Where to get 1/8" sheet mild steel laser/water jet cut?

[HankMcSpank]

Hi Hank, building some hotrails or another variation on the sustainer? does the steal need to be 3.25mm thick? I'm sure the production ones are thiner, if so you could just use a guilotine and a good old file for prototyping.

This is for Sustainer MK XII! (for a non-blade version bedecked with twinkly lights have a look at a quick 'n dirty video I made - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXB92cSQi8E be warned, the first 18 seconds is just me dicking about showing of the lovely blue LEDs! For a marginally better video of what the sustainer is all about here's another rough vid of mine - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=106Se7AHknc (see the circuit on breadboard to the side!))

I relaise the production blade hotrails are much thinner, but remember this is to vibrate the string not pick up the vibrations...everything has to be beefed up - hence 3.2mm thick steel needed.

For the actual prototyping of this latest 'blade' version, yesterday I've ordered some modelmakers' 1/8" x 1/4" bright steel (I'd have prefered black steel, but they don't have it in a suitable size)....that works out at about 3.2mm x 6.34mm in new money, which happens to be pretty damn close for my bobbin 'blade' proto- so I've just Dremel'ed a length of 53.5mm's worth off the end!

For this latest blade type - here's a somewhat rough and ready test coil I wound around a DIY acrylic core (in turn cut from my DIY CNC!) with the steel I've just this minute cut (I'm still fine tuning the spec hence it not looking that refined yet)



The 100pcs of 'radiused' blade would be destined for my first 'batch' (wishful thinking that I might interest 100 people in buying one of thee puppies!)...so not exactly prototype, but not exactly mass production either!



This whole shebang reveals to me why we aren't a nation of inventors anymore - it's so darned expensive to get 'widgets' made (& I need widgets in spades...initially mainly to make the coil winder, but then I needed custom bobbins, hence making a CNC, then I needed some stuff turned so I bought a lathe)...alas, everyone wants more than 34p a piece!