Deep draw sheet metal forming

Because i know members have a diverse background of technological skillsets, even though lots of you never mention it. I'm considering having a batch of those Z1/KZ gauge upper cans made. You know, the upper painted black portion used on all 72-1980 KZ's. I "believe" the process is called Deep Draw Sheet Metal Forming? I know set-up cost will be the most expensive portion. I'm finding it harder to source decent ones that haven't been bashed/dented. Any direction, background of work experience Truly Appreciated!! Clay    

The tooling cost will be prohibitively expensive.  Where I used to work, we sourced many injection molding tools, and the cost from China was drastically less.   

I worked for a short while (3 months) in a custom small run metal stamping shop. They did mostly shallow stamping and bending, but they did have a small area where they did smaller deep draw prototyping but at a lesser diameter than what you are looking at there (less than half that OD) Prototype tooling is soft (non hardened steel) so changes can be made easily but you can't run many parts off on that setup (maybe 500)

The diameter is going to be the main cost driver as the blank sheet is much wider than the actual OD, plus there will be a lot of waste to trim off the ends. All the production tooling is hardened specialty steel and press needs to be a decent size as well. There are going to be several dies involved, probably 3 stages to draw down on. The draw ratio is not that high but there is a tight radii at the top so that will cause the tooling to wear more rapidly.

That shop closed up 20 years ago and I don't know anyone in that end of manufacturing anymore.

The Chinese are great on copying parts and reproducing them, probably the cheapest way to go on a per part basis for short production runs. Most small shops will want to quote 5000-10,000 pieces minimum, and I never heard anybody quote 1000 as it is not cost effective to get the dies made. I am not saying that its impossible but it would be expensive per part on less than 1000.
 

Metal spinning is probably more realistic for small production runs for something round like this. The tooling costs will be substantially lower and since everything is CNC operated sometimes they dont need a mandrel anymore. Also you also specify what the lifecycle of the tooling needs to be. There is no reason to invest in hardened tooling if you are only doing a production run of a couple hundred parts. If you find an oldschool shop they might be able to do it with a wood buck and hand spin it. 

Thanks fellas!!Yes i've seen that "spinning thing" Doc, really cool and they make it look easy! Injected, Yes probably be reproduced in some third world country unfortunately for cost concerns. I know there's a company that sells them already, thinking CBfaces.com. From memory about 80usd for a set of 2. My concern is they won't meet the dimensions of the originals. A Friend sent me one of those "aftermarket" Z gauges years ago but the upper can is shorter then original and glass is too close to needle and it interferes with needle operation when using original lower portion.  

Why not have a male and female die made to match the inner and outer dimensions of an original and use that to re press the used bashed and dented ones.
Anyone half competent on a lathe could make the dies and you would only need mild steel for the job.
Given the thin gauge of the material it should also be good enough to stamp out new ones, you would only need a decent press or even a draw bar .