high-speed spindles

Jon - sounds like you have a good process for the stencils but you had the advantage, initially at least, of using it also for pc boards. In terms of time & money, assembling the equipment needed just for stencils is costly. On another subject, have you found an easily interfaced merchant account for credit cards for your web site? I'm planning on selling some electronic gear over the internet and I'm looking for suggestions on handling the cards.

Hul

J> > rec.crafts.metalworking

Yes, the accuracy of laser printers makes it unlikely this would work well from a laser printed transparency film as the master artwork, especially as you need mirror image films that have to align pretty well.

I am using Merchant Warehouse, with Authorize.net as the payment gateway. Between the two, it costs about $45 a month to have these accounts. Merchant Warehouse has a minimum $35 fee.

Using OScMax, they only have an interface to Authorize.net AIM, but not their SIM. AIM has your web site receiving the credit card #, which then means you need to be PCI compliant. I'd much rather use the SIM interface, which shifts the customer over to Authorize.net's web page to do the credit card transaction, but OScMax doesn't have an interface for that. The PCI compliance nightmare keeps me up at night.

Anyway, unless you are at least as serious about an on-line business as I am, you really DON'T want to get involved in this, it will take a LOT of time to make it work and keep it secure.

Jon

Jon - thanks for the suggestions about credit cards, especially authorize.net's AIM & SIM interfaces.

Hul

J> > Jon - sounds like you have a good process for the stencils but you had the

If you find a good web store that works with Authorize.net SIM, or another good payment gateway that you can use without having to be PCI compliant, I'd sure be interested. I'm not a PHP coder although I can generally follow what is going on in the osCmax scripts and make very small changes, I'm nowhere up to speed to try rolling my own interface to Authorize.net's SIM.

Jon

Simple regulator should do the job. Lots of my clients use NSK air spindles for C axis work on CNC lathes and we simply throttle down the air pressure if need be.

There are some electric spindles out there..about 1" in diameter that use a speed controller..but they add about $3k to the basic price

And NSK isnt..isnt cheap.

Gunner

Reducing adapters are readily available.

Basiclly a 1/4" shank with a collet adapter on the end. Easily found

Gunner

anyone had any experience with Paypal credit card handling?

I just got one of their card readers the plugs into the headphone jack of my cell phone.. Seems to work well enough. I think its something like 2.7% per transaction

Gunner

Jon - if you are familiar with the C programming language, you might look... it's been a few years and I'm not up on the proper buzz words; stated more generally: there is an http:// interface attachment for Unix systems, something or other C this that..., which enables coding internet pages with c. You would probably find the name of the attachment and the name of the company that makes it familiar. Whether this would be an advantage with Authorize.net's Sim interface is merely hope on my part. Take a look at rs-big-print.com to see what has been done so far.

Hul

J> > Jon - thanks for the suggestions about credit cards, especially

Check that rate - and unless you really need something only they offer like tapping into online eBay funds, I'd still be wary just because it's Pay-Pal. They have a long history of behaving badly.

"We don't have to follow normal Banking Rules, we're not a Bank. We can freeze your money if we want, and we decide whether you get it or the other party. And we can clean out the attached checking account and you don't have any say in the matter. Oh, and don't try calling, we don't have phones for customers - e-mail your problem and we'll get to it when we choose to."

We got Square for Westend, and IIRC it's 2.1% or 2.3% to clear, and they drop it in the company checking account. Bada-Boom. And Intuit has one too...

If you were using Credit Cards for an online store you almost have to go with a regular Merchant Account - I don't know if any of the Phone-based systems let you type in a credit card number by hand and process a 'No card present' or 'Mail Order' sale - the whole reason for the mag-stripe reader dongle is proof you had the card in your hand and it looks legit to you.

If you generated enough volume of sales to justify the monthly fees, the clearing percentages are far lower and you would do a lot better with a regular merchant account.

But for onesy-twosy in-the-field credit card sales (and some months none at all) they phone-based systems can't be beat.

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Ive never attached my checking account to PayPal.

Intentionally.

Gunner