I’m looking for somewhere to make me some 6mm thick grade 5 titanium weapon discs for my upcoming vert. I have tried a few websites such as Xometry but it just says it needs a manual quote and that I need a cooperate account (obviously I don’t have a company). Other websites such as fractory and protolabs say there is something wrong with my file. I got it off thingiverse though so I can’t really change it. The only one that’s been successful (so far) is pcbway but it says it would be £40 which is a bit expensive for me and the delivery costs would probably be quite high. Do any of you know a good service that does the job?
Depending on your design £40 is a pretty good price for something in (assuming grade 5) titanium including material. You’ll probably struggle to do much better.
Can we see the design? Does if need to be 6mm thick and titanium? That seems very thick for an ant and very thin/wrong material for a beetle.
Edit: reading your post properly with the thing verse namedrop I get the feeling you’re just shoving an STL at machine shops which isn’t really a useful format. I’m surprised you were able to get something from PCBway to be honest.
I think you need to rethink your approach and either buy something off the shelf or design your own, with material you can source easily, with a process in mind (eg lasercutting) and go from there.
I don’t know if this helps but, because of the design the disc fits onto the top circle bit of the motor (sry I’ve never built a spinner before so I won’t be using the most technical terms).
Having done this recently, I used 8mm hardox, which was lasercut at Lasered Components, didn’t need a CNC machine for it, way cheaper. 6mm would also work, just make sure your tolerance is ok.
I just email their sales mail. Would keep in mind, I think Lasered component is a £75 order minimum. So would recommend joining a group order and such.
Agree on lasercut hardox being a totally valid way of preparing a part like this.
However just some input, just wanting to limit any disappointments or speed bumps. This is me working under the assumption that this is your first spinner, that you’re using an open source design and money is limited.
I can’t say I would just hit send on a design drawn by someone else, put through a different cutting process and different material and expect smooth sailing.
This is an important point. And something you need to be prepared to account for, either with means to clean up the bore to account for taper and finish or worse having it turn out too loose.
For your first I would be completely on the side of buying something premade from Monsoon and the like that just bolts to the disc. Cheap enough, proven and it lets you get to grips with building the rest of the robot.
Now, I understand the urge to not go down the premade route and that is fine but I would strongly suggest designing your own. That way you have all the control over tolerances and process choice and even material.
Worth pointing out that if it was designed to be titanium and you make it in hardox it’s going to be heavier as titanium is ~55% lighter than steels
Worth mentioning as pointed out in Mark’s post on super PLA+ and also something that’s used in beetles for TPU - number of walls / perimeters is what matters for armour rather than infill:
100% can be a bit tricky, because if you are over extruding even slightly, there can be nowhere for all the material to go, and larger volumes get warped and messy with the extra plastic. You can probably mitigate that by going for a high number like 75%. But as I said before, infill is basically nonstructural.
