Like Kirk I also think there is indeed a lot of value in doing it yourself.
I just started to investigate all the opportunities but there is a real
market for people who can do both design and prototyping/production.
Last weekend I retrofitted my fully faired recumbent bicycle with a Rohloff
hub, I needed some constructions to mount the hub into the existing frame
(see http://www.myvoice.nl/quest/). There looks to be a very small market
for this because there are only 200 bicycles of the type it's designed for
but this is a nice item to show to other 'customers'.
To get from "I have a dream" to a product you do need people like us to do
design and prototype the whole thing.
I'm not sure there is big money in production but there definitely is money
in design, prototyping and handover to mass production.
Small series 10-20 pieces I can do myself but for larger series I rather
have this done by another machine shop in my neighborhood specialized in
production. They, in turn, send customers to me for design - the perfect
symbioses.
It all started with the building of a large bridge port for milling foam and
soft woods but now I am already thinking of expanding with a more robust
machine with full emulsion type of cooling for (hardened) steel and a CNC
lathe would also be well appreciated ...
There is just this one problem: what is the price of a machined part? The
aluminum plating shown on the website cost less than US$ 10 on rough
material but due to the complexity it takes a while to machine them. I
calculate about 50 Euro (about US$ 75) per hour resulting in a price of
around US$ 300 for the milled components - seems expensive for two 6x15"
pieces of 1/4" sheet plus some small parts but it looks like this price is
well accepted by the customers :-)
Someone told me you have to be schizophrenic to do this kind of work.
This comes in handy since now I am the team of scientists making the really
cool stuff :o)
Cheers,
Rob
> I have made 5 machines so far and I am working on my sixth.
> >
> > Of the two most economically successful parts I have made so far, one
> > costs 50 cents to buy and I use about 20 a month, the other one costs
> > about 9 dollars to buy and I use about 4 a month.
> ... snip
> > Does anybody else have thoughts about this and where it's going?
> >
> > Dan
>
> I needed some swaged stand-offs, so I spent some time Googling. After a
> while I found what I wanted and was just about to put in an order. Then
> I thought, I am going to have to pay for shipping and wait a week ...
> scr___ it, I'll just make them. It took way too long to do the program,
> but at the end of the day, I had more parts than could use, and now I
> can make more in no time. There is allot more cost to an item than just
> the purchase price. I think there is allot of value to being able to do
> it yourself. Too bad, it takes a team of scientists to make the really
> cool stuff.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge
Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes
Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world
http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/
_______________________________________________
Emc-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
