Great idea, I can do some CAD work from where I am now (converting your napkin sketch / concept into a CAD file), machine work when I return from my current gig.
I have full CAD and a full manual machine shop at my house. All offers or help is welcome. Great concept. Will work for beer....and of course, will sign an NDA.
Subscribed. Gotta lotta ideas floating around in my brain for M/C and cabinet shop applications. They are frequently stymied by my lack of machining resources.
. saw this thread, was forming my reply, before i posted, boom - appendicitis. so ive been out of the loop for 3+ weeks. i work full time for the last couple years at a local cnc shop, but for the previous 12 yrs worked full time in my own shop and still have it. 3 axis cnc knee mill, very small manual lathe. cad-cam, saws, drill presses, inspection tools, yada yada. also a 17" x 40" cnc eng lathe, but with a bad cnc control. that control will be replaced in the next 4 months or so, depending on how much $ i can make part timing on the mill. have already worked with a couple adv'ers, always willing to talk, if i believe in a project i can be flexible and willing to "donate" time, at least on the front end. send a pm, ill send a phone#, it will be my shops#. leave your#, ill likely not be there, but ill return the call, lets chat. even if its just some advice you want, mine not always the best but its free. unless youre one of the bankers, lawyers, etc that stole all the money in the last big market crash and drove me back into my new fulltime job, in that case, its $500 an hour. . .
I have full industrial textile capabilities. A commercial walking foot sewing machine is the center of the shop. Can make bags and luggage, repairs and alterations to riding gear, zipper replacements, vinyl or leather seat upholstery. Can do many different stitched things. I'll be producing some rugged pannier , tail, and tank bags and seat covers. Would love to team with someone getting ready to design and fabricate metal racks and innovate in ways that other producers have not, namely catering to the more popular of the obscure dualsport bikes of the 80's like XL600 and XT600 for example. Wanting to replicate seat covers more accurately than other seat cover sources online, complete with vinyl screenprinted logos of the OEM. Any textile projects send a PM. I'm in central NC and will be doing the same thing in 6 months up in Portland OR. Possible interest in setting up operations in both places.
TIG welding, steel aluminium and stainless steel, tube fabrication, years in the high end bicycle racket. vintage and antique motorbike weld repairs are fun. cast aluminium case and head repairs. cooling fins and what not. basic manual machine tools. have built lots of racks from scratch. my usual buisness is custom furniture and railings.
Update, on my post, in a few weeks I will have all paper work in line -"T's" crossed "I's" dotted and the partner business will be all mine. Also added 55 tons of punching,small heavy plate shearing/bending,coping (iron worker) to the list
This maybe a little early, but how about a spread sheet of some sort to list the particulars in... username (so others can PM them), or if desired some other form of contact info... capabilities (machining, welding, etc.), location would be nice to know... maybe what you need is right around the corner! ...and sticky it to the top of the thread so people don't have to dig through 50 pages to find "that post I remember seeing that guys name in". Thoughts? C
I'm just a self taught amature with not too much machine shop experience but have a small 3 axis CNC mill (soon to add the 4th axis), real small manual lathe, small powder coating facilities, tig & mig. Have lots of experience with (non professional) computer drafting (can't afford auto-cad but own turbo-cad v 18 with 3D) and visual mill. Think this is a great idea and although I don't have the experience I am willing to help wherever I can - for beers / cost.
