Companies who can scan and machine parts for CNC

Yeti831
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Anyone know of any reputatable companies who offer services to 3d scan parts for CNC'ing?

Looking to have some fork lugs and an ignition cover made.
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bh
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Piedmont, SC US
5/30/2020 10:24am
I could be wrong but I believe Phil Denton engineering might offer that service.
mister2dt
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Canton, MS US
5/30/2020 11:03am
Cost prohibitive. $165 an hour and you are looking at 10-12 hours
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Yeti831
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5/30/2020 11:12am
mister2dt wrote:
Cost prohibitive. $165 an hour and you are looking at 10-12 hours
Honestly, for some factory lugs replicated it'd be worth it to me.

But yeah, that seems way too high to justify for an ignition cover.
5/30/2020 2:24pm
I don't know a machine shop around that charges $165/hr for machine time.. Maybe the design aspect of it. Just download a free copy of fusion 360 and lean how to use it . I don't know about in your area but there are places all over near me that offer digital scanning. I would guess that an ignition cover would only take an hour to machine. Fork lugs would need to be done in 5 axis, a lathe with live tooling or multiple ops in a regular 3 axis mill. I own a full CNC machine shop, but we are booked out about a month right now
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The Shop

philG
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5/30/2020 4:10pm
You can scan stuff in 5 mins, then you have to take that scan and turm it into proper surfaces.. takes ages. Costs money.. i did have a file for my RM125 ignition cover done, but never got it made up.. you can 3D print off a scan , but machining is a lot of work.
rob162
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IL US
5/30/2020 4:59pm
What type of lugs. Best thing you can do is a group buy. Find 10-15 guys to go in on them to break up cost. A guy i knew did that with a factory cr450f piston and cam. Had JE and crower make replicas of them then sold them to cover his cost.
JeremyK
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5/30/2020 5:03pm Edited Date/Time 5/30/2020 5:10pm
mister2dt wrote:
Cost prohibitive. $165 an hour and you are looking at 10-12 hours
Yeti831 wrote:
Honestly, for some factory lugs replicated it'd be worth it to me.

But yeah, that seems way too high to justify for an ignition cover.
I'd look into more, that 10-12 hour scan time is extremely inflated . Something like a fork lug would not need to be scanned anyway ,anyone who is smart enough to program a cnc to machine one can easily get dimension off an existing part.
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Sprew
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5/30/2020 5:20pm
^^^This. Don’t need a 5 axis either. But is time prohibitive for one piece.
Yeti831
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5/30/2020 5:23pm
mister2dt wrote:
Cost prohibitive. $165 an hour and you are looking at 10-12 hours
Yeti831 wrote:
Honestly, for some factory lugs replicated it'd be worth it to me.

But yeah, that seems way too high to justify for an ignition cover.
JeremyK wrote:
I'd look into more, that 10-12 hour scan time is extremely inflated . Something like a fork lug would not need to be scanned anyway ,anyone...
I'd look into more, that 10-12 hour scan time is extremely inflated . Something like a fork lug would not need to be scanned anyway ,anyone who is smart enough to program a cnc to machine one can easily get dimension off an existing part.
That's the issue though. It's a works part that I don't have blueprints for and I figured scanning would be the most cost effective way to measure everything.

I think he was speaking to 10+ hours of actual CNC time.

I don't see an ignition cover being to involved but it's the lugs I was curious about.
JeremyK
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5/30/2020 5:59pm
Yeti831 wrote:
That's the issue though. It's a works part that I don't have blueprints for and I figured scanning would be the most cost effective way to...
That's the issue though. It's a works part that I don't have blueprints for and I figured scanning would be the most cost effective way to measure everything.

I think he was speaking to 10+ hours of actual CNC time.

I don't see an ignition cover being to involved but it's the lugs I was curious about.
Ya ,without having one to look at it would be hard to know what changes were made to make them better over stock other then just being machined.
Yeti831
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5/30/2020 6:55pm
Yeti831 wrote:
That's the issue though. It's a works part that I don't have blueprints for and I figured scanning would be the most cost effective way to...
That's the issue though. It's a works part that I don't have blueprints for and I figured scanning would be the most cost effective way to measure everything.

I think he was speaking to 10+ hours of actual CNC time.

I don't see an ignition cover being to involved but it's the lugs I was curious about.
JeremyK wrote:
Ya ,without having one to look at it would be hard to know what changes were made to make them better over stock other then just...
Ya ,without having one to look at it would be hard to know what changes were made to make them better over stock other then just being machined.
Full honesty, I literally got them for the cool factor and it was cheaper than getting the machined KYB lugs that are on the kit forks.

