On Sat, 03 Dec 2005 04:50:32 GMT, Bruce L. Bergman
wrote:

On Fri, 02 Dec 2005 20:07:26 GMT, "Tom Gardner"
wrote:

The part I use is a 9/16" OD x 1/2" x 3/8" eyelet. It has been declared
obsolete by the Mfgr. I've been looking for a replacement for over a month
and can't get less than 50k parts at $.15 ea. My usage is about 4k / year.

I can use DOM tube...if I can find it. I've been looking A LOT! My normal
tube suppliers, I use 6 sizes of tube, don't have it and it looks like I
need to get a big qty.

I wish I could buy dies to make the eyelet or find a source for tube or find
a source for steel bushings (1 quote at $1.36 ea...machined from bar)

Any ideas?

Don't raise the drawbridge, lower the river. ;-)

Call your old eyelet supplier and see what the problem is with them
making them. And perhaps ask if they'll sell you the tooling to make
them yourself, and the equipment if it takes something custom.

Perhaps they just don't want to spend the money to rebuild an old
machine that they know is dying and only making them 4,000 pieces a
year. Or they're having trouble sourcing the raw tubing and don't
want to deal with it anymore. But either way, since it's a vital
component of one of your products you have much more incentive to do
the work than they do.

After all, they have the tooling (how else did they make them?) and
they stated that they aren't going to use it anymore. Right?

You'll still have to pay to get the right size steel or brass tubing
drawn to use as raw stock. (Unless you'd like to buy all the gear to
draw your own, which I doubt.) And machining bushings from bar stock
would be insane. But the rest of your destiny is under your control.

Just assign someone to feed the machine a fresh stick of tubing
stock every half hour or so, lube it up, and let it sit over in the
corner going kerchunk kerchunk kerchunk a few hours a week.

Do it right, and you can develop your own tooling for all the eyelet
sizes you use. And all the sizes that the customers can dream up for
making 'specials'. Unless you like being at the mercy of component
suppliers...

-- Bruce --

Sounds like a perfect job for a Traub screw machine. Set it for
length, and cut off an entire bar via bar feeder.

I can get em for less than $500

Gunner

"Pax Americana is a philosophy. Hardly an empire.
Making sure other people play nice and dont kill each other (and us)
off in job lots is hardly empire building, particularly when you give
them self determination under "play nice" rules.

Think of it as having your older brother knock the **** out of you
for torturing the cat." Gunner