Custom cut fins, centering rings, and more

I am from the University at Buffalo High Power Rockety club. In our club, we have a cnc machine that allows us to cut out custom designed fins, centering rings, and more. As a fundraising idea, we thought people could send us their design, and we will cut and ship it to them for a fee. Before we officially went with this idea, I wanted to see if anyone thought this was a good/bad idea? The way it would have to work, a check would have to sent out to the club, and once the check is received, we will cut and ship out your order. The designs would have to come from either open rocket, or autodesk inventor (3D modeling software). Also, there is a limit to our cutting abilities. We can only cut from 1/8" up to 1/2", and dimensions as long as 14'' x 14". All of the money would be put back into the club to help us fund our builds. What do you think?

Great idea.

Sounds like a great idea. What type of material are you planning on working with?

Being local, next time I'm doing a cluster you're getting a call

what are the prices?

I'm in. Can I say, Just cut me a bulkhead X" diameter? or will I have to send some kind of cad file?

MB_SEDS_Rocketry said:

I am from the University at Buffalo High Power Rockety club. In our club, we have a cnc machine that allows us to cut out custom designed fins, centering rings, and more. As a fundraising idea, we thought people could send us their design, and we will cut and ship it to them for a fee. Before we officially went with this idea, I wanted to see if anyone thought this was a good/bad idea? The way it would have to work, a check would have to sent out to the club, and once the check is received, we will cut and ship out your order. The designs would have to come from either open rocket, or autodesk inventor (3D modeling software). Also, there is a limit to our cutting abilities. We can only cut from 1/8" up to 1/2", and dimensions as long as 14'' x 14". All of the money would be put back into the club to help us fund our builds. What do you think?

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Can you handle cutting G10 fins?

(aka do you have sharp carbide bits that you don't care about too strongly, and a safe way to suppress the dust)

One feature for OpenRocket which had been requested a while back was a way to export the CNC command file (txt file, I suspect) required to define fin shapes. If any of you industrious students are interested, I'll point you in the right place to make the changes.

Kevin

etoyoc said:

Sounds like a great idea. What type of material are you planning on working with?

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We use birch wood. We do also fiberglass the wood and the cnc cuts it just fine, so I suspect if we did the same thing with carbon fiber it would work fine.

AfterBurners said:

what are the prices?

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I do not know prices yet, I need to figure that out. It will be competitive with other sites doing the same thing.

kruland said:

I'm in. Can I say, Just cut me a bulkhead X" diameter? or will I have to send some kind of cad file?

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I would need to know the ID and OD of the bulkhead you would need. We only have experience with working with Blue Tube and phenolic tubing. I know fiberglass, LOC, and all other tubings can have different OD's and ID's. As long as I have a ID and OD I can make it.

CarVac said:

Can you handle cutting G10 fins?

(aka do you have sharp carbide bits that you don't care about too strongly, and a safe way to suppress the dust)

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We have never cut G10 before. However, we have fiberglassed wood before and the cnc cuts it our perfectly. I cannot remember what material our bits are, I will check tomorrow and let you know.

kruland said:

One feature for OpenRocket which had been requested a while back was a way to export the CNC command file (txt file, I suspect) required to define fin shapes. If any of you industrious students are interested, I'll point you in the right place to make the changes.

Kevin

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That would be helpful. We usually design them in autocad inventor, and then use mastercam x4 to generate the cnc code. Let me know about the open rocket way.

This could be a great service but your cutting capacity is pretty limited. Everything I make is some sort of composite laminate which I lay up in 2x4ft sheets so I can get a lot of pieces from a panel. There's a lot less waste this way and I can cut all my parts in one shot. I'd also like to know what sort of tolerances you'll hold. I won't name vendors but everything I've ordered has been a pretty poor fit compared to what I can do myself.

Rather than cutting you a check, the club should set up a paypal account. That way we can cut out part of the middle man (sorry USPS).

K'Tesh said:

Rather than cutting you a check, the club should set up a paypal account. That way we can cut out part of the middle man (sorry USPS).

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I am fine with that. However, I do not know how money will work with it needing to go through our student association. I was thinking about setting up a website and you can place orders on there. Also, I will have very tight tolerances. Whatever dimensions are given to me will be cut to that dimension. I may cut everything a little big to allow to operator error and errors in measuring.

