Has anybody manufactured their own hubcentric rings?
05-10-2012, 03:22 PM
#24
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Well apparently this niche market demand is already adequately satisfied by existing vendors.. making reason number 2 for the argument that it would be a poor business decision to start "spacers for idiots inc".
05-10-2012, 04:33 PM
#25
Spoke with the head machinist at work today to get an idea about what exactly would be involved to CNC these. To make a long story short they're a bit of a pain in the *** for a few reasons starting with the jaws limited ability to clamp around a circle and hold it stationary due to the lack of contact area between the ring and the jaws.
My plan was going to be to cut the OD and ID out of a block, going as deep into the block as I would want the ring wide (the block obviously would be thicker than the width of the ring), giving me my ring with a solid square section attached to the entire bottom edge. From there I planned on flipping the piece so the ring would be held horizontally by the jaws so I could fly cut the square portion away from the ring. My coworker said that's one way to do it, but it's not unlikely I'd run into problems such as a lot of vibration in the part during the machining and/or the entire thing getting pulled out of the jaws during the fly cut (this goes back to the problem caused by the jaws and ring contact area).
He basically told me making 4 of them is more trouble than what it's worth when I could just work the same amount of time it would take to make the rings and I'd earn more than the cost of them. So with my lack of fluency with CNCing, this is something I'm not going to attempt, at least not right now. I've decided to order the plastic rings anyway, but I do plan on working on these eventually when I have some spare time at work just for fun. Or maybe by that time my company will buy the 3D printer I've heard people talking about and I can skip the CNC machine all together
My plan was going to be to cut the OD and ID out of a block, going as deep into the block as I would want the ring wide (the block obviously would be thicker than the width of the ring), giving me my ring with a solid square section attached to the entire bottom edge. From there I planned on flipping the piece so the ring would be held horizontally by the jaws so I could fly cut the square portion away from the ring. My coworker said that's one way to do it, but it's not unlikely I'd run into problems such as a lot of vibration in the part during the machining and/or the entire thing getting pulled out of the jaws during the fly cut (this goes back to the problem caused by the jaws and ring contact area).
He basically told me making 4 of them is more trouble than what it's worth when I could just work the same amount of time it would take to make the rings and I'd earn more than the cost of them. So with my lack of fluency with CNCing, this is something I'm not going to attempt, at least not right now. I've decided to order the plastic rings anyway, but I do plan on working on these eventually when I have some spare time at work just for fun. Or maybe by that time my company will buy the 3D printer I've heard people talking about and I can skip the CNC machine all together
05-11-2012, 04:09 AM
#27
Seems like the better idea to not mess with it. When you can buy metal rings online for $15-$20 it just doesn't make sense unless it was easy to do and you were that bored at work. If you were going to start a business and sell mass quantities then yes, of course.
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