This is nothing more than me purely having my moment as a parts geek.
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mister2dt
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5/30/2020 7:01pm
Yeti831 wrote:
Honestly, for some factory lugs replicated it'd be worth it to me.

But yeah, that seems way too high to justify for an ignition cover.
JeremyK wrote:
I'd look into more, that 10-12 hour scan time is extremely inflated . Something like a fork lug would not need to be scanned anyway ,anyone...
I'd look into more, that 10-12 hour scan time is extremely inflated . Something like a fork lug would not need to be scanned anyway ,anyone who is smart enough to program a cnc to machine one can easily get dimension off an existing part.
Yeti831 wrote:
That's the issue though. It's a works part that I don't have blueprints for and I figured scanning would be the most cost effective way to...
That's the issue though. It's a works part that I don't have blueprints for and I figured scanning would be the most cost effective way to measure everything.

I think he was speaking to 10+ hours of actual CNC time.

I don't see an ignition cover being to involved but it's the lugs I was curious about.
I was speaking start to finish time. Scan to finished product. I own and run a cnc shop. $165 an hour is my custom rate and I turn work away. My machines average $135 an hour, 60 hours a week. I have 26 of them running at all times
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JeremyK
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5/30/2020 7:24pm
Yeti831 wrote:
That's the issue though. It's a works part that I don't have blueprints for and I figured scanning would be the most cost effective way to...
That's the issue though. It's a works part that I don't have blueprints for and I figured scanning would be the most cost effective way to measure everything.

I think he was speaking to 10+ hours of actual CNC time.

I don't see an ignition cover being to involved but it's the lugs I was curious about.
JeremyK wrote:
Ya ,without having one to look at it would be hard to know what changes were made to make them better over stock other then just...
Ya ,without having one to look at it would be hard to know what changes were made to make them better over stock other then just being machined.
Yeti831 wrote:
Full honesty, I literally got them for the cool factor and it was cheaper than getting the machined KYB lugs that are on the kit forks...
Full honesty, I literally got them for the cool factor and it was cheaper than getting the machined KYB lugs that are on the kit forks.

This is nothing more than me purely having my moment as a parts geek.
You could just copy the stock lug internals ,have the outside surfaced and have them use more step over to exaggerate the machined look.
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BobPA
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5/30/2020 7:57pm
Did you contact the guy from Luxon MX? He posts on here a descent amount, and is full of knowledge and info on the subject. I think he is in the process of producing lugs for WP forks. All of their CNC'd products look top notch.
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FWYT
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5/30/2020 8:44pm
mister2dt wrote:
I was speaking start to finish time. Scan to finished product. I own and run a cnc shop. $165 an hour is my custom rate and...
I was speaking start to finish time. Scan to finished product. I own and run a cnc shop. $165 an hour is my custom rate and I turn work away. My machines average $135 an hour, 60 hours a week. I have 26 of them running at all times
NICE BIZ!!!!!!!!
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JM485
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Davis, CA US
5/30/2020 9:17pm
I might be able to help you with the reverse engineering depending on the complexity of the pieces, can you post up a couple of pictures?
Yeti831
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5/30/2020 9:30pm
BobPA wrote:
Did you contact the guy from Luxon MX? He posts on here a descent amount, and is full of knowledge and info on the subject. I...
Did you contact the guy from Luxon MX? He posts on here a descent amount, and is full of knowledge and info on the subject. I think he is in the process of producing lugs for WP forks. All of their CNC'd products look top notch.
I didn't even think about him. Thank you.

Ideally, I'd love to go to a moto savy place and he probably forgets more in a day than I've learned in my life.

philG
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5/31/2020 4:02am
Whatever you do, when you copy something, you have just that , a copy. You have no idea of the original specification, all you can do is guess at what the original sizes and tolerances were.

I have seen some horrific stuff over the years, like people using smaller rads 'to save weight' and not grasping the basic concepts of design and manufacture.

We 3D printed a set of fork lugs, and the dumb shits had no concept of what it even did, no way to hold it to machine anything, Colossal waste of time and money. By the time anyone proper got to see them, it was already too late to do anything.
JeremyK
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5/31/2020 7:32am
philG wrote:
Whatever you do, when you copy something, you have just that , a copy. You have no idea of the original specification, all you can do...
Whatever you do, when you copy something, you have just that , a copy. You have no idea of the original specification, all you can do is guess at what the original sizes and tolerances were.

I have seen some horrific stuff over the years, like people using smaller rads 'to save weight' and not grasping the basic concepts of design and manufacture.

