest.
I have found cam locks on other apparatus, such as telescoping extension poles for brooms, car washers, and painting poles. You'd think that tripods and canes would be good places to look, but I've never found anything suitable for metal detectors on such things.
I suspect that cam locks could be manufactured by open-mold urethane casting, which is much cheaper than two-piece mold liquid resin casting. The result would probably be affordable for a low-volume specialty product.
If anyone wants to get into the business of manufacturing OEM parts that are needed but unavailable, here's another one: A decent OEM battery box for 9-volt batteries. The stuff from Keystone, Memory Protection Devices, etc. is unnecessarily bulky, lacks a proper means of closing the compartment, is difficult to get the battery in and out, ..... in other words, designed by engineers who didn't care whether it was any good or not. There are huge numbers of consumer products which use 9-volt batteries, and almost every manufacturer home-brews their own battery compartment in part because nothing is available off-the-shelf that a self-respecting OEM would want in their product.
Another thing that is conspicuously absent is a decent 9-volt battery snap. The thinking among connector manufacturers seems to be that nothing that uses a 9-volt battery retails for more than a dollar, so a battery snap has to cost less than ten cents. But, you look in an industrial instrumentation catalog, and see instruments costing hundreds of dollars running on 9-volt batteries. .....Keystone makes a reliable fish-paper battery snap, but the thing is so ugly that most OEM's don't like it.
Here's another needed item: a decent 6-AA slide-in battery pack, for machines which are regulated at 5 volts. GOOD QUALITY, preferably splash-resistant, not cheapo junk like most battery stuff is. The battery systems in use nowadays are mostly relics from a bygone era when more than 5 volts was needed to get good performance from analog circuits of the kind used in metal detectors.
Metal detector manufacturers believe that their searchcoil appearance has to be a trademark. Because searchcoil tooling and development is expensive, most manufacturers are unable to offer the searchcoils they ought to. So aftermarket manufacturers fill the void, and instead of viewing them as resources, the metal detector companies usually view the aftermarket guys as competitors! even though the aftermarket guys are helping to sell the metal detectors!
There's a better way, and when a manufacturer starts taking that better way seriously, their competitors who don't follow suit will get left in the dust.
Refs: read=3292 and 3275 on this forum, and related posts.
--Dave J.
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