And you thought $200 hammers were high!!!

is who we use for specialty washers. You can use the "FastQuote" tool on the upper right. David

You can buy 1/16" teflon sheet for about $10/sq ft from

Make a punch on the lathe, get out a block of aluminum or hardwood and a hammer, and make yer washers. I figure you can get 81 washers per sq ft,, which makes them about 13 cents each plus the time it takes to swing the hammer and poke the new washer out of the punch.

Give a shout to Bokers, they've got zillions of sizes of OD & ID tooling. They always used to come through for me.

Why don't you call Zero Products again and ask to speak to their CFO. Tell him/her you've got a terrific idea on how they can make a financial killing. If they start sounding interested, tell them that you'll sell them those washers they quoted you for just $8.00 and $6.00 apiece. Tell them they can more than triple their investment with little effort, just by selling them to another buyer.

I used that approach to get my rocks off quite a few times back when I was hobbying in the player piano/nickleodeon field. I'd advertise for old player piano rolls in local newspapers. The market price of common player piano rolls was about $1 to $2 back then.

Sometimes I'd drive out to a seller who showed me a carton full of nondescript rolls and then asked me for a price they'd pulled out of their backside, like $15 apiece. I'd show them a boxfull of similar rolls in the trunk of my car and offer to let them have them for $5 each so they could "triple their money." I never hooked a taker that way though.

Jeff Jeff Wisnia (W1BSV + Brass Rat '57 EE)

"If you can keep smiling when things go wrong, you've thought of someone to place the blame on."

Try

You can get an online quote.

Which reminds me of a joke I heard about 45 years ago, before political correctness set in.

A bum was selling pencils on a street corner, with a sign that said "Best quality pencils. $10,000 each."

A well-dressed man walked up to him and said, "My good man, you don't have the right idea for business. How many pencils do you expect to sell for $10,000 each"?

The bum replied, "I'm not worried about quantity. I only have to sell

*one*."

ta-dah-BOOM...

go to harbor freight and buy some gasket punches( i bought a 11 piece set for about $3.00 when on sale)... then buy some sheets of teflon and sheets of other non metallic sheeting and punch them out yourself..... and for $24.95 each i can beat that price by about half.... of what they want, sight unseen... i alrady got the punches.. you send me that sheeting and well buy a case or two of PEPSI( i dont drink beer) and we can knock them out in no time... i also got the hammers, so just bring the sheet goods and the Pepsi...

daughter had a minor fender bender in our 2001 civic.. the front bumper and fender was to be removed by me as i did not want to pay the body shop $1500 to do a job that looks like it can be fixed with about $200 worth of parts and some labor... well i take off the front plastic bumper and i find a 2 in. sheet of styrofoarm with two probes made out of the same stuff that just pushes into the front of the car (they call the styrofoam a bumper absorber.. its 2 in. thick, 5 inche wide and about 2 ft. long.. the part list for $60.00 when i take it off i break one of the styrofoam probes off and then check to see what they want for it and then get the old soldering iron out and seal it back with the heat... looks like new....front bumper list for about $220.00 at honda place... it has two one inch cuts in it.. i bought some plastic welding rods and will use the soldering iron to mend it back up... the fender has about a 4 inch indentation that looks like someone punched it... i pulled most of it out when i went to the body shop to get the estimate.. felt like pulling a fender on a bicycle(and it was metal)........ i thought the body shop was high with their estimate of $1482.. so i contacted the insurance company and they came out and gave me an estimate of $1500.85 and wrote out a check for the same to me....... no wonder why the rates are so high they just give our money away and then raise the rates for next year..

I drive a paid for '95 Toyota pickup. Pulling into the Burger King an empty car coasted into my side. Lady driver had not put it in park. Put a little crease in the lower corner of the cab and bashed up one side of the box and ripped off the rear bumper. After all the bureaucracy with the policeman I pulled the fender away from the wheel, threw the bumper in the box and drove home.

Her insurance adjuster came out and says "It's totaled. Here is a check for $4K." I beat out the fender with a rubber mallet, straightened the bumper and after two years I am still driving that "totaled" Toyota.

