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Look in the yellow pages or an electronic equivalent for metal recycling places. They will frequently save large/useful chunks of scrap and offer them for sale at just over what they would get sending it off to a foundry. There's a place I go that offers aluminum at ~$1/lb and I've seen 3'x3' precision ground .5" plate, 3-6" diameter round stock, and all sorts of interesting things in their save pile. Most of the stuff is 2-3' long at the largest, but it is absolutely worth the few minutes of calling around if you hit a place that has a decent stash.
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Jul 29, 2013 19:49
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Brass makes my favorite shop glitter.
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Oct 27, 2021 00:23
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We have APSX's injection molder and for a teaching environment it is great! The swiss lathe looks like a far better deal than the tormach lathe we have only barely gotten to do things (No tailstock, seriously?).
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Feb 17, 2022 18:07
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CarForumPoster posted:A lathe with no tail stock is shameful, is the bed super short or something? Does it come with steady rests? It is a CNC lathe so it isn't unheard of, but it is pretty terrible. It lacks the rigidity to do much of anything--a .100 depth of cut in 6061 with appropriate speeds/feeds/tooling caused it to bog down, probably because it seems to have way more flex than any similarly-sized lathe I've ever used. Free taper with every cut! https://tormach.com/machines/lathes/15l-slant-pro-lathe.html
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Feb 17, 2022 22:00
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I'd strongly consider taking a manual machining class or two at the community college if they offer that, possibly over taking the woodworking versions. Going from metal to wood is mush simpler than the other way around, in my experience. Having some machining as a foundation has been immensely helpful for my ability to teach kids on all sorts of shop class type projects (I teach at university level, but even for high school it is going to be useful). Being at the community college you might even pick up a donated CNC machine--we see one or two a year from people who have gotten it, found it to be harder to manage than they expected, and drop it off to "see if the students can make something with it."
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Aug 16, 2022 17:45
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