Anyone have (or access to) a small CNC plasma/water jet/laser cutter?

[HarryN]

Being that you're from Holden, you may know this place. Called "Water Cut" on hwy 59 in Abita Springs.
Has done work for me and a good guy to boot. See Mr. Salter there. Good luck.
Show us some pictures of your finished product if you can.....

 

[jwmorris]

Simple stuff like that is why I built a pantograph. Sawing a template out of plastic takes less time than programming and setting up my CNC plasma. The $80 labor was because they don't like to set everything up just for one part. Order a few hundred and they would get real cheap.

 

[weldermike]

Kinda easy to make to be honest. What kind of tools do you have available. Even a circular saw with a abrassive wheel would make short work roughing out the pattern. Then tack two of them together at a time and finish up on two pieces instead of four. If you have, you can holesaw the radius in the v as well. For nice well rounded corners put your grinder in a vise upside down with a flap wheel on it. Comes out beautiful!

 

[Danno1]

Thanks for the input guys! I did provide the ACAD drawing to all the shops, so all they had to do was import it to their CAM software and finalize the programming. I'm just going to try to make the time to do it by hand.

i've used these guys in the past:


Rapid Sheet Metal - The Fastest Prototype SheetMetal Source


.

 

[grsthegreat]

I have a cnc plasma table, but honestly $80 for a laser is VERY reasonable. The local dealer here spent over $1,000,000 installing their laser.

Shipping metals from Idaho, labor to set up and cut, i probably couldnt do it any cheaper.

 

[jwmorris]

This is the pantograph I was talking about in an above post. Should have made it 20 years earlier, very useful for many projects. And a lot of templates are quicker to make up for a few parts than making the program and loading it into the computer that runs the CNC.

 

[jimcolt]

I have a home based metal shop with 2 cnc plasma machines. The parts you show would be around $12 each out of 3/16" steel......shipping via USPS flat rate (for 4 pieces) would be about $16. The parts would be within .020"....holes within .010".

I would use my PlasmaCam machine...drawing the part using PlasmaCam software would take me roughly 5 minutes, cutting the part with a Powermax85 (Hypertherm) plasma would take about 35 seconds. The holes would be cut slightly under, then drilled with the proper sized drill. I can do the parts tomorrow.

Here are some other similar parts done in my shop.

Jim Colt I work for Hypertherm.....but have a home based light fabricating business that my son operates. jim.colt@hypertherm.com


Update....I had a few minutes so I drew the part in CAD as posted. The part cut from 3/16" steel will be $10.43 each. 4 of them will fit in a flat rate medium box ....which is $11.30 shipping in the 50 states. So, for $41.74 + $11.30 shipping....you can get your parts cut accurately and quickly with plasma. My son has no minimums....and will ship anywhere in the US and Canada

I'm making a bracket to mount my 15 gal sprayer to my ZTR mower and I need some steel sheet cut out. I already have some material and can do it myself with the few tools that I have (portaband, grinder, etc.), but I don't really have the time to spend on cutting these out. I got prices from a few local shops here, but they were all way more than I'm care to spend. One shop quoted $3+ for material and $80 labor (laser). I'm not saying they're out of line. These are large shops with large machines, so their overhead just to start the machines up is high I'm sure. I don't know of any other shop locally that is a smaller operation with smaller machines and lower operating costs. Does anyone here do this line of work or know of any place online that provides these services? I've attached a picture of the bracket.

View attachment 314687

 

[jwmorris]

That deal is like a sore Peter...can't be beat.

 

[Brad_Blazer]

Meat rhymes better with beat.

Jim Colt those are great rates. I'll have to keep you in mind if I need anything like that in the future. How thick can you cut?

 

[jimcolt]

We like to stay at 1/2" and under.....but we will do relatively small jobs up to 1". Just don't have good material handling capability just yet. With flat rate mailing from the postal service.....and parts with the largest dimension being 12".....you can ship up to 70 lbs for under $16 anywhere in the 50 states.

Jim Colt

Meat rhymes better with beat.

Jim Colt those are great rates. I'll have to keep you in mind if I need anything like that in the future. How thick can you cut?