[Elecraft] K2 100 Tuner question

[Josh Fiden]

Hi Don,

Sounds like you're not up to speed on 21st century sheet metal fabrication. 

Small volume parts like this would be cut on a laser and bent with a CNC press brake. The only setup is loading the programs and there is no tooling. If someone draws the parts using a CAD program like Solid Edge, the resulting 3D models can be utilized directly by the vendor. Even small job shops have laser cutting ability, especially for small gauge material like this. 

Hard tooling would only be used in high volume (thousands at least) for a very cost sensitive project. 

I'm not familiar with methods prior to the '80s, but even back then this would be done on a turret punch press. You'd only need tools for oddball shapes the vendor didn't have, and those are fairly inexpensive. For small runs you'd have the setup time of loading tools into the turret, but as noted, that no longer exists. 

73,
Josh W6XU

Sent from my mobile device

> On Dec 22, 2018, at 5:15 PM, Don Wilhelm <donwilh at embarqmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Josh,
> 
> The stuff needed to punch the panels out of a piece of aluminum and put the holes in the right place.  The tools needed to bend the panels at the right places.  That stuff can cost thousands of dollars.
> It is not the same as making a one-off copy using hand marked pieces.
> 
> If you have ever studied what it takes to make production quantities of a device, then you would understand that it takes specialized tools that can be quite costly.
> 
> In my small custom woodworking shop we usually went the inexpensive way by making jigs and other pattern tools, but doing even that costs money.
> 
> 73,
> Don W3FPR
> 
>> On 12/22/2018 7:35 PM, Josh Fiden wrote:
>> What tooling?
>> 73
>> Josh W6XU
>>