Machine shops for CNC milling???

[JFettig]

a cnc isnt as cheap as 700 bucks, well maby a REALLY cheap one for milling wood or something, the cnc in school is quite small, it can hardly mill copper, its a real pain in the butt to do on that little thing, im actually workin on a block that iv been milling in the mornings before school for the last couple days,

the problem with a cheap cnc is that it doesnt have the horse power to spin the bit against that force, this is a 1/2hp mill, and sometimes it gets cought, or something and gets way bogged down, thats why you need a lot more than half hp,

btw this mill in school costed around 2000 bucks when they bought it, its pretty nice and all, but it doesnt have the power to mill thru this stuff...

hopefully this summer ill work my butt off and save up for a small cnc, thats at least 1hp or maby 2... so i can mill stuff, i wanna do custom waterblocks for people, just gotta get a mill that can do it easily..

 

[ed8150]

masked, if you were to provide a service to the rest of the forums by making waterblocks for us perhaps you could start a fund? i know i would contribute(we would have to send you the design in a cad format, buy materials from you or somthing, and perhaps a fee of like $10-30 a block) but it would be ALOT cheaper than a professional machine shop.

 

[JFettig]

ok what a block would cost

a mill bit( get 1 or 2 per bit about from my experiences) 2-20 bucks
copper 4 bucks
hrs put in, about 3-4, must watch it constantly

im first gonna get a job and get at least half of the money for the cnc, then loan some from my parrents and buy one, then get the hang of everything, by trying diff things, then i would start the service

and by sending a cad file, that doesnt alone do it, ill attach a pic of what the file looks like and what the block looks like

also, setting up how its gonna mill and whatnots takes a little while.

 

[JFettig]

heres what the block looks like

 

[gadget228]

What would be cheaper buying & shipping the water block or having one made in a machine shop?

most machine shops charge a flat rate per hour so unless your design is simple and fast to cut it would be cheaper to order it

 

[JFettig]

and here is what the tool path compared to the block looks like, you take that tool path and tell the bit what to do, how deep, and how fast what side or ontop of the path... so on...

 

[ed8150]

its going to most certianly be cheaper to order it than to mill it yourself(unless you got connections)

 

[ed8150]

maskedgeek - this is what the overclocking field is missing...affordable cnc. it would be very good if you would do this. if you decide too i will try to dontate at least $50 or so

 

[JFettig]

mid to late summer is when im plannin on purchaseing one of these, prob 5 grand total, then gotta get some hookups on copper... and SILVER! hehehe

 

[ed8150]

i dunno about silver. on paper it it just a tad more effective. in the real world it would probably be about the same. besides it costs alot more.

o yeh and anything i can do to hel pplease contact me

 

[ssjwizard]

id definatly donate money to this cause if it were likly to happen.

 

[Script Kiddie]

Maskedgeek, I'd donate to get some cnc time...

 

[tcl]

leg-work

The key to finding a place to get stuff custom milled is taking the phone book, getting into your car and driving from one place to the next. Some might tell you that they won't do it, some will tell you it will cost $50 an hour, but eventually you will find one where they are interested just enough to say, "sure, we'll throw it on the next time nothing is scheduled on the machine" and maybe charge you $20 or so.
A couple years back, i was trying to get the rotor part of a pair of integrated-hub-brake-rotors removed so that I would have just the hub (and could then use that to mount larger brake rotors on the car). Regardless of whether that made much sense to any of you, the story is this: Other people that had done this project had taken their rotors to brake shops that normally resurface rotors (by taking a thin layer off the surface). So, to part-off the rotor, they had to make many, many passes by hand, requiring hours and costing many $$(over $100 easy). Anyway, i asked around and eventually found this little (not so little, actually) machine shop that was largely automated and set up for production-quantity runs.... and had a huge cnc lathe that wasn't in constant use. The only time/ labor for them to do the project was putting the parts on and taking them off, a resonsibility the owner deligated to some kid that would have otherwise been sweeping the floor or something for those five minutes.
A key point in the above story is asking them to do it whenever the machine happens to be idle. This might mean you don't get it back for a couple of days but that's not going to be a big deal. The industrial mass-production stuff is meant to be set up and left essentially unattended- so if it's sitting there idle anyway, it doesn't cost them much at all to throw you metal on.
The moral: skip the small shops, look for a place that does production-run-quantity stuff, tell them "whenever they get a chance" ...and bring cash.

 

[JFettig]

well guys, i didnt ever get a decent job, rite now im jobless... i dont have any money besides the last little paycheck.. if i could find someone to donate me some money (enough for this) for a decent desktop cnc... one block may take a couple hours, it takes a while to set it up, and i would need some kind of chopsaw with carbide blade... to cut the material, with that block i made on the mill, it had pretty long channels, it took i think 12 or 13 minits to mill one pass, then i had to reset the mill and mill it again, onl .03inch each pass because its too much for the mill

 

[ssjwizard]

ok well how much are we talking total cost for a good desktop cnc. i have an idea we can start a paypal account and collect donations from anyone who wants to help. if enough members are interested the funds could probably be raised within a few months.

 

[garasaki]

I contacted someone I know who is a cnc operater about wether he'd like to lend his services to the OC community. He seemed interested, but you guys will need to be patient if you'd like to have him do your stuff while he learns the ins and outs. I don't know anything about prices, turn-around, etc, but I sent him a link to this thread and later today sometime we might hear from him. I don't have my design drawings ready for him to look at though...does anyone have some fairly detailed drawings I could show him?? PM me if you do....

PS...the machines he can do milling on cost 500,000...so I'm assuming they produce a better product then any desktop cnc mill And this seems like a much better solution to putting a fund together to donate a mill. No offense to MaskedGeek, but in the time it'd take him to learn how to effectively use the mill, this guy could already have all our WBs made! And we (or whoever donates funds) would be out some serious cash, instead of what hopefully could be small beans for "S-74" to do it...

 

[ssjwizard]

anyway we can get it is how we will take it. here at oc.com we are known for doing whatever it takes. most of us dont have access to people who work big cnc machines or anything like that. most of us dont care to much about time as long as we get what we want.

 

[JFettig]

i do have this milling and stuff down, but i dont know how much i want to do this rite away, because it would be a huge rush to get everything set up and everyone would want waterblocks and such... it would be difficult to have everyone donating and stuff toward this

btw a desktop cnc costs between $2000(cheap one that mite not be able to mill copper) to $6000+++(mill copper decently still lots of passes)
if you want to see what a 3000 desktop cnc does, check my www on the front page of our site is my waterblock i made on it, it took about 12 minits per pass and 1/32inch deep passes

 

[gone_fishin]

Here's what I will get for garage hobbying when the funds are available. You can buy them used for about $1000 (transportation to your home is another story) and they usually need some restoration, from there over the years upgrade them with stepper motors to cnc if you like (not sure if I would even bother). Something like this has the horsepower to tear through a block in no time There are a multiple of other uses that could be a good source of side income also.

 

[T20]

roflmao, you can mill engine blocks with that.