We 3D printed a set of fork lugs, and the dumb shits had no concept of what it even did, no way to hold it to machine anything, Colossal waste of time and money. By the time anyone proper got to see them, it was already too late to do anything.
That sounds like a good number of engineers i've dealt with over the years , a good engineer will meet with the person/people building something to find out manufacturing constraints,the know it all, book worm engineers just send prints to the floor.
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Luxon MX
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5/31/2020 8:44am Edited Date/Time 5/31/2020 8:54am
If you're looking for a single set of one-off fork lugs, starting from nothing more than an existing set (no CAD or anything), then you're at least looking at $2k. Most of that money is in reverse engineering, design time, machine programming, fixturing, etc. The actual machine spindle time is negligible.

If you're looking for KTM/Husky lugs, we're slowly making progress on that, but something else keeps popping up with higher priority, so they've been delayed quite a bit. I'm hoping to get back on it next week.

Here's the 3D printed test fit:

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philG
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5/31/2020 10:50am
philG wrote:
Whatever you do, when you copy something, you have just that , a copy. You have no idea of the original specification, all you can do...
Whatever you do, when you copy something, you have just that , a copy. You have no idea of the original specification, all you can do is guess at what the original sizes and tolerances were.

I have seen some horrific stuff over the years, like people using smaller rads 'to save weight' and not grasping the basic concepts of design and manufacture.

We 3D printed a set of fork lugs, and the dumb shits had no concept of what it even did, no way to hold it to machine anything, Colossal waste of time and money. By the time anyone proper got to see them, it was already too late to do anything.
JeremyK wrote:
That sounds like a good number of engineers i've dealt with over the years , a good engineer will meet with the person/people building something to...
That sounds like a good number of engineers i've dealt with over the years , a good engineer will meet with the person/people building something to find out manufacturing constraints,the know it all, book worm engineers just send prints to the floor.
Yup , they spent thousands printing a Sit Ski for a disabled athlete that the 'designer' said was a 'bespoke solution' .. when I got first sight of it , the blueprints had nothing you could actually check, and when I asked why they had 3D printed something they could have bought off Ebay for £40 , you could have heard a pin drop... it was a direct copy of a 1981 RM125 top rocker arm. The guy suddenly lost the ability to speak... needless to say the first one snapped clean in half.

After a while , it stops being funny.

And then there is the moral ' can you copy this ' dilemma.. yes I can, but I am not going to . And then folk copy bit that have to fit together, and get the limits wrong so they don't... all good fun.
Yeti831
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5/31/2020 4:04pm
Luxon MX wrote:
If you're looking for a single set of one-off fork lugs, starting from nothing more than an existing set (no CAD or anything), then you're at...
If you're looking for a single set of one-off fork lugs, starting from nothing more than an existing set (no CAD or anything), then you're at least looking at $2k. Most of that money is in reverse engineering, design time, machine programming, fixturing, etc. The actual machine spindle time is negligible.

If you're looking for KTM/Husky lugs, we're slowly making progress on that, but something else keeps popping up with higher priority, so they've been delayed quite a bit. I'm hoping to get back on it next week.

Here's the 3D printed test fit:

Well, that sucks. Was hoping it'd be a grand or less. Thanks for the insight from you and everyone else here.

Figured no harm in asking.
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CalRMX
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6/2/2020 1:56am
These guys don't know what their talking about, 2 grand for a set of fork lugs is a complete ripoff, I could make a set if you gave me something to measure for less than a grand.

It's not rocket science, a lot of people value their time way more than it's worth
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mister2dt
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6/2/2020 5:45am
CalRMX wrote:
These guys don't know what their talking about, 2 grand for a set of fork lugs is a complete ripoff, I could make a set if...
These guys don't know what their talking about, 2 grand for a set of fork lugs is a complete ripoff, I could make a set if you gave me something to measure for less than a grand.

It's not rocket science, a lot of people value their time way more than it's worth
Businesses are set up to run at certain margins. Staying within those margins keeps the doors open. My shop, started by my grandfather in 1964, seems to be doing something right. Which in turn means, we probably know what we are talking about. Sure, i could take a set of lugs, reverse engineer them, make exact replicas of them and sell them for less than a grand. But that would cause my business to run a negative job. There is a term, "time is money." And it is absolutely true in cnc machining. Time is money. Every second is either a loss or means to a profit. I sure as hell dont run a shop to break even or lose money.
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Nbonney54
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Media, PA US
6/2/2020 5:58am
We do. Scanning is 125 for the scan. Would take a few minutes with our scanner set up. That’s a super easy part to scan with our ATOS 5 and 500 volume set of lens.
Reverse engineering after could be a little bit of coin due to the time it takes.
The machining on that with our 5 axis prob wouldn’t be all that long and could be done to within 2-4 thou. With a Rescan after to match to original part and check tolerance.
Unless you have super deep pockets it probably wouldn’t be worth it. If you had a cad model already it would be way cheaper.

