On Tue, 2008-03-18 at 18:52 -0700, Jorge Barrera wrote: > Jim, > > At some point I would like to do a retrofit, I know it would be the > most ecomical way to go if frames are available. > However the purpose of my project is a bit more complicated.
I learned allot on my first conversion. Don't underestimate the value of traveling the beaten path to get the lay of the land. Plus, you will have a machine to make parts for the real project. > I am trying to see if through innovative sourcing and design the price > of VMC of HMC could be brought down. Way down. The current innovative sourcing, and increasingly the design, is called China, or the next poor country lucky enough to get a chance to gain what many take for granted. Trying to get people to do more work for less money has a long history. > The over all objective is to try and create open source hardware > designs. I am not doing this on my own I am being sponsored by my > company MFG.com to try and get this off the ground. I've never build a > CNC machine before, however I like the challenge of reducing the price > of proprietary hardware. I wonder if the advantage of an open or collaborative project is not in reducing cost of production, but the cost of distribution or similar costs by cutting out the "middle man" (and maybe the tax man). This has a history too. > Now you may be thinking Open Source Hardware? What am I smoking, Well > projects like EMC have created expectation that perhaps this would be > possible. If software can be open source why not hardware? Well I've > been giving this lots of thought. And although there are projects out > there like OSCAR (open source car) and a number of machine designs > (mostly pictures), I am out to create a full set of detail drawings > and a detail BOM, together with a site for collaborative engineering > that works. I am also looking to get off the bench top into something > in 2-4 ton range. I like some of the project on Instrutable but I want > to go bigger. I agree that an open source project is worth trying, but I tried twice to start a small collaborative project and got no response. The latest was a project to make a batch of router type machines with each person contributing their specialty, be it design, drafting, cheer leading, sales of extra machines, manual writing, machining, welding, etc or just plain spending cash. I have no idea why it didn't go anywhere. So I am thinking that many of the problems you will face will not be technical at all. > Collaborative work is a piece of the puzzle and the tools for > collaborative software development have been here for a long time > (with low cost to entree). For hardware we have not been so lucky but > with the right tools and by this I mean engineering and sourcing > perhaps this can be cracked. Also I know there is more work here than > I can handle so perhaps this is a good time see who out there may be > interested in collaborating on this idea. I am willing to get involved, but if I were a businessman, I would be wondering how to get a return on my investment. (Credits of some sort?) I did some brief research on a related subject of Virtual Companies. These were interesting links: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/10/01/consider-a-virtual-company-to-get-a-flexible-work-life/ http://webworkerdaily.com/2007/05/15/a-look-inside-virtual-company-moveonorg/ I lost another link, I think describing today's twenty-somethings as already living in the virtual world and being frustrated by not much being there yet. I suppose these people will be the ones that settle the virtual frontier. ... snip -- Kirk Wallace (California, USA http://www.wallacecompany.com/machine_shop/ Hardinge HNC lathe, Bridgeport mill conversion, doing XY now, Zubal lathe conversion pending) ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Microsoft Defy all challenges. Microsoft(R) Visual Studio 2008. http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/vse0120000070mrt/direct/01/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
