We have a new little CNC machine at work and my brain is running wild. I see lots of fab parts that guys are doing on their cars. Ignoring the gaudy billet decorative pieces; what is the first thing you would make?
I manage a shop with 6 HAAS VF4 cnc mills and lets just say at night those babies are still humming right along. I've made everything from carb spacers header flanges, all sorts of brackets a ton of Harley parts and yes even some gaudy aluminum pieces for friends. The actual machining process is relatively easy suck the work piece down on the fixture or clamp it which ever works and push a button after you select the program. Oh yeah thats the hard part, you need someone to create a part drawing either in Solidworks or Mastercam or ProE for example then convert the part drawing into a program, then load it in the machine and the rest is easy. So before you get yourself all worked up become buddies with the guy who writes the programs. Most good machinist can write simple programs but anything complicated needs a guy who really knows his stuff. Bottom line: give me my old WWII Bridgeport mill any day of the week.
.... Also need to set up the tooling and pick up the offsets, knock the runout out the end-mills while using your trusty Interrapid indicator and a mag base... Etc, etc.... I tell ya, it's enough to drive someone nutz!
Yup and hope you don't have a fault code right int he middle of the whole mess and crash a tool into the part destroying both, don't ask me how I know that, so the answer is what your making for yourself make a few hundred more of them and sell em to your HAMB buddies
You tell us, what would you build?? Sounds like a similiar thread on what parts are "guys wanting" and I'll make them.
The first few pieces would be programming exercises. After that, any part that is not commercially available.
I made these! (1st photo) which made this.( 2nd,3rd photos) But I did this with a band saw and needle files (4th photo) which did this (5th photo) Made my living on a Bridgeport for the better part of the last 30 years. Gawd I miss having access to one.
We have a few cnc mills and lathes. Milling one part a lot of times is a waste of time. We use ours for windmill parts. And ar15 parts.
If they are production machines, most probably nothing. Suppose you crash the machine and it is not available to run the next day, can you spell unemployed.
I have a 10'x20' Cnc high def plasma table and a Cnc Bridgeport .. I make anything and everything . I'm working in making my own 32' rails as a few other fellows have done. I make lots of carb spacers and header flanges, I've made wheel centers for guys and all kinds of good stuff. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
I've used a local community college. enroll in a night course, once the instructor sees that you know what you're doing, they will leave you alone and let you play. If you crash a machine, oops to bad, that's all part of the tuition.
It needs to be something that requires some R&D, not just whittling. I remember the old McGurk front drives for Chevy inlines with offset water and oil pumps. Brackets for a SBF to move these outboard would shorten it a lot and eliminate the front sump for the oil pump. Or with all the used Eaton superchargers out there, an adapter to a factory 4 bbl manifold that also puts the SC pulley at the right offset to line up with an aftermarket serpentine pulley on the front of the balancer. You will also need something like this for 4 bbl to top of Lightning SC. I just need to clean it up and add SC bolt holes on sides.
Let's see here...a spring-cap adjuster tool for the '30s Chevy Dubonnet front suspension pods - got a model drawn up, will get around to cutting it eventually. Ford small-bearing 9in axle ends to accept '37 Chevy Huck brake backing plates - got that drawn up too, need to finalize a few dimensions once I've figured out the exact track width and confirmed what I can get in axles with 6x5.5BC and 1 3/4" standoff. Then there's the final versions of all the front and rear brake bracketry for the '64 Country Sedan, I've got AL prototypes cut but the final pieces are going to be 1018. Think I've figured out that I'd be better off waterjetting the 4R70W shift detent for the Country Sedan's floor shifter, still have to figure out the shift-cable bracketry. Given another five minutes I'd probably come up with a bunch more stuff. Once you have access to the tools and (possibly even more importantly) the CAD and modeling software, the needs kinda come out of the woodwork.
I have one (used to have 2) and it's just a glorified drill press these days. In a previous life I used it a lot; now it sits for weeks/months at a time. Old age and lack of ambition are heavy contributors to the lack of machine time.
WC Steve....that's some nice work. I can tell it took some doing with just a saw and files. Carb adapters, engine/transmission adapters and bracketry would be the parts I'd think would be nice to make on a CNC. When I first got into Tool & Die work back in the 70's, the choices for NC or CNC were somewhat limited. Our first CNC mill was a Bandit controlled Beaver mill made in England...(no funny jokes, ok) The Bandit was MDI; Manual Data Input; and believe me that took some time to program, then you had to punch in all the code at the keypad on the Bandit. At the time we didn't get into 3D contouring very much, so most of the parts we did were 2 1/2 D. Later on, the shop got a HAAS CNC. Often times I wish I had a CNC mill like a Bridgeport EZTrak at home, but I make do with an older Do-All mill which is just a BP clone.
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