David R.Birch wrote:
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.

Not applicable in a home shop in many cases we are doing it for fun.
Personally I think this is one of the reasons why the US is losing the
global economy battle. Don't repair that machine that you have, scrap it
and buy a newer one.


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.

Not really, parts duplication would be easy. You already know what
material to make it out of, you have a sample in hand.
Look at the books and you would know what the original specs should be.



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

True to some extent.

--
Steve W.