We do mostly aerospace stuff so our tolerances are tight and we have one of the best scanners on the market. That stuff comes at a price though
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Luxon MX
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6/2/2020 9:32am
CalRMX wrote:
These guys don't know what their talking about, 2 grand for a set of fork lugs is a complete ripoff, I could make a set if...
These guys don't know what their talking about, 2 grand for a set of fork lugs is a complete ripoff, I could make a set if you gave me something to measure for less than a grand.

It's not rocket science, a lot of people value their time way more than it's worth
Cool. Post up photos of the finished product in a couple days when they're all done!
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kb228
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6/2/2020 9:48am
CalRMX wrote:
These guys don't know what their talking about, 2 grand for a set of fork lugs is a complete ripoff, I could make a set if...
These guys don't know what their talking about, 2 grand for a set of fork lugs is a complete ripoff, I could make a set if you gave me something to measure for less than a grand.

It's not rocket science, a lot of people value their time way more than it's worth
$2000 = $80/hr(standard shop rate) x 25 hours of work. Or 3 days of work. You need to scan, model a cad file off of a faceted body, then export it to mastercam for programming, then CNC cut the part. Dont forget you likely need to make special fixtures to hold the lug in the CNC. Then after that you need to check for fitment and if it doesnt fit then you start over. Id be shocked if $2000 even covered the entire development cost to be totally honest.
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CalRMX
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Brea, CA US
6/2/2020 11:13am Edited Date/Time 6/2/2020 11:16am
The difference is I don't waste time

As soon as I've got some basic dimensions I cut some material, put the part in the vise, and start roughing the part.

As the parts running I finish measuring and programming. Then I finish machine.

------------------------------------------------------

On the other hand the the place that makes a $2k part has a highly paid engineer in a nice ac controlled room, on a pc with expensive software who works at 25-50% he's capable of, because as an engineer he thinks he's special. And that's assuming the model is correct, from what I've seen of recent 3D models, there aren't many engineers who can make good models.

After he creates the model it probably needs to be checked against the part. Then some paperwork needs to be created for the project.

A traveller is probably required for somebody to be able to get some material of the shelf and sawn.

Then the programmer who's also working at 25-50% of the speed he's capable of gets some paperwork. Goes to the relavant directory to fetch the 3D file. Looks at it, goes to get a coffee and bullshit with some of the machinists, or smoke a ciggy out back. Then sits back, starts programming. Then creates a setup sheet, with all the tools and processes outlined. That alone probably takes him an hour. Probably specifies tools that aren't in the tool crib so they need to be ordered.

Then the setup sheet and material arrives at the machine. The operator backplots the NC code on the machine, sees that the programming is crap, goes back to the programmer and tells him to reprogram the part so that it can actually be made. Programmer gets pissed off, drags his feet reprogramming the part.

Then the foreman, programmer and machinist have a meeting that takes min 30 minutes to figure out how to make the part, meeting ends with most participants being none the wisier. At that point it's left to the NC machinist to figure how to make the part, having concluded that the neither the foreman or programmer have a clue.

(It's amazing how many NC programmers can't run a machine)

Then the part gets made. Then it goes into inspection, inspector not realising it's only a fork lug decides to a 100% inspection. Flags all sorts of errors that are totally irrelavant. That meeting to tell him it's ok and the paperwork required waste an hour.

That's why it's a $2k part, nothing to do with the actual time required to make the part, it's all the ineffieciencies, the ineptitude, the overhead required to employee the people who contribute nothing to making the part

--------------------------------------------------------

I'm the engineer/programmer/NC machinist/Inspector/floor cleaner etc etc. I don't waste time, if the machines running i'm engineering/programming/washing floors/cutting material/talking to customers etc etc.

I'm still as busy as I've ever been. Must mean something
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CalRMX
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Brea, CA US
6/2/2020 11:19am
The last place I worked had 100 people

6 in the front office
4 foreman
6 engineers
6 programmers
4 inspectors
1 welder
10 on manual machines
the rest on CNC machines over 3 shifts.

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The company that charges $2k would likely have
6 in the front office
1 foreman
1 engineer
2 programmers
1 inspector
1 on manual machines
2 CNC machinists.
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