CNC End Milling Recommendations

[HM-2]

I'm looking to get some custom PC parts CNC end milled in acrylic- two halves of a water cooling reservoir, pump mount and distribution plate held together with M4 screws, and with a number of cut G1/4 fittings. Ideally I'm looking for a company that can also do the thread milling as part of the machining so I don't need to manually tap ~70 different holes.

I've put the CAD drawings I've got through some of the larger national rapid prototyping companies and had them sanity checked, made a few adjustments in response to some of the feedback from their systems, but the costs seemed extremely steep for what I was looking for and they weren't able to offer Acrylic, only POM or ABS. So I was wondering if there was anyone in the South-West who could recommend a smaller company who might have previous experience, or a hobbyist with access to decent tooling who might be happy to do a commission piece. I'm moderately skilled with the CAD side of things but have exactly zero experience turning a digital output into a physical object...

[Andy616]

I also struggled when I needed to get some caliper brackets machined from my own CAD and tech drawings. I tried all the local companies I could find and some larger national ones. The local companies acted like they didn't want the work and the national ones came back with ridiculous quotes.

I ended up using 3D Hubs: https://www.3dhubs.com

Great website, instant quotes, and my brackets turned up exactly to spec and within the quoted time scale.

They use a range of different facilities and if your parts need to get made outside the EU (like mine due to having deep threads) you may have to pay customs charges, but you can claim them back.

I'd definitely use them again.

[Gary C]

Andy616 said:

I also struggled when I needed to get some caliper brackets machined from my own CAD and tech drawings. I tried all the local companies I could find and some larger national ones. The local companies acted like they didn't want the work and the national ones came back with ridiculous quotes.

I ended up using 3D Hubs: https://www.3dhubs.com

Great website, instant quotes, and my brackets turned up exactly to spec and within the quoted time scale.

They use a range of different facilities and if your parts need to get made outside the EU (like mine due to having deep threads) you may have to pay customs charges, but you can claim them back.

I'd definitely use them again.

They look good but demand your work email address !!!!

fk that, I would get in trouble for sharing it.

[Fusion777]

Ping some of your local small scale machining companies and see what sort of prices they're quoting. Be prepared for it to be quite pricey. 1 offs are never very cost effective for an organisation. If you've got CAD files, they'll handle the rest (creating the proper drawings and G-Code to enable the CNC program to run).

Hobbyist/someone with decent kit at home would be a good option if you can find anyone.

[HM-2]

Gary C said:

Andy616 said:

I also struggled when I needed to get some caliper brackets machined from my own CAD and tech drawings. I tried all the local companies I could find and some larger national ones. The local companies acted like they didn't want the work and the national ones came back with ridiculous quotes.

I ended up using 3D Hubs: https://www.3dhubs.com

Great website, instant quotes, and my brackets turned up exactly to spec and within the quoted time scale.

They use a range of different facilities and if your parts need to get made outside the EU (like mine due to having deep threads) you may have to pay customs charges, but you can claim them back.

I'd definitely use them again.

They look good but demand your work email address !!!!

fk that, I would get in trouble for sharing it.

That was exactly the issue I ran into with 3dhubs, this has nothing to do with work and I'm not going to provide them with my work email.
Until that point they looked pretty promising.

[Andy616]

HM-2 said:

That was exactly the issue I ran into with 3dhubs, this has nothing to do with work and I'm not going to provide them with my work email.
Until that point they looked pretty promising.

Wierd, that must be new. I've just logged into my account with them to check and it's only got my personal email.

[merlin75]

try telmar engineering

[R12many]

JEM Engineering in Taunton do all my prototyping.

[HM-2]

Andy616 said:

HM-2 said:

That was exactly the issue I ran into with 3dhubs, this has nothing to do with work and I'm not going to provide them with my work email.
Until that point they looked pretty promising.

Wierd, that must be new. I've just logged into my account with them to check and it's only got my personal email.

I sent them an email and this is their reply:


Thanks for reaching out. We’ve recently updated our email signup flow with the aim of providing a higher level of service to engineers and other business professionals that use our platform. This means that to create a new account with us, you’ll need to sign up with a valid business email address.

For this reason, addresses that end with @gmail, @yahoo, @hotmail, @aol will receive an error message. I apologize for any confusion this change may have caused.

Please let me know if you have any other questions and I’ll be happy to help.


So maybe I'll go set up a mail.com email

[HM-2]

Just to round this off, I've managed to source a provider whose not worked with acrylic before but is happy to give it a go and if it doesn't work out I'll only pay for materials which I'm happy with; if it does it's a very fair price.

[Tim O]

Bit late to the party but if anyone needs small parts machined then talk to Ed Mason. He's a very talented engineer, works with very difficult materials and does does superb work. Based in Bath.

https://dward-design.co.uk

[e-mail]