Yes, installing bonded-in sailplane style plexiglass is a giant PIA. Generally it involves cutting out all but a rim, then grinding back to the glue slowly, obviously preserving the frame. Then the new part has to be trimmed accurately and Cleco’d before bonding it in – at least that’s the way I’ve seen it done. Damaging the Plexi anywhere through the whole process is a risk.
Generally a company in the transparency business keeps the tooling for anything they’ve ever done (it is their primary business asset) so they rarely will say they “no longer do them” because a substantial proportion of their business is built to order and involves pulling tooling. I would expect that any statement to that effect means they have production orders to keep them busy and aren’t doing any one offs at all.
The tooling for the parts I bought from Weiss pre-dated anybody working there, and they had no idea why they had it. I explained that the detail design of the plane was done 10 km away from their original facility, the designer lived and built the prototype even closer, and it might just be possible they supplied the OEM parts 
Since the tooling was OEM (whether they knew it or not) the parts fit well.
There is a German (?) firm which always has a stand at Aero Friedrichshafen and which had been mentioned for Socata TB windscreens. I spoke to them this year and they said they no longer do them because they only ever sold 1…
One day I would like to install the thicker (about 6mm) one because there is a lot of vibration on that item from the propeller airflow, and it may well reduce cockpit noise a bit.
I am told the installation requires a lot of skill.
A lot of the glider canopies are done by Mecaplex in Switzerland.
€1500 seems a fair price. Glider canopies are 1500-2000 (not mounted) for single seater or 2-seater with individual canopies.
I would expect 1 piece canopies for tandem 2 seaters like DuoDiscus or Arcus to be at least 3k€.
some time ago, i owned a sukhoi 31 – the canopy was a bit low for me, my head kept brushing the inside of the bubble during negative g.
i asked about getting a new bubble blown (re-using the frame). the sukhoi dealer knew somebody in europe who would do a good job of this – was quoted about 10K euro to make the mold and draw the plexiglass!
it was a lot cheaper to find a different parachute that fit into the seatback a bit better.
there are some very skilled people around fixing plexiglass – maybe try some glider specialists – lots of big canopies around in the glider world, somebody must be doing a lot of clear plexiglass repair.
Thanks for that – Altufix sounds very interesting! In considering whether I could have used it to fix a crack on one canopy panel that I replaced, it occurred to me that tinted parts (versus clear Plexiglass) might not be as repairable with Altufix. For example, a lot of older western European glider and light aircraft canopies were tinted in an otherwise unusual blue color. Matching existing transparencies was one reason I bought new parts from Weiss versus having them made in the US.
You’d be amazed at what some people do with altufix. It’s liquid plexiglass (I reckon that you could make some if you had chloroform available, but it’s so hard to find at least in France) and it is perfectly transparent once cured. It’s SOP to fix airliner windows with it, I’ve been told, and you couldn’t tell there was a crack.
The challenges are:
All that without shooting your lungs – it’s nasty stuff.
wleferrand, it’s pretty bad, the cracks went three ways from a single point of impact and they are more than 15 cm long, two out of the three going all the way to the edge. Thanks for the Altufix idea, it’s probably cheap enough to try it anyway, and the crack is not in the line of sight, so even an ugly repair will do.
How cracked is it? Do you have a picture of it? If you are patient enough, you can get near-perfect repairs using a product called Altufix p10. (I’m building an ultralight from an abandoned kit and my first task was to repair the windshield)
Otherwise this company: http://www.groupe-devisu.com/en/aeronautical does custom job but I’ve no idea of the costs involved.
I have bought parts from Weiss and they are nice people, but their products are not inexpensive. In the US we can get custom made plexiglass parts made but the issue with going in that direction is the very high cost of packaging and shipping large, delicate parts across the world. I faced this when buying parts from Weiss for which they already had OEM tooling, and have hand carried a total of three large transparencies to the US, as oversized baggage on Lufthansa. I picked them up in person from the Weiss factory south of Munich. Also not cheap, but cheaper than palletizing and shipping!