Used the money to pay my car insurance premium. :-)

Yeah, I think you're being unrealistic. I think the prices you were quoted are way too high, but remember - you sent them YOUR specs. What materials did you specify? What tolerances? What finish? Do those meet the parameters of a stock item from them? Trying to find someone already manufacturing the pieces you need should give you reasonable prices. Unless they're just trying to hose you.

John Martin

Exactly. I think that price is probably high for those parts (as Max described) but if the specs Max gave us are the ones he gave the company, who knows where that price is coming from. Do they normally make washers for jumbo jets and the shuttle?

As for bumpers, the first one will cost you half a million dollars. The next one's worth about $5.00. Who's first?

Regards,

Robin

Of course another option is that they just didn't want the job. Rick

Opportunity costs....

Regards,

Robin

Not knowing the specs submitted, I'd venture to say the price is a tad high. You might have gotten the same total price for 5,000pcs from them. Some places are just no good at doing small quantities like 500pcs.

I think your estimated price of 20 cents each is too low for having them made in that quantity. I don't know anybody that would setup to do an OD and ID for $100. I certainly wouldn't.

I will setup my presses to run one part if a customer wants. The price won't be cheap, but it will be fair for the amount of time required.

Les

On Tue, 21 Oct 2003 17:24:30 -0400, Glenn Ashmore pixelated:

You lucked out. They usually demand salvage rights when they total a vehicle.

I got a final settlement letter from PurCo today. Having rented a car from Budget Rent-A-Car up in Anchorage for my birthday bash last August, I got a letter from PurCo demanding $684 for a new windshield for that vehicle a month later.

I said "HUH? WTF you talkin' bout?" After an hour on the phone with their claims dept drone, I convinced him that I had not left a damaged vehicle there and they wouldn't have let me off the lot without a signature to that effect if I had. He sent the papers to me and I received them a week later. I had to write a letter stating my position and mail it in, then he sent another sheet showing the position of the crack and the mileage. Oops, it had 50 more miles on it than when I had turned it in. He submitted that info to them and finally got back to me with an entirely NON-apologetic letter today saying that they realized it had been rented out again after my return that day and have closed the claim.

What he couldn't help me with was the fact that the car had been rented on one credit card and another was substituted at the time of return. BOTH were dinged the entire amount.

"Who ARE these f*ckheads?" he exclaimed, at wit's end.

----

- Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it? -

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I would try GlobalSpec

You can search for components by specifications across suppliers by user friendly search forms and send RFQs You may get some good pricing here.

Larry Jaques wrote: You lucked out. They usually demand salvage rights when they total a vehicle. (clip) ^^^^^^^^^^ That's not luck. That's normal procedure. The owner is generally given a choice of keeping the wrecked vehicle by paying the salvage value, or not, as he chooses. It is usually a very nominal amount, and I'll bet they deducted it from the settlement. If you are in a position to repair the vehicle yourself, it is always well worth it.

They definitely "wanted the job". I got a phonecall from them again tonight wanting to send me some material promoting their company and a catalog. I told them where they could put it.

Thanks to all who chimed in with helpful references. Boker's and Phoenix Specialty look very promising. I'll post again when the estimates come back.

Hopefully it won't inspire quite the same "shock and awe" as that last estimate...

--Max

Contact a metal-fab shop that has an NC punch that can cut the material you're using. They can punch the 1/4" hole, then punch the outside diameter on the next strike, or punch the center holes as a series, then backtrack and repeat with the other O.D. punch. Try flashing shops, sheet-metal shops, metal fabricators, etc. If they don't have the stuff or can't do it or aren't interested, ask if they know someone else. It's easy to program and execute, so programming time/charge should be minimal or near zero.

Another possibility is to f>

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 03:50:41 GMT, "Leo Lichtman" pixelated:

When I was wrenching for a body shop in CA ca. '85, the insurance companies discouraged salvage by putting a -high- price (30-50% of the 'total') on the carcass, not a nominal amount. Perhaps it's more sane now, but sentimentality cost a bundle back then...at least in San Diego North County.

---- A mostly meat-powered woodworker, and proud of it.

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