3 ms·

I haven't looked too carefully, but I suspect those "needs to be strong" parts could mostly be cnc machined with an inexpensive hobby CNC like a 3020, from alum

• Animats 1y ago
  That's what I was thinking, too. All but one of those parts can be easily milled from flat plate. The yoke end is a bit harder, but yoke ends are cheap standard parts and there's probably an off the shelf solution. The ball joints they use are standard R/C car parts. Those are available in in a stronger form, nylon with a brass ball, for EUR 0.53.[1] It won't be hard to strengthen this design so it can do useful work. [1] https://toni-clark-shop.com/Ball-Joint-for-M2-and-M3 https://toni-clark-shop.com/Ball-Joint-for-M2-and-M3
  • contingencies 1y ago
    Smiles from Detroit. I would look to press those parts, since most contact surfaces are potentially convex and variant-depth parts appear superfluous to requirements. With a shared punch and die you could pull the nest off a laser, press them all in parallel, and break them after the parallel press-forming. Should be cheaper than injection because the cycles can be faster, the material can be stronger, there's only one die, and the unload will be easier?
    • Animats 1y ago
      Yes. Here are very similar parts produced with a punch press.[1] In Silicon Valley. Or in China.[2] This sort of thing is probably about $40,000 for the first part, $0.05 for each additional part. Designing and making the custom dies is expensive. Banging out the parts is cheap. Mass production works. [1] https://www.petersenprecision.com/fine-blanking https://www.petersenprecision.com/fine-blanking [2] https://yonglihaomachinery.com/ https://yonglihaomachinery.com/