Not certain when I will be able to work on any of these, but these machines seem like a tremendous addition to any workshop. And they are all quite easy to make!
Yes, I know these folks need to eat and feed their families, but since I am just a hobbyist, it makes little sense for me to spend thousands of dollars on something I can easily make for much less. If I had a factory, however, I wouldn’t waste my time manufacturing them. I would just buy them up!
Tapping Machine
I could do tapping on the Tormach, but what a frigging pain! I often end up doing them by hand. Again, WHAT A FRIGGING PAIN!!!! So which one is less painful? Obviously tapping by hand has been winning, but this little machine I just saw is by far THE WINNER!!!
Magnetic Box and Pan Brake Sheet Metal Machine
This one I saw a while ago. What a tremendous idea! I mean, it is basically a simple electromagnet and then a pan brake. How hard could it be to make one of these? I work with electromagnets every day so to me this is peace of cake. The brake is something which will not necessarily come as easy, but come on… It’s a frigging hinge! How hard could it be?
Precious Plastic Recycling Machines
This is more than just a machine. Is a set of machines concocted to aid in the goal to recycle plastics the “easy” way. The premise is that if everybody had one of these machines, you could shred and extrude your own plastic. Sounds reasonable but it really doesn’t. I completely doubt the entire human race will go through hoops to have a bunch of machines in their homes to shred plastic, inject plastic into molds or do your own filament extrusion.
For makers, however, these machines could become quite the good tool to have! I think the major hurdle in these machines is the requirement of a large and bulky motor to move at very slow speeds with decent torque to push the plastic in whatever state it is in. I will have to think about how to do this one which smaller motors, because I don’t have a big large pile of industrial motors lying around…