Having an idea of price would help me out. there are also my services that accept CC for approx. 3.5% and anyone in the club could set up the account. trying to get anything set up through the university will be slow, that has been my experience. maybe prices could be based on tube size for round items and outer perimeter for fins.

i'm in if price is right.

I'm in too.

Oh, life just got more interesting. I need fins for a new project...

MasonH said:

Oh, life just got more interesting. I need fins for a new project...

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Mason,

Are you going for the title of the youngest BAR?

MasonH said:

Oh, life just got more interesting. I need fins for a new project...

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Great to have you back , you got some cool ideas

Before I say anything official, I have to clear it with our president and E-board to make sure we can do it. I am meeting with them on monday. If you have an idea and would like me to cut it, please pm me or send me an email at [email protected]. We can talk about a price and once I have the official okay, I can begin to cut.

MB_SEDS_Rocketry said:

Before I say anything official, I have to clear it with our president and E-board to make sure we can do it. I am meeting with them on monday. If you have an idea and would like me to cut it, please pm me or send me an email at [email protected]. We can talk about a price and once I have the official okay, I can begin to cut.

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I might be slow so excuse my questions as others may already have put 2 &2 together.
- if I understand you correctly, you are looking at using school ( university equipment) to cut fins, rings, etc to fund your school's ( universities) local club. Is that correct?- if this is incorrect- skip all the way down to last point, as apparently I didn't get it and points and suggestions won't apply.

- if so I think how payment works ( Paypal, or other electronic format) will be a challenge from my experience. If you are accepting payment personally that opens up another whole bucket of interpretation issues at least from what I have seen in the past.
- not trying to be negative but if this is university equipment on university property, from what I have experienced these ideas usually never can move forward as it turns into a paperwork nightmare for those who want to take advantage of your services.
- the hard sell is usually trying to get the service seen as a true fundraiser. Something to consider if you run into this is instead of taking "custom orders" is to offer things as a product. So instead of person x ordering 3inch centering rings with a 29mm hole in it made from basswood at 1/4 thick, have a products list with this as a choice. In essence take in the suggestions of what people may want -make it a product you are offering. (Note-this doesn't mean you need to stock it)
- if you look at typical fund raisers, your buying a chance to win something, buy something, or receive a service ( ie car wash). Any person has an equal chance to get whatever it is being offered, meaning person "a" can buy 1 box of popcorn, and pay what person "b" is paying, and they get the same product, same amount, etc.
- I applaud your creativity in wanting to offer a service and I hope you have a good meeting on Monday.

^+1 i didn't put it together that this was university property. You will learn a lot about politics and patience in trying to get this ok'd. One other aspect that will probably apply is the university will want the 40% overhead off the top before your funds will be distributed to the club. I love the entrepreneurial spirit but you will probably graduate before this is approved. ( I am not a negative guy at all, my glasses are all half full) you might think about finding a local business that has a CNC machine that might like to mentor you students and might let you have some machine time. you could put some apprentice time in for things the business needs to repay the owner, everyone makes out.

Cl(VII) said:

Mason,

Are you going for the title of the youngest BAR?

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All i said was that it was interesting. Im getting 'new projects' all the time. Rockets is still on the backburner for me, but at least I now have my grades back up and the PSAT over with. Still busy looking for a car and enjoying my high school/college experiences. I dont consider myself a BAR. Wasnt out of it long enough to count.

Plus, I only logged back in to sell things.

Sorry for the late reply. For now, I will not be able to cut anything out for people. Our president did not really care for the idea. I will try to get something worked out and get back to everyone. Sorry about the delay.

Sounds like this got some traction, but since MB_SEDS_Rocketry isn't going to be able to cut things, maybe I can help.

I have rocksim/openrocket to CNC code that needs some polishing (using it to cut plugs for nosecones on a rotary axis), but I should be able to make the tweaks I need to parse your rings/fins and generate the gcode to make this easy. Ask MasonH how his rings turned out.

If there's enough interest, I'll put the time into it to really optimize the code so I can get turnaround times down (pretty busy right now).