How much would it cost?

Damn, two plonks in a week over the same issue.

Jim

LOL. You clearly understand the breed! I think Steve's problem is he cannot realize that some folks just cannot stop thinking, the same way they work. Machinists *have* to analyze a job like this the same way they would do it for real.

Jim

While I make no claim to being a machinist of any sort...my wife finds it fascinating that I cant stand pictures hanging on the wall crooked...and the last one she measured was 1/16" tilted. Neither she nor my son could tell that it was off. Shrug.

Gunner

Liberals - Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own. Benjamin Disraeli

Some people do possess extraorinary eye-placement acuity. There is that famous Ted Williams story. for those who have been living in a cave, Ted Williams was a famous baseball player. It is well known that many of the big hitters have exceptional eyesight. It is one of the things that set them apart from us mortals.

Home plate had been dug up on his home field and some different kind of dirt had been put down to please Mr williams. Once this was done, surveying equipment was brought in to measure everrything and put home plate exactly where it neded to go. He went out to check it out. After a few swings he went to the management and told them that home plate was not in the right place.

Not wishing to offend their star, they went out and measured everyting all over again. It turns out he was tight. Home plate had been istalled a few inches off. And Big Ted noticed it instantly.

So, whether it is home plate or a peice of steel that is off by .001 inch, there is omeone who will notice these things. And these skills keep the world running.

Ayup. Life's too short.

My dad had one of his fathers paintings restored, and hung it in the spare bedroom. The panelling in that room is about 1/4 off square over the entire height of the wall, and the painting can either be square to the panelling and off-square to the ceiling, or square to the ceiling and off-square to the panelling. Infuriating.

I've been known to get up in the middle of a meal at a resturant and tweak artwork on the wall just because it's spoiling my meal....

Jim

And I thought I was anal!

I fully understand. Being anal is what makes a great machinist, at least in my experience, it does. I've never known anyone to have exceptional machining skills that wasn't that way. The finest lathe man I ever knew, heads and shoulders better than anyone else, ever, got really pissed at me because I reset the compound on his lathe to 29 degrees instead of 30 degrees, where he liked to run it. I ran his machine one day when he wasn't at work. He went right out of his way to let me know I screwed up. Actually, considering I am/was as anal as he is, I thought he was the one that was screwed up, for chasing threads @ 30 degrees, but it worked for him. He was the best. I don't recall ever seeing him produce any scrap, a claim I can't make for myself.

Harold

Let the record show that Gunner wrote back on Fri, 29 Jul 2005 16:04:37 GMT in rec.crafts.metalworking :

It tends to follow you around. Friend is working making pallets. He determined that their machines were a few thou off. I figured out the shear I was working had a 3.6 thou per foot taper between the back stop and the shear, and that of the 4 1/2 feet of guide only about 4 inches was square to the blade. So why am I getting dimensions to three decimal places, when I can only hold, at best, a 32nd? I didn't stay there long.

tschus pyotr

"pyotr filipivich" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com... |>>SNIP

From a web page I found:

Nailed it: To give an exact answer.

Kind of a ways off from:

"Can anyone give a straight answer? I'm not really interested in how to do it or which machines one would use. Just a guess at how much each would cost."

I work in a CNC shop. I'm not a garage machinist, even though I have the skills to utilize non-CNC machines very well.(and a friend who lets me use his.)

I will make a guess, but it's my guess, others may charge more for their time, or less, than me.

Aluminum material. (at least 25 ft + 50 kerfs) ????????

Saw 50 pieces to 6" length. 20 bucks

Turn down middle of bar. (50 pcs) 150 bucks

4 flutes, 3/16" wide keycutter (50 pcs) 200 bucks

deburr 50 pcs (fiber wheel) 50 bucks

Comes out to about 420 bucks + material, + customer's attitude.

That -- or a 4-jaw chuck. A regular one could be used, but this kind of job would be nicer in a 4-jaw universal (scroll-back) chuck. Yes, they are rare, but they do exist. I've got two at present for different machines.

He said *no* machining on the ends, but you would at least need to center drill one end, and ideally should face both ends, too.

Or -- a ball-end mill, which would have less trouble staying clear of the square ends. It could not cut as fast as a half-round side milling cutter, but ... :-)

And if six flutes would be sufficient, one end of the workpiece could be held in the machinable collet in a hex collet block held in a vise.

The ball end mill seems to be called for here.

Agreed -- the lever X-axis feed would be nice for the fluting. I would prefer to have a universal 4-jaw chuck on a proper dividing head, however, as it would be more rigid than the spin indexer. You would have to spend a lot of time turning cranks on the dividing head, however.

[ ... ]

And for this, without CNC to do the work, I would tend to say that the fixturing to do fifty of them efficiently would boost the price significantly.

Enjoy, DoN.

*And* -- what *shape* flutes? The easy ones would be concave, formed by a ball-end mill or a half-round side milling cutter. However, they could be *concave*, in which case a special side milling cutter would have to be ground to cut the shape.

Also -- everyone has been assuming that the flutes are parallel to the axis. I can imagine someone wanting *spiral* flutes, which would call for much more complex machining and setups. (I know that *I* could not make even *one* of them, let alone fifty.

Exactly why I am not bidding on it.

I don't *want* a job like that which needs fifty of them made.

*One* would be fun to try. Fifty is *work*, and I am retired, and want to stay clear of committing to that much work.

I'm not going to even semi-commit someone by making a guess as to what would be a reasonable fee for someone else to do the job, if

*I'm* not willing to do the job for that amount.

I'll speculate on *how* to do it, but not on the price.

I no longer remember whether the original post specified *which* metal. Aluminum would probably be not bad. Stainless steel would be a serious pain.

The suggestion that someone else posted for it being more a job for casting seems reasonable to me. (But -- I don't do casting.)

And -- looking at the size of this thread (I've fallen behind in reading usenet recently, and have a *lot* yet to read), I'll probably soon do a "catchup" on this thread and go on to other threads.

Enjoy, DoN.

Now..if the machinist stacked (4) 3/16" radiused cutters on a horizontal miller...they could be wacked out in just a few seconds per side. Which should bring the cost down.

Gunner

Liberals - Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own. Benjamin Disraeli

Blink. Blink.

Am I missing something here, Gunner? How are four cutters, side by side, going to cut flutes that, as I understood it, were spaced around a cylinder? Do you want to give that more thought?

Harold

Blink blink indeed. Brain fart on my part. I was thinking square cross section for some reason...sigh

Mea culpa.

Though..a single such cutter may be faster than a endmill.

Gunner, suffering from brain farts Liberals - Cosmopolitan critics, men who are the friends of every country save their own. Benjamin Disraeli

Oh, yeah! Much faster, and much harder to break. That's why I didn't suggest a ball end mill when I posted my proposed method. This job screams for a multi-toothed cutter, even if it's nothing more than a Woodruff cutter, modified with a radius. If it was for one piece only, no big deal. You grit your teeth and get through the project, but when you have multiples of parts to machine and you can trim minutes from each part, it's well worth the effort. Besides, it often saves your sanity.

Harold

She bids on the job, delivers 100 parts in pine.

"Oh. I thought that price was for making them out of walnut. I'm not paying for those."

:^)

Jim

BTDT and the shaft was not too comfortable.

Now I ALWAYS get a -signed- agreement and half the bux up-front.

See previous post. Buyer agrees to pay for whatever is delivered that matches the description, whether or not it matches his mental image that only he can see. "Do and review" cycle could be an acceptable alternative to a drawing if each "do" is paid for.

Initial bid: $15 per piece. For final cost ... there's Mastercard!