Self-Service Cloud Machine Shop

[anchorlabs]

Hey Chief Delphi,
I'm a FRC alum and just launched a new company called Anchor Labs. I thought some teams with limited machining capabilities could benefit from it.

Anchor Labs is a cloud based, self-service machine shop where teams can design and CAM parts themselves in Fusion 360, upload the part, then we will manufacture the part for you.

We'd be happy to expedite any parts for FRC teams and run them with a 1-3 day lead time as we know how rushed build season is :) Just send us an email at support@anchorlabs.io or use live chat and we will flag your order.

If anyone is interested, checkout our website at http://anchorlabs.io.

Good Luck!
Sam

[Cory]

I would never in 10 million years allow some random person on the internet send me CAM to run on my machine.

Do you bill them when they crash your machine?

Do you go through and change their speeds and feeds to match your tooling?

What happens when they CAM something with a tool you don't have? Do you redo it to match what you do have? If I ask for a 20"x20" plate faced with a 1/8" end mill do you kindly tell me I'm an idiot and switch to a face mill? or do you make the part as CAM'ed and spend 3 hours facing the top?

Why is this a draw for potential customers? Is it cheaper for me to submit a part to you that I've CAM'ed than to have you do the whole thing? as both an end user and someone with CNC machining skills I don't really care how you CAM the part as long as I get something back that matches the print. Unless it's cheaper I don't understand why you'd offer this feature to customers, particularly given the time involved for you to check/edit the user submitted CAM and the potential for some random person on the internet to crash your machine.

[anchorlabs]

Before we run anything on our machines, we go through the CAM. Based on the parts we've gotten so far, the CAM is used more as a guide. We don't just receive the CAM, post it and run it. The process is closer to receiving the CAM, simulating it, checking the feeds and speeds, then modifying anything that is different than what we would do.

There is a standard tooling library that includes the tools we have in stock and their feeds and speeds.

Our prices tend to be considerably lower than going to another online machine shop. Unless someone really messes up the CAM, it takes less time to fix their toolpath than it does for us to design it ourselves.

That being said, the self-service model is really just an experiment. We offer a full-service model which is just like a traditional machine shop which is may be the direction we may end up going if people would rather just have a part made albeit at a slight premium.

[anchorlabs]

[QUOTE=Cory;1624167]If I ask for a 20"x20" plate faced with a 1/8" end mill do you kindly tell me I'm an idiot and switch to a face mill? or do you make the part as CAM'ed and spend 3 hours facing the top?

The former :)

One of the interesting "features" of our product is it gives people a chance to learn about CNC machining even if they don't have a machine. By telling someone, "hey, that's not a great idea, here's a better idea and why," we are hoping to educate people at least a little bit on how to design for manufacturing.

One of the big perks of having the customer do the CAM is HOPEFULLY that people will send in parts that are possible to make. If you have to think about how to design the toolpath, it will hopefully prevent you from making a part with crazy undercuts and such.

[asid61]

Sounds pretty sweet! 1-3 day CNC machining is a fantastic deal, especially given that your "self-service" model is already cheaper than regular machine shop work.
Maybe I should actually start learning CAM...

[anchorlabs]

Sounds pretty sweet! 1-3 day CNC machining is a fantastic deal, especially given that your "self-service" model is already cheaper than regular machine shop work.
Maybe I should actually start learning CAM...

I'd highly recommend John Saunders' youtube videos. He goes through parts then talks about how he would fixture them and then how to do the CAM:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9tn9rGywKUW1CM7i69gWVlj3YD_PaANw
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9tn9rGywKUUGyeBWX5Alt9yzBIp84sD8.

Autodesk also has some great resources: http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/blog/getting-started-introduction-to-cam-and-toolpaths/

[Cory]

If you have to think about how to design the toolpath, it will hopefully prevent you from making a part with crazy undercuts and such.

That is a very good point.

[J_B_Wood]

Will you eventually support other CAD/CAM formats? If I were to use this service, I would rather submit the Solidworks part and not have to do the CAM myself. I understand you have a full service option, where you guys write the CAM, but you still need to CAD the part in fusion? Thanks.

[anchorlabs]

Will you eventually support other CAD/CAM formats? If I were to use this service, I would rather submit the Solidworks part and not have to do the CAM myself. I understand you have a full service option, where you guys write the CAM, but you still need to CAD the part in fusion? Thanks.

For full-service you don't need to use Fusion. We accept many more formats:

* Autodesk Inventor (*.ipt, *.iam)
* CATIA V5 Files (*.CATProduct, *.CATPart)
* Pro/ENGINEER and Creo
* SolidWorks Files (*.sldprt, *.sldasm)

The website isn't setup to handle them yet but if you email us at support@anchorlabs.io or contact us over live chat we can manually add them to your account (should only take a few hours from the time you email them if it's after 9am PST).

[s-neff]

This is a super cool idea.

How wedded are you to F360? In my case, our students have been learning CAD & CAM in Solidworks with the HSMWorks add-in.
Would there be a pathway to "import" the completed and CAM'd part instead of having to redraw everything (part & CAM paths) in F360 before we could submit it to y'all?

(Asking because HSMWorks is also an Autodesk product, and it would be cool if they actually did build a pathway into F360 from it)

[anchorlabs]

This is a super cool idea.

How wedded are you to F360? In my case, our students have been learning CAD & CAM in Solidworks with the HSMWorks add-in.
Would there be a pathway to "import" the completed and CAM'd part instead of having to redraw everything (part & CAM paths) in F360 before we could submit it to y'all?

(Asking because HSMWorks is also an Autodesk product, and it would be cool if they actually did build a pathway into F360 from it)

The reason we are working with Fusion right now is mainly due to the resources required to write a plugin. Eventually it would be great to support other CAM packages but right now we just don't have the dev resources available to do so. Fusion supports importing Solidworks files but I don't believe it will retain any toolpaths from HSMWorks so it would just be doing the CAM in Fusion.

That being said, if you have a part you want to make and have the CAM done in HSMWorks, hit us up at support@anchorlabs.io and we can most likely work something out. Our automatic quoting wont work but we can just manually quote it.