Design Study: Rail Inline With Ball Screw

[Bravin Neff]

It's an interesting point, and I wonder if there is a difference between UK and US here. I have no idea where I would go to find a jobbing engineering shop anywhere near me, let alone one with that kind of capacity. My own machine top rails are roughly 1.8m long, 1m separation, on a floor-mounted machine. It would be great to have had that machined but like most (UK) folks on this forum, I ended up with an epoxy bed instead. My background is IT so I have very few contacts in the engineering world - I wonder if anyone else knows how likely/easy it would be to find machining capacity like that, available at an acceptable cost, in the UK?

I am sure regional differences apply, and not just between countries. Where I live and work, there are over 800 CNC machine shops within a 50 mile radius of where I live. I also have colleagues elsewhere in the country that have to travel 500 miles in order to reach fewer shops. I am sure there are hot spots in the UK for manufacturing.

[cropwell]

I am sure regional differences apply, and not just between countries. Where I live and work, there are over 800 CNC machine shops within a 50 mile radius of where I live. I also have colleagues elsewhere in the country that have to travel 500 miles in order to reach fewer shops. I am sure there are hot spots in the UK for manufacturing.

Every little job that I have deemed would benefit from machining (generally milling or surface grinding) I have received exorbitant quotes for (I believe they are known as 'F**K OFF' quotes). The main reason given that setting up is the bulk of the work (£200 ish min) and so a one-off job is not economically viable.

If I wanted 1000+ machining, then I would guess the set-up would be amortized quite magically.

Basically, finding a small machine shop in UK that is struggling for work and prepared to talk sensible pricing for small jobs, seems to be difficult.