Time to rev this up. I'm working on another project bike, this time a Ninja 650r which I hope to turn into quite a capable dirt road machine. I have been working mostly on lathe projects to mount the KTM triples and swingarm. At some point I will need to address the rearsets. Being a sportbike, the factory mounts just would not do. So I am thinking I would need a plate of some kind that would bolt to the factory lugs, just swing down and forward more. It would also be great if I could mount dirt bike type footpegs to this. So here's my question. The cheapest way would be for me to cut it out myself. I've done that before, it looked like I cut it out myself The last time I had rear sets made, I had a local guy waterjet the parts from 3/8" 6061 plate. Which was cheap. In order to mount the footpegs, I would need tabs coming out of the plate to bolt through the peg. I can weld fine but seems like it would be weak. CNCing it out of a really thick plate would also be very expensive I'm guessing due to time and material waste. vs stock You can see where the stock frame mounts are in this woodcraft rearset. I thinking something *generally* along this line. I would want the pegs down further and more forward. I also know that I stand a lot and this will be going offroad so I would want some strength. I had been thinking aluminum but it might be easier/stronger to make it from steel so I can TIG it to the frame instead of relying on 3 M8 bolts at max. Maybe it actually would be lighter out of steel since it would be so much small no needing to pick up 3 bolts so far apart? Plus I can weld the steel ears much easier for the pegs. I can draw in 3D CAD so I can send someone drawings, anyone here interested in offering up advice and their services? We can discuss compensation offline. I also have another similar project that is probably best suited for waterjet and will be steel upper shock mount arms to mount the KTM shock to the Ninja frame.
I know that this shorts out the intent of exercising the jobshop, but... Why not just beef up the lower rearset boss and mount a footpeg directly to it? That would get you down and forward, and you can make a bracket for the rear brake MC easily enough. If not, I have a Taig 4 axis CNC micromill that spends most of it's time holding a bench down. It can do 16"x10"x7" parts.
I hate when people make sense. Hmmm I guess I could just drill out the little light weight threaded cap, machine up a insert and weld it into the frame. I did this exact same thing on the CBR and made my own footpegs from aluminum rod but they are too slippery for dirt even if I knurled them. I'm not really to this stage yet as I want to get the bike sitting on its own 2 wheels in order to get the seat on etc so I know where I want the pegs to be. The other reason that I want things made for this bike that are more "bolt on" is that I am trying to come up with a basic kit for transforming the Ninja into a super KLR. So I have been carefully thinking things through and keeping good notes and CAD drawings. The idea is you buy a wrecked Ninja like I did, go shopping for the suspension parts from a KTM (swingarm, shock, rear brake system, wheels w/rotors, forks, triples, front brake) and I would supply the kit with the frame inserts for welding so the KTM swingarm can get mounted, the custom stem to adapt the KTM triples to the stock Ninja bearings etc. There will obviously be fabrication involved for the end user like welding, but I don't want to make it so custom that the user can't build this bike in their garage with just a welder and basic hand tools. Your mount system certainly would do that and is way easier for me to do myself. Let me think on this and I'll post up when I am further down the road.
I'm an Industrial Design student, so I've got access to a pretty decent shop (pretty limited CNC capability though) with mills, lathes, woodshop stuff, etc. We have got a laser cutter, which can be useful for cutting out templates in acrylic to then transfer into another material via the router table. I'm also pretty decent with CAD and would be happy to help out turning ideas into files ready to be produced as well as producing renderings. I've got the most experience with Solidworks but I can also work in Rhino. Gotta build up that portfolio...
Great thread Jesse. I'll post up my capabilities once I can commit some time to actually getting around to machine work (read, after Dakar!). Dave
Thanks, that's a little down the road. I might have jumped the gun in trying to get that part made before I have a few more things in place. Speaking of that I need a simple spacer for a sprocket made. 1/4" aluminum plate, 8mm bolt holes, 125mm ID. Who's able to waterjet this? I can send the CAD file if that's helpful. I made one of these before but it took a lot longer than it was worth. Let me know I have a local guy who can do it but I'd like to get this thread rolling.
I've been sending all my stuff to Craig at R&I Industries. It's a laser shop, but have been really happy with the cut quality. Mostly steel parts, but just got a sample for a new roadbook mount that I designed for RMS and it looks great.
Have you seen http://www.bigbluesaw.com? They'll do it for a little over $100 for 1, $30ea for 5. I've never used them but it looks pretty good. On a vaguely related note, is there anyone who makes custom sized spacers? For axle spacing, bearing id/od matching, etc. It's the sort of thing that most projects need and is easy if you have a lathe, really hard if you don't.
