Westec 2015

[Toolman]

The place had plenty of people walking around. Lots of new technology. The kind of 3D printer we would need is the liquid bath type and the most expensive (stereo lithography). But just like the LA boat show, they all want to make up for 5 yrs of bad sales all at once. The prices of this stuff is ridicules. 60K for a printer with a 12" x 12" envelope. 30K for a laser etcher with the same envelope. I paid 50K for a cnc lathe! And just like wire edm, everybody's getting in on the 3D printing business and so the bottom will fall out and people that own these machines will be cutting each other's throats to get the work. And it looks fairly easy if u can manipulate a cad file. "Easy" means everybody will be doing 3D printing in their garage at home. I've found the easy stuff doesn't make the big bucks. I go after the hard stuff which pays way more and the competition is much less. There was a cute little bench top cnc lathe with a manual chuck with max cutting dia of about 1" and 4'' length. So I ask how much and he says 35. Ok, $3500 is not bad........... NO, IT'S $35,000!!!!!! Are u f'ing kidding me? Did I mention a paid 50K for a full size cnc lathe! lol lol Geeeeze

Also all the big players we not there. Fadal, Haas, Mori, Cincinnati, Makino :( But It did look like some actual sales were happening.

The last pic is the guys from Knuth. The sell mostly conventional machines. Their machines come from all over the globe. Really nice stuff. They actually make an English Wheel! That's what Jessie James uses to form his fenders and gas tanks. I own a cnc shop but I came from the conventional world. I really appreciate good quality machines with handles. Their machine catalog is about a half inch thick. Again, good stuff.