welding steel base or just getting aluminium extrusion

[reefy86]

True but me personally would not be issuing F**k Off quotes when that person would potentially spread the work and bring me more custom regardless if i have mass companies ordering from me, I would just simply say to them i can but its months waiting list because obviously bigger orders are a priority in business :)

What F**ks me off the most though is they buy materials in bulk and have the machine to make these parts as if they are butter so more then likely it cost them hardly nothing for the material due to bulk buy and charge me almost £2k and thats not even half of the plates i need doing. on their behalf i bet its a good thing but for poor old me it bloody aint lol

[m_c]

They won't save that much in material by buying bulk.

People think that just because it's a flat bit plate, that it's easy to machine, but it's rarely the case. Taking your end plates for example, how would you hold them down?
On a router table, you could just screw the plate to the bed, or rely on a vacuum table, but I'd doubt they'd be using a router to machine them.
On a mill, you could clamp to the bed, but then you have to work around the clamps. You could use some form of low profile vice fixture, but you're still looking at two setups. Other option is to make a fixture plate, but that's additional cost and machine time.
Even your small plates, if you've specified tight tolerances around the full perimeter, instead of just using a bit suitably wide bar in a vice, milling both ends flat, maybe surfacing the top face, and drilling/tapping the holes, you now need to have two setups so all edges can be machined. Every time you have to do a setup, is time that has to be paid for by someone.

Plus you've specified a blasted finish, so that's more cost.

The quotes do seem high, but when you actually breakdown the time involved, they're probably not that high for a professional machine shop doing a one off job.

[mekanik]

Could be wrong but i think you will find the +/- .5mm will be on cut length,so all you have to do is group your sections together with all of one end flush lightly clamp them together, call the longest your master rail and measure the difference of the others (shims/vernier) if you recess your end plates these can be done to the same depth and on assembly put appropriate packing into the end plate(simples)