Small write up about water block making costs on..
 

Well I did a small write up on the costs of geting waterblocks made. I will do a part 2 here shortly. Go have a look see its over at www.custom-cooling.com let Jay and I know what you think, the site is still new..... but we are working on it, well actually Jaydee is, I just did 1 little write up.

cool little write up, I didn't realise it was that much just for one block. I knew all the software stuff, but I didn't realise all the setup time on the machine needed

Great wirte up. I was thinking of getting into the business. So the most it would cost is about 2gs for mill and cam software? Or is the cam an extra hardware component of the mill? I ask cause I do some free-lance sign plotting using autocad 2k, and I think it may already have the cam software in it. Does your mill once setup produce blocks in 10min?

$2K will get you a decent "Desktop" (small) mill. If you plan on mass producing you will probably need a larger mill in the $7,000-$200,000 range. It depends on who you buy it from for what software you get. Different mills have different options. Fixittt's mill will peck drill and mine will not for example. Neither of ours will tap holes. To tap holes you are looking at $7,000, that was the cheapest I could find but that is a larger mill aswell.

It depends on the block and the type of material and the type of mill you use for the time it takes. It takes about an hour on my mill to do the Copper water block on my www.dorrellco.com site and about 13minutes for the aluminum #2/3. That is just milling time. You have to zero it for the CNC so it starts at the right hight and spot. Then you have to do the tops aswell which add more time than you would think to each block.

I think Fixittt's will cut that timedown a little for Copper as it is a faster mill.

I use ACAD2000 for the CAD AND the CAM part but it dosn't have the auto CAM in it that I know of. The CAM is software that makes the path for the tooling to follow. I just do it in ACAD manually depending on the tooling I use. I will make up the actual drawing and then offset the lines depending on the thickness of the bits (endmill) I am using. Like if you want a 1/4" channel you would offset the original line 1/8" so the bit will not cut outside where you want it. It is half the width of the bit you want to offset.

If you get actual cam software I think it does it for you.

Setup time for the mill does take a while. But once it is setup all you have to do is just keep putting in new material if you have a jig setup to place the material back in the exact spot.

Part 2 is now up aswell.