General Cycling Discussion - CNC Machine

I got too see a real CNC machine. That freaking thing is crazy. The whole thing is machine operated. I got to see one at the Granite Fabrication centre that my father owns. He said that machine costed about C$270,000. It was really interesting to see how it cuts metal and all that. We had to take the granite cutter parts off though and put the metal cutters and plasma cutters. It really is cool though. For all of you that don't think CNC machined items are worth the price... think again. That freakin machine does a lot of work.

Gee, $270k can is pretty cheap for a CNC mill. The one at my university was worth about $500k us, and even it was obsolete. It broke down a lot, too. CNC mills in the aerospace industry cost millions.
Frankly, though, unless you actually need seriously accurate dimensions (or some otherwise weird shape cut), it's easier to just throw some metal stock onto an engine lathe, and start cutting away.

Well my dads employees only use the CNC for cutting and shaping granite and all of that. They aren't cutting metal. They just happen to have the adapters for metal and stuff.

We used a CNC Machine to fabricate a gearbox that was used for my school's robotics team. Designed the whole thing on paper, then on AutoCAD, then gave it to the engineering mentor who did some of his mathemagic and out popped perfectly cut gearbox pieces :D

Was way better than the cuts we did by hand...but then again, none of us are skilled machinistis