ooo Posted March 25, 2016 Report Share Posted March 25, 2016 I know a lot of you have experience fabricating stuff at work and at home, so hopefully you can help me. I want to find a way to automatically cut panels like this: With mainly circular holes, but some slots and squares, my panels will be around 30x15 cm so quite small, ideally I would like to cut 2mm thick sheet aluminium, but could I switch to perspex type stuff too if that's easier ?? I guess factorys use lasers or pucnhes to do this, but can I use a CNC machine ?, and has anyone tried crappy stuff from ebay ? What sort of machine do I need ? and how much do they cost. Also are there any that can do laser engraving as well as cutting ? Cheers !!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted March 25, 2016 Report Share Posted March 25, 2016 (edited) How many are you making? Are you going to be making any the same in the future? If it's a one off I would invest in some decent home saws / starret cutters of the right size and some marking out tools. If you're planning on doing many then a profiler will be able to laser cut them for you, they should save the program which will save time and money on the next batch. You will get stung with a minimum order charge though so a more viable option if you're doing more panels. If you go down the cnc route then it will save time if you can produce your panels as dxf files, the profiler will then be able to transfer it straight into the cnc laser. You need to be able to use autocad or similar though and your drawings need to be accurate. Doing them in perspex would require a cnc router rather than a laser cutter, most plastics fabricators would be able to cut them out for you though. edit: most cnc lasers will be able to engrave at the same time as cutting. Edited March 25, 2016 by forteh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ooo Posted March 25, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 25, 2016 I 'll be doing quite a lot of them, by hand isn't really an option. But obviously I am limited by cost, a few hundred quid is okay, but has to be under a grand really for the stuff. I'm fine with CAD software, I used a CNC cutter once many moons ago. I'm trying to work out what I would need and what is realistic, the tolerance doesn't need to be super accurate it just has to be neat. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forteh Posted March 25, 2016 Report Share Posted March 25, 2016 Get your drawings over to some profilers and see what they come back with. If you're working to a price point why not mild steel or is weight an issue? The more you do, the cheaper it will be with commercial laser cutting. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weirdoku Posted March 26, 2016 Report Share Posted March 26, 2016 (edited) If you switch to perspex, this place can do custom laser cutting on plastics for like £20 and you can probably get multiples of the same panel in the size they can cut up to (384 x 384mm). You can upload .eps files and the website will automatically give you a quote. I've only gotten a quote from them though, never an actual piece cos I'm too lazy to finish my projects lol. Maybe you can be the guinea pig so I can see how well their laser cutting is. http://www.razorlab.co.uk/ Edited March 26, 2016 by weirdoku 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alex Dark Posted March 26, 2016 Report Share Posted March 26, 2016 Lasers by far your best and cheapest option , you should be able to get each one done for a round £40 going off the job I was quoted on recently 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ooo Posted March 27, 2016 Author Report Share Posted March 27, 2016 Brilliant thanks guys, i will get some quotes for laser cutting. And I can maybe use razorlab to get my prototypes done instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobinJI Posted March 29, 2016 Report Share Posted March 29, 2016 Whenever I get stuff laser cut through work for my own projects these guys often seem to be the cheapest of our suppliers for small/thin/fiddly bits. They should be able to give you a quote from .dwg or .dxf files. (maybe other file types too, but I've never needed to know.) http://www.laser.co.uk/ (I've no idea what they're like to deal with as an individual though, but they're good with small jobs for a large company. Hopefully they're decent!) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Danny Posted March 29, 2016 Report Share Posted March 29, 2016 Have you looked for clubs/groups in your local area? Theres a few places in my area which have cutters that would do prespex which you can use for free/cheap. E.g. http://leedshackspace.org.uk/http://fablabairedale.org/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Posted March 31, 2016 Report Share Posted March 31, 2016 I'm currently building my own CNC router... 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke Rainbird Posted March 31, 2016 Report Share Posted March 31, 2016 Cool! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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