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.

[ChumpChange]

Tapatalk is the best way to load pics.

[riverrunner1984]

What do you make?
I don't know much about these machines. I'm guessing it's all about molding/forming/cuddling metals?


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[Toolman]

What do you make?
I don't know much about these machines. I'm guessing it's all about molding/forming/cuddling metals?


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I make tooling for the aerospace industry. Mainly airborne sand castings. I don't make the castings, just the tooling to make the castings. I'm a toolmaker.

This show is all about machining, sawing, bending, welding, sanding, de-burring, laser cutting, water cutting, printing, and inspecting of metals and plastics.

[Eli]

Wow that's impressive stuff. I've also seen 3D printed things and back when I saw it the machines were starting at $50K is that still the case?


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Go Team Brady!

[Toolman]

Wow that's impressive stuff. I've also seen 3D printed things and back when I saw it the machines were starting at $50K is that still the case?


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Go Team Brady!

The ones that weave plastic like a gunny sack are around 15 to 30k. The ones that do it from a liquid (laser) are from 50 to 75k.

[HB Vic]

That's very cool


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[Toolman]

After the show I went to LA Live and treated myself and let the traffic clear out. It's a whole other way of life down there.

[nowski]

My teenage son recently bought a Rigidbot 3-D printer and he paid right around a $1000 for it. It has a 12" X 16" X 12" platform and he's using Solidworks for his drawings. We recently did a little boat project together to fix an eyesore on my steering column using his 3-D printer. I also included pictures of a couple of projects he recently printed, that machine is awesome...

[Toolman]

Nice work!!!