Steve W. wrote:
David R.Birch wrote:
Fortunately, they can be had cheap, so it's a good idea to buy two good
ones and use one for parts, as the price of certain replacements are as
much as a used machine. Other parts are just not available.

David

You know I often hear folks who have fully equipped machine shops
complain about the lack of replacement parts for machines.

What parts could not be made in house?
Why?


Most shops are not set up to hob gears, for one thing. Even if they
were to make one, including tooling, setup and cutting, you could
easily have 20 hours @ $50+ an hour, and while that work is being
done, those workers aren't doing what they were hired to do.

If all they have is the worn out part to work from, they have to
reverse engineer it and guesstimate the pre-wornout sizes & tolerances
plus guess what material will work.

I've done work like this and you really have to need THAT machine up
and running to make it cost effective.

The only parts in a machine that I can think of which are likely out of
the abilities of most shops would be semiconductors and other electronic
components.

Parts are made in production lots of 50, 100, 1,000,000, whatever. The
most expensive is the first.

David