Need parts machined?

[cevonk]

I have no idea about the quality of the work or the reliability of this company, but this site looks very interesting.

http://www.emachineshop.com/

[nunyabeezwax]

Great idea but... I downloaded the software and it is not intuitive at all, it crashed the second time I tried it.

NunYa

[Reno]

I tried it and wait til you see the price quote for a simple disk with holes cut in it. Then throw in the shipping charges. OUCH

[jacquesm]

emachineshop is ok, but really only interesting pricewise as soon as you have a small series, for prototyping or one-offs you are better served by your local machine shop.

[whatsnext]

Or, since the parts we are likely to need don't have complicated three dimentional shapes, just learn to create DFX files. Taking a floppy disc to your local lazer fab shop will likely get you a fair price.

John......

[jacquesm]

true enough.

If you want a free cad program (because autocad is big $) to make dxf's and you don't want to use pirated software, I'd like to suggest Linux and QCad. There is a free single CD linux distro called "Knoppix" here that will turn any old PC that you may have lying around into a pretty good cad station. Knoppix runs on just about anything but toasters, and Qcad while not perfect is in fact pretty good.

If you're going about this professionally, then you may consider Turbocad (or if you want Autocad, but it is no longer leading edge and as I said pretty expensive).

[Slingshot]

If you're already an AutoCAD user, consider AutoCAD Lite as an alternative for something you can purchase for personal/hobby use.  Then you don't have to learn new software.