Any one do laser cutting ? 15mm aluminium

[sparkyt]

I've got a little project on the go and need some wheel spacers cutting out . I've got the design work done on a file I can send

Just need someone with or works at a laser cutters ?for a price etc

[Dez]

hardly anywhere will be able to do 15mm ally. the place i use do stuff like prototyping for JCB and they're only capable of doing 20mm mild steel, 16mm stainless, and 10mm ally. something to do with the properties of ally makes it difficult to lazercut and great thickness, I'm not sure what.

think youd be better off looking at water jet or CNC.

[smurf]

We have a petty good laser cutter at work amd that can only go to 3mm on ali


Waterjetting is your best bet or as dez said, cnc milling

[logicaluk]

I had theas guys make trigger wheels and cills good prices pretty sure the can do water jetting

wcampbellengineering.co.uk/

[skylinedave]

You can do it with water , it just takes a bit longer obviously .

[LowStandards]

whengparts.com/

Not sure about ally mind, drop him an email...

[hario]

Turned from bar stock if they're wheel spacers surely?

Though you would need a CNC lathe to cut the stud holes I suppose..

[kel]

You could turn the them to size on a lathe and bore out the centre bore on a lathe. Then you could easily do the rest on a milling machine just clock the bore to find the centre.

Could be an easy foreigner if you know someone in a machine shop.

[sparkyt]

They are wheel spacers but they are 300mm od and 160 I'd

Bar that size is not cheap .

I've got to change pcd from 10.5inch x5 to 205mm x 5

[Dez]

id just do em in 10mm steel tbh. easy lazercut job. the last set of wide 5 ford adapters i did were 10mm steel and they were fine. if youre running caps its not worth the huge jump in material cost to do them in ally..

[Dez]

the ones i did are running without caps so i cut the back bearing out of a knackered original hub and put it over the adapter. looks stock at first glance-

[sparkyt]

I like them . . I was going to cut 5 m out the back to make them fit snog on the beetle drums to kind of make them hubcentric when fitted .

[Dez]

not really necessary, as both the VW and ford wheels are studcentric (obviously), but i guess you know that already, having eyes and everything to see there is no spigot

the outer edges of the beelte drums are only roughcast though so cant be trusted, or where you going to skim them up?

i did make the original ford hub hubcentric onto the outer edge of the adapater plate on mine, as the wheel bolt tapers don't touch it so theres nothing to pull it square if theres any play in the bolts.

[georgexs]

Jun 5, 2015 22:10:59 GMT Dez said:

hardly anywhere will be able to do 15mm ally. the place i use do stuff like prototyping for JCB and they're only capable of doing 20mm mild steel, 16mm stainless, and 10mm ally. something to do with the properties of ally makes it difficult to lazercut and great thickness, I'm not sure what.

think youd be better off looking at water jet or CNC.

Aluminium is difficult to lasercut because it is more reflective than steels, it reflects far more of the laser's beam back into the optics of the system which can damage it. This is true throughout the thickness of the material so you can't just give it a matt surface finish to get around it.

Waterjet or High Definition Plasma cutting can give similarly accurate results to lasers for profiled sheets.