How do you fund your big machinery purchases?

[nobrakes8]

Unfortunately, my answer about money is that you probably need to do it the hard way by finding sponsors and budgeting carefully.

The good news is, if you start with reasonable expectations you can find good used equipment. We bought a belt-driven manual mill that was built in 1981 for like $2500 and I indexed the head in place within +/- .0003 (+/- .0001 if anybody on my team reads this post )

If I were your mentor out in Cali I'd probably tell you to start by contacting this company http://www.permach.com and see what they have for used equipment and some ball park prices so you can set some targets for fundraising. I'd use that information to setup a priority list and you can share that with potential sponsors and see what they can do to help you out. I don't think it's unrealistic to find a few companies that will fork over 3-5k to help buy a machine.

If you want any fundraising advice or anymore detailed advice feel free to DM me --I'm a machine geek.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by nobrakes8

If I were your mentor out in Cali I'd probably tell you to start by contacting this company http://www.permach.com and see what they have for used equipment and some ball park prices so you can set some targets for fundraising. I'd use that information to setup a priority list and you can share that with potential sponsors and see what they can do to help you out. I don't think it's unrealistic to find a few companies that will fork over 3-5k to help buy a machine.

I wold definitely contact them. We have worked extensively with Performance Machine Tools to purchase a bunch of machines and tooling over the last year and have been very satisfied with their prices and service. Ask for Bob and tell him Bellarmine Robotics referred you. We referred 5924 to them and I believe they purchased a lathe and were looking at some other equipment as well.

For the OP, unless this is a one time only expenditure opportunity I would start small and get a solid base built up of manual machine tools and support equipment (sanders, drill press, band saws, shear, brake, etc). Once you have a group of mentors/students who are competent with that stuff you'll be better equipped to move up to CNC. If you're starting from scratch without people that have a deep knowledge of machining/fabrication it's easy to end up with the wrong stuff or with something that sits for years because you don't know how to take advantage of it.

[GeeTwo]

Our biggest purchase in team history was our trailer ($9,000 budget, including wrap, solar panels, and other neat stuff). One of our mentors, Isaac, put together a grant proposal (with a bit of team help) to Ingersoll Rand Foundation; he's an IR employee. We're listing IR Foundation as a platinum sponsor for three years based on this grant.