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

[Jarrett]

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.

 

[Fifelaker]

Have you got any community colleges nearby? Some high schools may also have them.

 

[CNC Dan]

what are the tolerances?
That can make a big differance on the price. If you can live with plus or minus 1/16" on most of your part it might lower the cost.
At work we often get prints that are over toleranced, and the cost goes up.

 

[yomax4]

Pretty Easy part. Find someone with a hand held Plasma and cut it out. Doesn't have to be perfect. Or if it does have to be perfect. Pay up.

 

[Jarrett]

Plus or minus 1/16" is fine. I don't know anyone with a plasma. Hopefully someday I'll have one myself.

 

[CliffordK]

It is relatively thin stuff.
You have a nice drawing.

I'd just cut it out with an angle grinder.
A little filing, and you should be able to get a fairly nice piece. The most difficult thing is working around the little ears on the end, and getting a nice radius rather than a V in the middle.

Ahhh, you need 4 of them? Well that is a bit of a pain, but still very possible.

I could probably mill it pretty quickly on my mill too, although, at this point it would take more time to do the setup than the actual project. That may be what your machine shop is also saying. Someone still has to program their CNC. $80 for all 4 pieces doesn't sound too bad.

 

[flyerdan]

Since there are only 4, I'd probably cut the blanks, rough out the V-section with a skinny wheel, then tack all 4 pieces together in a stack to do the drilling, radius, and finish work on the inside of the V. Grind the tacks off and deburr.

 

[JimRB]

If that was an Autocad file then the one CNC plasma cutter I saw you just feed it the cad file. Well I sketched it, the cad jockey spent 5 minutes in Autocad, and then we walked out to the plasma cutter, pulled the cad file from the folder, a few minutes later it was done. Of course you have a rather expensive machine that the shop will charge you to use, plus if your drawing is not the correct format they have to fix that.

 

[Brad_Blazer]

That quote seems in line. You could try a place like this: CNC Plasma Cutting
I don't know anything about them other than their web site. Your parts would ship easily.

If you spend 2 hours chasing a source, you could have them hand carved by then.

 

[Jarrett]

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.

 

[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?