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Thread: Need to pay off my new toy...

  1. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Buffo View Post
    Then again, a lot of us recently purchased surplus optical plates like these on E-bay. Evidently the seller has a whole crapload of these things and puts groups of 25 of so on E-bay from time to time. His price is pretty hard to beat, though I will admit that his plates are not tapped, and the holes are not drilled on 1 inch centers, but rather on 5/8 inch centers. Nevertheless, I used one in my RGB rig, and so far it's worked out very well for me.
    Hey Buffo! That's a really good point, but check this math out...

    Actually we can make profit at those prices even after tapping all the holes,
    we have rigid tapping capabilities on the mill, but we'd probably use our
    dedicated air tapping machine... The reason the prices seem so low is that
    the seller is using 1/4" plate which gives you a lot of area for the weight.
    For example, for the plate you saw on ebay, if the seller bought premium
    new aluminum at retail ($2.25/lb) then at 5lbs, you're looking at a bit
    over $11 in material. Throw in $15 for labor and $10 (averaged) in spent
    tooling, And you could make money even with one-off quantities.

    Quote Originally Posted by Buffo
    Can you give us a rough idea of what it would cost for a 2 ft by 1 ft table, say, 3/8 of an inch thick, drilled and tapped on 1 inch centers to 1/4-20? And how much extra if we bump it up to 1/2 inch plate? (Aluminum, of course... Steel is too heavy.)

    Adam
    For a 2' x 1' table 3/8", Here's how I'd compute it...

    24 x 12 x 0.375 = 108 cubic inches.

    The density of aluminum is 0.0975 lbs/cu. in. but for rules of thumb we can
    use 0.1 (aka divide cubic inches by 10) which also works out when sizing
    material if the plate you bought has extra meat, etc.

    So at 10.8 lbs... At $2.25/lb that's $24.30 of metal,
    Add $15 labor and $10 tooling costs, it's $49.30 before shipping... If demand
    is higher, we can amortize the tooling over larger quanitites so that can go
    down later...

    The tooling costs is the cost of "unusable" plates and broken taps, etc...
    For example on a 24x12 plate you're looking at 253 holes... For really large
    plates, labor (monkey + machine cycle time) goes up because of the
    problems with workholding...

    If you bump up to 1/2" plate, I get 14.4 lbs or $32.40 in metal...
    Add $25 labor + tooling we get $57.40

    Now one caveat is that if you want really funky sizes, we'd have to charge by
    the largest full inch dimension because of how we get our metal, so asking
    for 11.25 x 23.25 is the same as asking 12x24...

    I'm hoping to get some standard sizes so we can bring tooling costs down.
    For example if we just had a line of 3 or 4 standard sizes, then we could
    make a work holding pallet and save some cycle time tooling for each unit.

    Quote Originally Posted by allthatwhichis
    How bout a whole enclosure?
    I suppose we could make enclosures, but I really like the personalization
    aspect of how everyone makes theirs differently right now. I haven't had
    more than 1 or 2 people ever ask me about it...

    Quote Originally Posted by QUAZAR
    Also, most Europeans would require the holes tapped for M5.

    How about MM1's, dichro holders and brackets etc.
    We can do M5 holes with metric sizing, imperial is nice for table layout
    because you can divide by 2 quickly... Metric is more optimized for dividing
    by 10...

    Quote Originally Posted by Laser Ben
    If anyone would like to loan me a mm1, I can make a CAM file of it so he cam mass produce them. The problem is that you cannot just cut them out of plate, you have to start as a block.
    I think you could start with a right angle extrusion for the main holder, the
    other 2 main parts look like plate to me...

    Actually optics holders is one of the things on my todo list to engineer and
    build, the main reason is that most conventional systems are spring loaded,
    and I've noticed that clamping the setscrew on the nicer units twist the point,
    not a big deal for normal stuff, but most of my stuff is fiber launched and
    that's a huge pain in the butt requiring 10-15 more minutes of alignment.
    I was looking at the zero backlash ballscrew designs, maybe make a mini
    one with integrated end bearing?

    So anyways, enough rambling... your thoughts?

