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Old 04-14-2019, 02:51 PM
Sandy H. Sandy H. is offline
Intermediate Rocketeer
 
Join Date: May 2009
Posts: 50
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LeeR
Sandy,

Selling laser cut fins would seem like a good way to get started. Selling them in various sizes for upscales and downscales would be nice. Another product to offer might be centering rings (CRs). Other vendors sell them, but if I come to you for fins, I’d just as soon also get CRs from you to save on shipping costs by eliminating the requirement to go to several vendors. A number of users would want fin tabs on fins for larger models. By offering CRs, you could provide fins with tabs matched to the size of motor tube in your CRs.

Best of luck to you.


Lee,

You bring up good points. I think CR's are trivial, as there are a finite number of options and handling the cut files wouldn't be an issue. As you say, there are already some good sources for this.

A challenge for custom fins is that the cost of creating the pattern and running just a few would make the cost unattractive, I imagine. I could do spec fins, like a clipped delta with parameters the customer could specify, but then again, a clipped delta fin is pretty easy to cut with conventional tools.

One of the places the laser really shines (wow, bad pun. . . ) is doing precise/complex curves that would be difficult to do repeatably by hand with simple tools. These types would be hard to make parametric, I'm afraid.

I will definitely take your suggestion into account and try to figure out a way that I could provide low volume runs without a ton of design overhead.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Sandy.
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