Implementation of Dan Gelbart's talk: Wishlist - Jig Borer, Laser Welder, Clean Room (Box), Water Jet, Plasma Cutter, Spot Welder, Watchmaker's Lathe, Granite Parallels, etc

General lounge
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Hi,
Dan Gelbart’s talk on Friday was great and he suggested some great equipment (needs varying amount of money).

This would be a brief wishlist gleaned from his talk (beg, build, buy, whichever works):
(1) Water Jet Machine ($$$)
(2) Plasma Cutter ($$)
(3) Spot Welder ($, can offer to help build it as well)
(4) Clean Room (or rather a Clean Box for Optical and other dust free assembly) ($)
(5) Laser Welder ($$$)
(6) Sturdy Old Lathe ($$)
(7) Watchmaker’s Lathe ($$)
(8) Jig Borer ($$$$)
(9) Granite Parallels ($)
(10) Metal 3D Printers (cost?)

Would love to see members want.

Thanks,
RK

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I’m building the spot welder, but without a bending brake and shears it’s kind of limited…

Water jet is unlikely and it requires a separate room due to the humidity and mess it causes.

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Water jet + Sheet metal break + Spot welder is really the trifecta for Gelbart-style rapid prototyping.

Something smaller and self-contained would make it more probable (e.g. Wazer) but the cost of consumables would be a challenge with the current revenue model.

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CNC plasma cutters are tons of fun but they take up a large amount of room, and generate an unholy amount of fumes. Last shop I worked in that had one had the entire area around the plasma arc curtained off, and had an extractor fan setup that took up the entire roof of a 20’ sea can just for ventilating the area.

1 Like
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You can get plasma machines that will take 4x4 sheet material. I’ve been
looking into them myself.

6

for us plasma is the way to go, we don’t have the room for a water jet cmc nor do we have the ability to isolate it.

7

like the laser there would need to be fume extraction as well as some screens in place top protect people from flash injury.

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pay and play works here, if you use the machine you need to pay for the consumables

9

I’m sure we could build one. There are guys selling them made from 2020
type extrusions

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absolutely, no more challenging than making a 3d printer. Cutting action exerts zero torque on the machine so it can be lighter

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Concerning the bending brake, that’s something we could easily make from segmented (and then stacked along the bend line) brake ‘feet’. We have the cmc machines in the space to do it, that is if we couldn’t find a cheap one first…

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auto spell filter bubble; incorrectly learned cmc from CNC

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