Someone on this forum is bound to have use a online CNC shop. If so, which ones have you used / what was your experience?
Depends on what you are wanting to do. If it is within their realm, www.frontpanelexpress.com/ does great work, but we are talking about primarily flat "panel-type" stuff. I have used them for various projects and am happy to recommend them. I have not actually used www.emachineshop.com/index.php - though their software (while a bit limited) is very intuitive. You will have to fiddle a bit to get the right quantity/material/etc. mix right to get the most bang for the buck. Sometimes 100 of something is only 2-3 times the cost of 1. I also have not used www.shapeways.com so cannot really comment, but have herd about it repeatedly from outside our community. It might help to know what you want machined. The last series of Big Gun turrets produced before Strike Models took over was done by Emachineshop, I believe - but, from what I hear, the next time he tried to order, the costs were about double - don't know if it was a smaller order, change in materials prices or what, but I believe that is one of the reasons Stephen is dedicated to his redesign and rethinking of the manufacturing - to provide more stable prices and perhaps simpler construction. Cheers,
shapeways, rapid prototyping: I have had good parts come from them, however, they are exceptionally expensive on a cost per volume of part basis. to get what I needed at a reasonable cost I made the parts structurally unsound with the intent to pull a mold off of the parts that came in. Any low volume part from any machine shop that is not hurting for work will be expensive.
I'm designing a variation on a big gun magazine turret that hopefully will be more CO2 effiecient. All of the layers can be laser cut, but one part might be better if it was cut out of a solid block of plastic rather than being several layers. I suppose I should post a new thread so people can help me refine the ideas / or shoot them down.
I have a CNC machine and could be persuaded to help cut out the prototype. I would do it mainly out of curiosity and would only charge a small fee over material and shipping costs. It does depend on the complexity, but I could help out some with the design too. I would not be interested in doing any parts production should your design work out, that you would have to find a shop for.