    Now there is also another alternative I'm thinking of... If you don't mind "odds'n ends"
    I've seen precision plate remnants go for very cheap, but the quantity and sizes
    aren't assured... I might be able to swing a "odd sizes" category with super low prices.
    For example if you get lucky, you can find good plate in the $1.69/lbs surplus bin, and
    occasionally you see good plate in the $1.25/lbs remnants bin...
    Last edited by yaddatrance; 09-24-2007 at 13:10. Reason: sperring mistaek :P

  2. #12
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    Cool

    Hi Yadda;

    Wow! Your prices *are* competitive. Hmmm... I might need to re-think my optical plate needs! I wouldn't mind jumping up to a slightly thicker plate. (Though I shudder at all the work it would take to move everything to yet another optical table...)

    I agree with the idea of a few standard table sizes. 12 inches by 24 inches, 18 inches by 24 inches, and maybe an 18 inch square piece too. (12 inches by 18 inches anyone?) Anything beyond that and the buyer could always cut it down to size themselves using a hand-held jigsaw. (That's how I cut my 1/4 inch aluminum plates...)

    Keep us posted as this project progresses. I might be interested... I'd need to scrap a whole shitload of stock that I'm currently sitting on, but in the long run it might be the right thing to do. Currently my table has holes drilled on 5/8 inch centers, and I'm using #10 SS thd rod (at 40 threads per inch) to hold everything down. The holes in the plate aren't tapped, so I've got lock nuts on top and bottom to hold the threaded rod in place. It's a pain in the ass to assemble, and even more difficult to mount, but once it's in place it's pretty solid. Still, not an optimal solution...

    Adam

  3. #13
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    Yadda, you beat me to it!

    We are hopefully going to order our Haas VF-3 this month and I was planning on doing the same thing.

    We currently have a cnc converted Bridgeport, a BIG home brew cnc router and a Haas TL-1 lathe and the VF-3 will be on it's way soon.

    How do you like the Fadal?

    Chad


    When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.


  4. #14
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    Nice!

    You should do it anyways, more than enough space in this industry
    It'd be hard not to beat the prices of edmunds and it's like

    So far I'm loving the fadal, it's controls are not as nice as the Haas,
    but we're dripfeeding it anyways so I don't have to stare at it too much.
    So far I haven't had any cause to complain about it. When I was
    originally setting up a job, I forgot that the last modal I used was G0 so I
    accidentally did a rapid (700ipm!) across a solid bronze block with a 5/8"
    cutter and in a blink it was done, chips had exploded everywhere and
    the bit was steaming hot even with flood cooling but it left a really clean cut.

    Right now we're playing around with broaching on it... square holes anyone?

  5. #15
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    Yikes! 700 ipm cut. You are lucky you don't have a broken $40 carbide end mill.

    Speed is the thing that I think is going to take the most time to get used to. We are going to get the 20hp 10k spindle and that should rip through alum.
    We are also going to get the high speed machining option that is supposed to improve contouring and boost max cutting speed to 800 ipm with 1200 ipm rapids.

    Please give more info on broaching. I have been trying to decide if i should get the spindle index option or not. The only reason I could come up with needing it was broaching.

    Sorry i am kind of thread jacking here. I should start another thread.

    chad


    When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.


  6. #16
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    Heh, yeah the VF-3 should move some metal If it's your first big machine
    expect to get some eyestrain because of the prices of the ancillary parts
    and the "required" crap to hook it up... It's the little things that really kill
    you... Speaking of expensive eyestrains, I'm currently drooling over those
    50-200k rpm air spindles...

    I don't think the spindle index will help with broaching (at least not
    rotary broaching, which is what we use), but I do think it's a
    prerequisite for rigid tapping... A cool feature is that with it all the threads
    can start from the exact same position... We don't usually care about
    such things, so we use a T/C tap holder (which prolongs tap life even
    on a rigid system)... The broaching is this creepy system which jiggles
    a square bit in this orbital fashion... You predrill a hole smaller than the
    broached hole and switch to the broach, spin up and feed it in slowly.
    It uses an external latch on the head to index itself (similar to a 90 degree
    sawmill adapter).

  7. #17
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    I think it would have been perfect if I can have a CNC made plate to mount my (4 maxyz modules) on !

    The plate need to be "xx" size and height !
    And it need to have holes to mount Mirror\cube mounts !
    And a cut down to mount the lasers..

    That would have been perfect
    It`s always a mess to align 7 diffrent lasers with all diffrent height becouse of difrent brand from each lasers.. in my RGB box ..

    I making a NEW rgb box now that will be 2Watt when I`m finnished
    And if there is any CNC alu support I will be glad for that

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