4 ms·

Apple sells hundreds of millions of iphones per year with CNC cases, and does indeed use tens of thousands of CNC machines The real problem with the point in t

Apple sells hundreds of millions of iphones per year with CNC cases, and does indeed use tens of thousands of CNC machines The real problem with the point in the article is that it’s easy to get CNC work done

rlt 4y ago
Maybe true, but I was doubting the specific numbers of 10K CNC machines for 1M MacBooks. I’m curious how long it takes a single CNC machine to machine a MacBook body.
- hef19898 4y ago
  I didn't see a naked body, but I'd guess max. one hour including polishing of the visible surfaces (and that is on the upper end, because you put more than one body in the jigs). Edit: The tact time per casing is somewhere around 30 seconds (assuming 24/7 operations). Which is absolutely doable, not just for apple but for everyone with a demand of 1 million units per year for the same part.
  - Retric 4y ago
    I have read 10 hours per Mack book initially split across multiple machines, but I don’t know how accurate that was. Or if that was adjusted for scrap rate and downtime etc. Presumably they wanted to create rumors to improve peoples perception of quality. On the other hand it’s several fairly large complicated parts and their removing a lot of material from the blanks.
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Difficult to tell without having the naked housing parts, or ideally the drawings. 10 hours is more in aerospace territory so, if it really is that, something seems a bit of. But you never know, some designers come up with the strangest ideas.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
hef19898 4y ago
Dead easy, especially in Southern Germany there are littetally thousands of small, independent CNC shops doing nothing but sub-cobtracting work for everything from cheap, rapid prototyping to serial parts, visible and not, for Premium automotive OEMs. And all of those are happy to get your start-up scale CNC part contracts. Get a good one, and they will even tell how to improve your part design to make it easier and cheaper to manufacture.
- dalbasal 4y ago
  Know any good ones?

rlt 4y ago

Maybe true, but I was doubting the specific numbers of 10K CNC machines for 1M MacBooks. I’m curious how long it takes a single CNC machine to machine a MacBook body.

hef19898 4y ago
I didn't see a naked body, but I'd guess max. one hour including polishing of the visible surfaces (and that is on the upper end, because you put more than one body in the jigs). Edit: The tact time per casing is somewhere around 30 seconds (assuming 24/7 operations). Which is absolutely doable, not just for apple but for everyone with a demand of 1 million units per year for the same part.
- Retric 4y ago
  I have read 10 hours per Mack book initially split across multiple machines, but I don’t know how accurate that was. Or if that was adjusted for scrap rate and downtime etc. Presumably they wanted to create rumors to improve peoples perception of quality. On the other hand it’s several fairly large complicated parts and their removing a lot of material from the blanks.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Difficult to tell without having the naked housing parts, or ideally the drawings. 10 hours is more in aerospace territory so, if it really is that, something seems a bit of. But you never know, some designers come up with the strangest ideas.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

hef19898 4y ago

Dead easy, especially in Southern Germany there are littetally thousands of small, independent CNC shops doing nothing but sub-cobtracting work for everything from cheap, rapid prototyping to serial parts, visible and not, for Premium automotive OEMs. And all of those are happy to get your start-up scale CNC part contracts. Get a good one, and they will even tell how to improve your part design to make it easier and cheaper to manufacture.

dalbasal 4y ago
Know any good ones?