Yesterday, we received word that our sponsor’s CNC person quit his job. We can’t have anything CNCed.
1072 has graciously offered to run off some parts on their desktop CNC, but there are still some other parts that need to be done. We checked the local shops in the area, but the average turnaround time is around 3 weeks.
Does anyone else in this area own a CNC machine, and are willing to assist us by running off a part or two?
What sorts of parts are you looking to have made? We may be able to do something to help. We’re not in the Bay Area (…at least, not the one you’re thinking of), but we can always ship things to you.
We sometimes work at a local community college’s shop which has all sorts of people (and other teams, beachbots 330) there. Many are simply people eager to learn machining as a hobby and will make parts for us.
I would check local classes an clubs like mentioned.
We’d also reccomend the tech shop. Everything we can’t do in our lab we do their, as our mentor happens to work there. In our machine shop, we have a lathe, mill, and welder. If you need to use any of those, feel free to contact us. If you need stuff CNC’d, I’d reccomend the tech shop.
Just go to google and search for CNC Machine Shops near Los Altos, ca (or try Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Menlo Park, San Jose, etc). There should be tons of them. I would highly recommend driving around and talking to the companies directly. If you call you will NEVER get anyone to help. I do this every year for 968 and we usually net about 4 shops out of about 15 that I visit.
Another option is try De Anza, Foothill, Evergreen Valley College, Canada, and San Jose City College. See if they have CNC classes that someone could enroll in and have the professor help program the machine and have the student load the parts. These classes usually work out well because they are normally in the evening/night so students can go over after school.
I own a mahine shop in michigan and have time to make a few parts .If you e-mail prints I can see what i can do .depending on the parts ,I could make them over the weekend and ship them the next day.And the price would be right.(FREEE!!!)
We’ve visited a total of around 7 machine shops. Only one gave us an acceptable timeframe, and they charge around $3500 for the wheels and dog’s alone. We cannot afford that.
We’re doing some parts at San Jose City College, but we lack the skills to do all of them.
If anyone is able to machine parts, or write gcode for parts, it would be greatly appreciated. San Jose City College has a CNC, but it’s useless without someone to program it.