And you're still worlds ahead of some places/companies that won't run a good idea if they don't think they'll sell 50k of them. :evilgrin:
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what Simon said
the vast majority of paintball players simply cannot afford custom work at a professional level, and frankly most of them would be highly confused as to why it costs what it does
the custom work that I do is either for myself or friends, or for projects that really get stuck in my head that I would get personal satisfaction out of completing
Don't forget community college classes, too... When I was on my brief foray into robotics and PLC programming the lab down the hall was amazing... get in good with the prof and time on the machines with your own tooling suddenly becomes an option.
TechShop and other makerspaces are great options for those with lots of patience and time and have something they can run in, do work on, and run out. You are gonna be hard pressed to setup a project and have all day (if not a few days) to do your cutting work.
Running machines in college, that was a constant problem, especially when you were trying to fixture something and that alone took hours. Now, with good design and fixtures and everything else MAYBE you could in-n-out a CNC job if it was broken down enough and the machines were kept square for you.
For an example of something I recently did with the Sherline, here's a Tiberius T8.1 body I lightened.
http://i.imgur.com/edKcAf5.jpg
The fillet on the back was done by hand with files, but everything else was machined on the little unit.
That sherline is soon going to get an aluminum sheet enclosure (once my CNC router table is finished) and then CNC steppers and a controller added for full 3-axis g-code cutting. It will let me do little projects like that frame on repeat without a lot of time spent counting handle rotations and what-not. As I said, I wouldn't be able to make that slide-frame from scratch: but for modding work, bonzo-presto: you've got a decent little unit.
I concur that the Sherline lathes are going to realistically max out at around 1" DIA parts. Which, for most all paintball applications is sufficient: you can make lots of reg parts, bolts, valves, etc within that limitation.
The lathe I has is already setup for CNC but I need a controller to run it, and without a spindle encoder I have no way to automate threading, stuck using the geared thread-cutting attachments manually. But that's a small problem in the grand scope.
Part of the "problem" that paintball players seem to have is that they love to move in and out of equipment every couple months/years/whenever. It's not really a problem per-se, but I think that's the thing that puts a damper on the custom end of things more than anything else from a logistical standpoint. Spending a couple hundred hamsters to get a unique custom modification isn't out of the range for many people already playing the game, but the custom equipment only holds value to the original owner (or a limited set of followers) and at this point people know there's little point in spending $1800 on a marker just to sell it for slightly-more-than-resale in like 2 years or less.
That's part of the problem that I myself have. I end up with a huge pile of stuff that I keep for the sake of having it...I only play like twice a year but don't want to give up anything that I own or anything that I modify to an appreciable point. It's not an issue of cost (or cost lost) but rather the fact that the cool unique part ends up in the hands of somebody else who doesn't truly appreciate it. If the new owner DOES indeed appreciate it then they would pay the cost for it no problem! But most people aren't interested and would prefer to get a more typical marker, then sell and get something else next year, again and again.
Back in the day (like around the turn of the last century) people were super eager to upgrade and modify their parts. Granted the factory/stock items were worse and begged modification, but it seemed like people were more apt to pay for the work then keep playing with that same unique marker for years and years. Skipping ahead to now, those guys are the old timers that still use 90's Angels, brick Shockers, classic mags, etc. Even if they don't use them, they're often still in a box somewhere. But the value is the same as any current-day midrange electro marker from present market.
Anyway, speaking strictly in terms of representative prices, I don't have a problem doing milling for people but they have to supply the CAD data for it. For me the milling is the easiest part, but I'm not an artist so the modeling side takes too long. The ultimate price for just that machining work depends entirely on the amount of detail...large open contours take less time than tiny fine details. There's a certain threshold where a project's time doubles. lol
The only way I'm able to justify low prices on that sort of thing is to piggyback it onto the production jobs. Some of the upfront time is saved, but of course not all..
It's really not that bad for anyone who is technical, which obviously you are. Take a look into it. You may find you get hooked. It is certainly amazing to be able to realize your dreams. It's what got me hooked on CAD and then CNC machining. :tup: There aremany of us here that will help you also.
I definitely wouldn't consider myself technical haha...this forum has been incredible in helping me understand the technical details of paintball design. I at least want to teach myself CAD so I can bring some of my ideas to life. Maybe I'll learn the machining side, but baby steps at this point haha
Yeah see I know CAD (from architecture) and some 3D, but the CNC side seems so far out of my understanding to be a whole other language. So I feel d0c's pain.