Figure I would share this if anyone wants to 3d print one out.

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2181582

Still smashing out manifolds.
Finally making time for myself.
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e720d91fd9.jpg1jz manifold

I thought this was cool and thought I would share. These guys 3D printed rim and did some "testing."

Thats really impressive.

A 3D printed wheel made of PLA seems like a waste of time and money to me. I guess if you have a YouTube channel devoted to "extreme" 3D printing projects for self-promotion or ad revenue it makes sense. But as an actual product it sucks. I wouldn't even use it on a garden tractor unless I was desperate. The material cannot withstand the temperatures of normal street use, let alone durability targets for things like fatigue life.

I do agree with you that PLA isn't the ideal material to make functional parts, but damn I'm impressed that it held up for that long.

I think it was just to see if they could, im amazed it worked at all. PLA gets noodly by just siting in the sun here. In the summer time, itll turn to a puddle given a few hours. But ABS or even poly carb wouldn't be enough for a wheel IMO, so....

And the metal versions of 3D printing, to my knowledge, are still sintered (which has its inherent flaws too) and would probably be more expensive and less structural than a cast wheel of the same alloy.

There are three ways to make a wheel: the right way, the wrong way, and the Norwegian way.

Other means of 3d printing metal exist, such as SLM, which NASA and Rocketdyne have been using lately to print functional rocket engine components, including highly-stressed stuff like thrust chambers. I'm certain you could print a wheel using this technique which was both stronger and lighter than any casting method. But it ain't cheap.

That having been said, I'm still waiting for any* consumer-level metal printing technology to come to market at a reasonable price. I will buy that immediately.

That bike frame they made, looked like ass and weighed something like 40lbs.

Not mine, but a fascinating series of videos. This dude manufactures a complete AR-15 lower, totally from scratch, with zero CNC. "From Scratch" in this case meaning that he actually cast the blank out of melted beer cans, and then worked from there.

Easily the most hard-core fabrication pr0n I've seen in a while.

More machinist pr0n, this time with brass!

Also, I just got approval today to build 12 more cameras. Nine will be robots, two stedicams, and one jib. Five of the robots will be basically the same as the last set, except I don't have budget to buy new pedestals for these. So I'll be inundating this thread in the months to come as we solve the challenges of integrating modern robotics with 1970s vintage pedestals. So very happy to have eMachineshop as a resource...

This pales in comparison to everything else I see on here, but I'm proud of it. I'm learning to weld on my lunch breaks at work and after a month of lunches I did this! It is 16ga sheet, cold-rolled steel, TIG welded with stainless filler.

Removed the horrible downpipe from hell (worst thing I've ever seen in person fabrication wise) on my 200tdi swapped '73 Land Rover Series III with a buddy a few weeks back. We got partway through completely custom fabbing a new downpipe, had to adapt to the crappy exhaust so I could get home though. So we finished the initial part of it, from the current Vband it will then go forwards in full 2.5" and curve down into that tiny open space within the front fender/wing and back under the car.

Night and day driving difference from the completely choked/blocked off airflow downpipe and our hand cut plate/hand formed collector and pie cut downpipe work.

That's fuking horrendous.

Wont spring the cash for off the self components, allows you to use like literally the most overpriced machine shop in the country. Holy shit those guys are painfully expensive and they dont even get held to prints with tolerances.

For the type of stuff we're building, there are often no off-the-shelf solutions. It's customary for TV stations to have to do some custom fab to make all this stuff fit together, I just prefer to do it to a higher standard than most.


Not sure about the tolerance complaint. Every part I've had them make fit perfectly the first time.

As to cost, yeah, they're more expensive than Fernando's Beauty Supply & Machine Shop if you're buying very small quantities. The difference being that Fernando doesn't build my stuff straight from a CAD file, and produce repeatable results every time. If I only need one or two of something, I'll hack it together myself. When I need dozens, and I need them all to work perfectly the first time, I use EMS.

I mean, you can't deny that these things are friggin' gorgeous:

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...966a685755.png

60 of them (enough to do 30 monitors) cost me $634. At $21 a pair, that's less than an equivalent Chinese-made part on Amazon, whose dimensions I can't tailor to my specific need.

Every time I order CNC-milled aluminum from them, they're all like "Hey, don't you want to check out our anodizing or power-coating processes?" And I'm like "No, you dumb bot, tool-marks on raw aluminum are sexier than Tricia Helfer!"





If it's any condolence, I also fabricated some shit the old-fashioned way today.

https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...4cbd9cabb3.png

Maybe not proper fab per se, just cutting rectangular holes into raised-floor tiles consisting of an inch of concrete sandwiched between two steel plates. Carbide-tipped tools ftw.

Yeah they just do it redneck style. Throw the cad model in their cam software, set tools on a pre-setter, cut parts and hope they're good. Everything should be within 10 thou probably.

I don't consider that to be Redneck Style. As the design engineer, I get to specify the process, the tool, and the tolerance for every step in the build. And they follow my instructions. That is, in fact, exactly the opposite of redneck style. Perhaps you've not adequately explored the various settings menus in the design software?


I'm extremely curious to hear the details of your negative experience with EMS.

I've used them to fabricate all sorts of random stuff, and every part I've gotten back has worked perfectly the first time.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...50adbb8220.png
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1f407a93d5.png
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1a4623baa6.png
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...29ecbb0b80.png

I never bought from eMS the price was always just out in left field insane. The must be better now based on your experience but I've had them come back with $600+ quotes for stuff I got for like $120sih elsewhere.