Machining request
 

Could anyone make these brackets in alloy?

Should be a fair amount of interest, considering how many Cats and Procat are still around or being refurbished.

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m...3936edited.jpg

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m...3938edited.jpg

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m...3937edited.jpg

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m...3943edited.jpg

This may cost quite a bit to do....

i recently looked to machining a alloy bulkhead for an Academy Sbv2 4wd buggy. You can find out about this on the net, but this part is renowned for breaking due to impact and loads form the suspension pins.

The part had to effectively be reverse engineered before I could do anything. Therefore, I approached a company who would scan the object in detail (using computer aided tomography i.e. CT) and then provide a image file that I could give to a machining company to manufacture the part.

I was quoted £250 + VAT for a part that is around 6cm..yes, it had holes and depressions elsewhere but I wasn't expecting it to be so costly! This is of course excluding the cost of manufacturing in limited batches in alloy.

Needless to say I am shelving this for now...although I may approach my local hospital to see if they could CT scan the part for me! :D However, I am not too sure if the images would be useful and they comprise of units called voxels. Do machinists use images in such a format?

I'd be interested to see how you get on. Maybe if you have the time to simplify the design and provide precision scaled drawing you could save.

Good luck.

Contact Cream on here, see what he can do for you.

3D scanning is indeed nice, but not necessary. In fact, if you can get some essential measurements (in case of this part) accurately (hole sizes and positions), you can build everything else around it any way you'd like to, covering for any potential weak spots in the process.

However, if you still want to do 3D scanning... A couple of my brother's friends have built a 3D scanner from 3 Xbox Kinect modules - in short, you could have your own 3D scanner for less than 250GBP, as it seems software for this mod is available online! I don't know if it would be accurate enough for RC parts, but I think it does show that it won't take long before someone makes an affordable scanner that is good enough for such small parts :)

kaszal, Sorry I didn't get back to you over your PM earlier in the week. I've been mad busy.The cost would be crazy for a one off.

Thanks for your reply. Sorry, I wasn't clear... it's not for a one off, which would obviously be impractical, but for a batch, like you did for the other cars. I could start a thread to find out how many sets. I did something similar a couple years ago when I got 20 sets of gearbox plates laser cut and sold them to other collectors...

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m...l/IMG_9768.jpg

It's something I could take a look at for you, but I'd need to have some rough idea of numbers to work out how much they would cost. I'd need the part and again Ideally the car so I can see what matters and what goes where.

Another little problem is I'm off on my jollies after tomorrow for a week or so. So it wouldn't happen fast :-), although I'm sure that's not a major issue.

Some more shots from the manual...

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m...ocatmount1.jpg

http://i103.photobucket.com/albums/m...ocatmount2.jpg