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I decided that I'd like to get some parts machined, nothing major, just some lamp casings etc. I've drawn them up and sent them around the local machine shops.
Basically no one wants to know as the quantities involved are so small and not worth their while.
Does anyone know of any companies/ individuals who might be interested in this sort of thing?
Thanks all,
A.
troutie has all the equipment, whether he'd do contract work for others I don't know.
I made a new dropout using my work little hand-milling machine.
I managed to persuade a friend of a friend to make me the next set on his bigger machine, but I wouldn't want to pester him again.
i think one of the official quotes I got, it would have been cheaper to buy the machine myself from Machine Mart...
When I win the lottery, I'll do it for you 🙂
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You might try your local model engineering club, there may be a friendly grandad with time on his hands. Time taken to set up these jobs is the real killer, and the special tools that you find you need to buy, to do just once
I would be a lot better off if I had just bought the nicest lupine light I could find compared to the cost of buying lathe and tooling.
If it is just light bodies you want to do then I suggest that converting something existing would be much better use of time.
sorry if that sounds negative 😥
Look at this
http://www.firstcut.eu/gb/
If it's small try rapid prototyping as they can do this in metal- www.shapeways.com
Charge bike shave been doing some really interesting stuff with 'printed' drop outs - have a look at their twitter feed.
Might be cheaper for one off items than machining as a result of no setup time once the original 'drawing' is done.
The best thing to find is a 'man in a shed' setup.
The runtime costs of even local engineering firms with CNC machines are more than enough to frighten most people away. You need serious quantities.
Or try the likes of BETD if its bike related. They may be interested.
Have you tried 3D printing?
seriously, email me and i'll have a look. i have 1 cnc mill, 1 manual mill with dro, one centre lathe with dro, plus the usual mig/tig and measurement kit.
All this kit is so my brother and i can make bits for our supermono race bike. We obviously do lots of little jobs for people as well.
jamie - ygm...
Will send you an e-mail porter_jamie, I've got some ideas that I would like machined...
I will do them for you, Wont be able to touch them for a couple weeks though. drop me an email pgodwi@cornwallprecisionengineering.co.uk
Generally with machine jobs like this, all the costly time is in converting the drawing, and programming it into the machine. The easy bit is slotting some material in there and hitting EXECUTE. So the price for 1x item is generally 90% of the price of at least 10x items.
BTW.
We have 2x 3D plastic printers. They shoot out ABS or PLA material in white/black/red/clear (clear is a bit tetchy). And yes we can do small jobs. Its orders of magnitude cheaper than any form of machining, and for some smaller components you can produce ACTUAL production components direct from the printer with no faff. Tolerances are generally pretty sweet too as the bead of material is around 0.2-0.3mm profile.
Give me a shout on faster4tec AT gmailDOTZcom if you want something produced.