Newbie needs your help

[silvertdi]

Hello everyone. My experience with metal working machines has been limited to hammers, drills and hacksaws. Its time for me to get more sophisticated and out of the stoneage.

I'm restoring a motorcycle I had purchased 15 yrs ago. Unfortunately, many of the parts that I would like to purchase are extremely rare or extremely expensive. In an effort to build my bike the way I want it, i've been thinking alot about machine tools and the best way for me to go about this. I'm hoping you can set me on a path to success.

First off, I'd like to do this as inexpensively as possible while learning along the way. I've come up with two paths for me to reach my desired end result. Please provide feedback.

1st) I've thoght about obtaining a drawing program (CAD or some other program) and designing the parts and having a machine shop make them. I'm trying to do this inexpensively. What would be a good program to use that could take the drawing and convert it to Gcode? Is there a program that's more universal?

2nd) I've thought about buying a small CNC mill shuch as a Taig. It would be great to learn all that stuff as I'm mechanically inclined and like working with my hands. Will this path be something I will later regret? Is this mill too small for anything but models? The largest part I plan to make is about 12" x 4" x 4"?

Thanks.

[ger21]

1) check out alibre xpress. It's free. I doubt a shop would run g-code you brought them, but you could give them the 3D model and let them create their own code to run.

2) I think 12x4x4 is a bit big for a Taig.

[larry53]

You may want to post some parts you need made in the employment forum. There are some good jobs that will give you good prices on what you may need. I have done work for people on this site as well has other shops. Larry

[silvertdi]

I may just look for a jobber to take on my projects. I would like to learn to draw the parts in an autocad environment and forward the plans. Hopefully I can learn Alibre quickly.

[larry53]

Originally Posted by silvertdi I may just look for a jobber to take on my projects. I would like to learn to draw the parts in an autocad environment and forward the plans. Hopefully I can learn Alibre quickly.

Learning how to do cad drawings will help you on your designs as show mistakes in most cases before the part is made. You could send dwg or dxf files and most if not all shops could open these up. The other choice would be to scan a sketch and send this to someone who is going to quote on some work. Larry

[pastera]

Alibre, or any parametric 3d modeler, is a whole different beast from Autocad.
Go through the tutorials and you will get a good idea of how to use the program.

Aaron

[silvertdi]

Would it be preferable for me to make the drawings in a parametric modeling program or autocad? Can drawings from a parametric modeling program be imported into autocad? Thanks.

[pastera]

Once you create a model the 2d drawings are pretty much done for you. The only thing is to drop the dimensions on them.

You can use a parametric modeler to do 2d work but autocad is a pain to do 3d.

Alibre is free so it only costs you a download to try it.

Aaron