Engineer's/machinist's help required

[SixPackBack]

brian d'marge- if you where to take your parts/requests to a reputable toolmaker or production Engineering shop they would do their best to match the part to a tolerance, this minimises cost for you. A direct corelation exists between tolerance and cost. If you wish I can supply a list of reputable Engineers within your area.

At work i can get to .01 of a mm on the hand lathe,
on the CNC lathe, i can get to .001 of a mm. (on the best out of the 4 CNC lathes, and 3 CNC mills)

First the centre lathe. Machining down to 0.01MM is possible but largely luck, as such, repeatability is virtually zero. In the real world +- 0.03MM is achievable and repeatable without excessive time or extra processes.

The CNC Lathe. Machining down to 0.001MM also is largely luck and can only really be achieved within a temperature controlled environment, once removed the component is likely to move with temperature differential. Again in the real world +-0.01MM is achievable

I base my assertions on 30 years as a Toolmaker. I now manage a research and development workshop for a company involved within the Electronics business industry.

[Sketchy_Racer]

Fair enough.

Yeah, well, your a damn sight more qualifyed than me!!

I've only done 6 months of my tool maker aprenticeship

and, i should change my lasp post as me saying "I can get it to .01

I believe with patients, I could get down to .01 on the lathe. I can reproduce over 200 items at .03

I dont do much on the CNC's yet, But the guy at my work says he can get down to .001. I would trust his word.

-Glen

[Brian d marge]

Thanks , Just wanted to get my head around what was achievable in NZ. As I sai the old fella round the corner here is really good , but a 500 bit run would give him a cornary!!

At the moment a lot of my work is one off . for the Cr it was a shock piston , Some Swingarm/crankcase bushes handle bar end wieghts and a flywheel , nothing of super critical tolerace ( though the bushes were a bit close )

Though later this year , I may make a run of a few things as people keep asking.

So I was faced with either buy equipment , or try to reduce the costs as much as poss . ie with simplified design ( lower set up costs ) and use of people equipment /experience.

So I sounds like an example H11 call is quite achieveable , should be enough room in that tolerance to swing a dead cat !

Thanks all for the input

Stephen