eMachineShop - custom parts

Have not used them, but if you create and price a part, you will discover that emachineshop is NOT the place for prototyping.

The "one off" prices are prohibitive, to say the least!

Steve Decker Square-jawed Chief Engineer of the Patternmaking Division

Can you recommend a good machine shop that can make one off stuff at a reasonable rate? I would like to get some jigs made for make EX motors.

I've never used a machine shop in my life and would have no idea how to find one.

Brian Elfert

Your best bet, is to ask others around you who they've used. Also, I'd recommend finding an individual, rather than a shop - someone who does machine work on their own time and as a hobby. Many shops just don't have the time to deal with someone who wants a one-off, custom part for cheap.

Also, try asking on rec.crafts.metalworking, for machinists in your vicinity.

Depends on where you live, I suppose.

I use a small country shop that charges $55.00/hour, and they do excellent prototype and small-run work. They mostly weld/repair/machine-parts for tractors and odds and ends for the local factories.

Most rural locations will have such a machine shop, usually family owned, and usually employing a couple or three machinists who've been doing this forever. My local shop employs an Austrian fellow who used to machine aerospace parts (including graphite nozzles!) for a German company. He likes it when one of my jobs walks in the door--more interesting than machining yet another steering knuckle or driveshaft...

Brian -

Loki Research makes this kind of stuff (motor tooling) all the time. Shop rates for custom work are competitive and you'll get the benefit of using a shop that knows rocket motors.

- Jeff Taylor Loki Research

Brian Elfert wrote:

Isn't that how Art Arfons and the Green Monster got started?

Doug

Yup. Try to find someone who can (and will) actually help you solve problems. Take them good drawings. Bring them fruitcake at Christmas. I use and old tool and die maker who got shot down in a Stuka once upon a time.

Brad Hitch

Good advice. And if you don't know what a good drawing is, let them teach you what a good drawing is.