Quote:
Originally Posted by D8R
Agree about the brass prices, tried to locate some profiles, the manufactor wanted top $$. Guess it will never be much cheaper, chineses buys all they can.
Have started to stock up all material I need for coming models, always nice to have a supply at home!
$800 in the boom, and a lot of work to remove the better part of it, guess you have $600 milled off!
Dan
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Your right about milling away a few dollars of metal Dan.
A lot of the store bought small profiles are just milled solid bar. I have other larger brass extrusions that I own the the die with my design but the mill will not produce the tiny thin walled extrusions any more. Way back when I was designing the "A" frame, I inquired about having one of the model brass suppliers sell me some 3/4'' "I" beams. They told me that they would mill them for me. Well since I have a milling machine, I just made my own and went with steel for strength. It is a very time consuming process. Set up in one to three vices on the table depending on the length,I milled one side then turned it over for the other. One big problem with milling one side is there's a lot of surface tension and the piece will bow considerably so I needed to make sure I hammered the part down flat in the vice on the long parallel. After the second side the beam flattened it's self out pretty well. Brass not so well but straightening it was easy. All in all, I think they took me about 2hrs per foot and wore out a few 5/8'' roughing endmills