Ask another place. It really shouldn't cost that much. I would expect to get it WITH special material for that cost..
I'd do it with angle grinder in some setup to move it linearly. It will cut fast enough not to have much heat-affected zone. Perhaps could do it by making it into a roll and use a cut-off holder for angle-grinder.. put it to vise like a bar (with bar inside) and cut it.
Roll it on a steel bar and use a pipe-cutter to cut it! This might actually be the way to do it neatly and simply!
This will probably leave a ragged edge, as the etchant will get up under the glue of the tape. But, maybe some hand finishing could clean that up. I etch .003" brass shim stock all the time to make solder stencils for electronic manufacturing. I use a laminated dry film resist that is then exposed through a master photo film and developed. This gives sharp edges and fine detail. But, I sometimes mask off an area with tape just to prevent using up the etchant, and this suffers from etchant getting under the edge of the tape.
Gunner Asch fired this volley in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:
No harm done, Gunner.
Sometimes I get cranky at folks presuming they know how a machine is built without seeing it or knowing the constraints under which we're required to work when building stuff for explosives manufacturers.
"PrecisionmachinisT" fired this volley in news:bMGdneS7RfCm5wfMnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@scnresearch.com:
hey... I want to thank you for that. As I said, I'd made one of those for scoring plastics - oh... - about 40 years ago, and use it frequently.
But for some reason, it did not come to mind.
We have a lot of use for that spring bronze for other, smaller contacts and bond straps for vibrating stuff. We've been cutting little pieces with shears and cleaning up the edges with a file and fine-grit carbo.
The 'scrawker' (as you call it -- probably because of the sound it makes in plastic??) peels up a PERFECT little curl for the entire length of the cut. Six or seven firm passes is all it takes to snap off a piece, and it only takes the fine paper dressing to finish it up.
I still don't think we have the patience or space to score 80" strips (problem likely solved tomorrow, anyway), but it sure works a treat on stuff a foot or less long!
Yeah, waterjet would be my choice, given a budget for it. I don't see how a laser could do it without ruining the temper, but I know little about the laser cutting process, other than what a friend's Analog did for his wood projects. No temper problems here.
Are in-house costs included? If not:
Does it cut fairly cleanly between steel blades? And would rolling the edges back to flat be acceptable?
OR, got a grinder to remove the curl?
OR, cut 7/16" wide and wind it, then grind the curled edges off to proper width?
What about a sheet-metal house? In bad times such as these, the mandatory minimums are often overlooked.
"SPARK RESISTANCE. A common misapplication of stainless steel is in areas requiring non-sparking materials. Since stainless steels are basically alloys of ..."
"PrecisionmachinisT" fired this volley in news:jKmdneOeHo7mYgbMnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@scnresearch.com:
Not a problem here, sir.
Yes, pretty much all stainless alloys spark when ground, and some spark under impact, some don't.
But in this case, there are no impacts against the spring-stock possible, and it's sheltered from any _serious_ contamination from the product itself. Nor are the parts moving fast enough to cause the sort of friction that would promote sparking (
The guillotine type shear? If it has newly sharpened blades, and they are adjusted to just barely rub against each other, you will get a much cleaner cut.
But the sheet metal house will not normally have the blades adjusted that close, because that setting is wrong for the thickness of metal they normally cut.
Understood.
Yep -- at least a couple.
1) The way the supplier probably does it is a set of rollers with
sharp hardened edges on two axles, with smaller diameter spacers between them, run interleaved. Gear them so they counter-rotate and adjust them to overlap by say about 1/8" for what you are cutting) and you can likely feed it in smoothly and get really nice edges. This is even the sort of thing which makers of recording tape used to use to cut a wide web of tape material (several inches or perhaps even feet) into 1/4", 1/2", 1", and even 2" wide tape for various recorders. If it'll work for that for miles of tape, it should work for your 80" long strips.
2) How much heat is too much? Try cutting it a bit over-wide, roll it up and cast it in one of the really low melting point alloys (melt in boiling water) from Cerro, and then grind the edges on one side, flip it over and grind the other side to the proper dimensions. You might even be able to slide the puck of casting around on some fine sandpaper if you can accept a likely bit of width variation as you go around the roll.
I have used Chem Milling to fabricate thin complicated parts. The vendor was very willing to fabricate small quantities relatively inexpensively. See the following link for more information.
One of the things we did when I worked at Thiokol was to check new propellant mixes for just that property . Chemist's opinions/calculations and real-world conditions sometimes disagreed - often violently .
"I think I'll light my high-explosive plastique on fire." is not a sane concept, sir. Even a super-small test piece would have blown his hands clean off if he guessed wrong about it not exploding. I mean, you wouldn't just shave a slice off your stick of dynamite to start a fire, would you? And it's less explosive.
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