Originally Posted by
cmulder
What are the cost to run a 5 axis cnc each hour? Including things like writeoff, maintenance cost, lifespan cutting bits, setup and electricity.
Add a reasonable wage for the operator, cost of packing shipping, order processing.
I would be verry surpriced if the price of a carb and electronics set would be less then €250.
There are many modelers who have no problem with spending this kind of money (cough turbines...) if it makes there planes fly better.
But you are basicly looking at starting a small company.
Comercial production does not have to contradict "open source" prusa for example is quite succesfull with there printers.
There design files are avaiable but its just cheaper to buy from then then to try to make the parts yourself.
I had the solenoid housings made and they came out around 15 Euro a piece. That is just the lathe work, not the finished product, BUT it has been manually checked for dimensional accuracy for that money. The side port we needed to drill manually and the tubing I glue in manually.
The CNC lathe takes about 5 minutes, a bit more, per housing. Going by that, and a throttle body being about 25 minutes for the CNC mill. I'd say that if I had to estimate, I'd think a body would at least be about 50 Euro, and probably there would still be some small finishing jobs to be done for that money, like the threads for the fuel nipple and the holes for attachment to the motor.
The insulator sleeve most likely would be mere euro's (5 or so, they are simple pieces, the lathe spits them out dozens per hour)
the throttle barrel is probably between 10 and 15 Euro, given that it is a rather simple piece to turn but also has a cross drilled throttle bore.
That is just a very careful estimation. I could ask my friend.
I would say, if I would change the design to say four sizes (7,5 cc/.45, 10 cc/.60, 12,5 cc/.75 and 15 cc/.90) I could keep the boss a bit small and supply different insulator sleeves, but that still is a huge hassle, and then there are engines that require threaded holes in the boss (like OS and ASP) and there are engines with a pinchbolt, but also engines with grubscrews (Irvine) and some dimensions are metric while others are imperial.
I keep butting my head against the wall of the need for these things to be made to fit a particular engine and I don't know how to make it more versatile (how to ensure that the .45 size will actually be able to be fitted to ALL .45 engines, etc...)