Anyone have an idea what a CNC like that would cost???
MM
You’ve asked the right guy. Being the finance person, I put together a payback analysis of making these parts in-house (on the Swistek) vs. purchasing them on the outside. This Swistek is around $175K, plus another $25K or so for delivering it, qualifying it, tooling, etc. So let’s call it $200K ready to program and go!
And you have to train operators, pay operators and pay people to service and maintain it as well.
As well as programers.
Yup, operators hourly rate plus the manufacturing overheads give us a fully burdened hourly rate (hourly rate, benefits such as insurance, 401(k), etc., social security, unemployment taxes etc.), plus pulling into the equation the cycle time for each piece to be made, plus the overheads attendant to the machine tool. The programmers who at our facility are the manufacturing engineers fall under SG&A (selling, general and administrative expenses as the accountants would say) to get all “finance’y” with you!! 
That’s a pricey piece of kit. Thanks for the info!!!
MM
Looks to be brass in the video. We get these guys in our shop all the time… They claim a cycle time of 9 minutes, and that’s all and well… now make it do it over and over again, all night long while the lights are out. We could push our machines to 7 minutes if we wanted, but you wouldn’t get very far on tooling.
Our choice of machine for our bolts, carriers, and titanium comps are Nakamura WT-150’s. It’s a cool video, but that machine would get hammered to death trying to run bolts day in and day out for a year making bolts.
That’s just my opinion on it though!
Thank you for sharing, I love anything that deals with machining and have zero trouble staying up half the night watching it on youtube. I had too make a career change a few years ago due to the economic dead zone called north west florida, so other than my modest little home shop set up its the only way too feed my addiction. Im going to have to go with the other posters that said it didnt look like steel though.
Many years ago I used to watch one of these types of machine mill an entire wheel strut for helicopters out of a large block of steel.
They are amazing
My uncle was a machinist, and it was always interesting to watch him set things up & work. Wanted to say thanks for posting this. It is very intriguing - would love to see more!
Please don’t consider this a personal attack but… First you state that you cannot sell a bolt for $70.00 because you bill more than that for machine time… Now you state that you cannot machine a bolt in 9 minutes because it would be too hard on the tooling and the machine… I understand that this is your business and you can make what you want, how you want to make it and sell it for the price you want but you lost my respect when you said the stock looked like brass to you. That punch was below the belt.
No, I stated we can’t make a fully assembled carrier and bolt coated and ready to sell for $69 as described in the other thread. And the video does look like brass to me, the tiny fine chips are consistent with how brass cuts. If I offended you in any way, I apologize, It was not my intention to be an attack, simply my opinion.
It does kinda look like brass the way the chips curls and breaks like confetti flake (I always hated turning brass, hot chip peppered Ya), even has a goldenish sheen to. But I believe it’s probably the lighting. But neither here nor there, nor of great importance to thread.
Demo parts for video purposes are often run with brass without coolant. It’s hard to get clear video when the part is flooded with coolant/oil. I doubt they could run alloy steel without coolant.
At the end of the video I thought the bolts could be brass, but I only watched it once and wasn’t specifically looking for the material at the time.
I want to apologize to ilmonster, It looks like I derailed the thread. The video is awesome, and is exactly how bolts are made in many shops, Just with different machines. Same concept though.
Ryan
No need to apologize Redmist. This is an interesting discussion. Good to see that a lot of folks around here work or have experience in manufacturing. And to your point, there are lots of ways to skin a cat, or in this case turn a bolt! Brake master cylinder pistons we make where I work are turned on a Nakamura TW-10 (I think that’s the model based on my addled memory) and take 2 or 3 minutes, but they’re all aluminum (vs. steel) and flooded with coolant/oil, and almost every process is a turning process. We also will prototype an aluminum brake caliper in our prototype area periodically, and those can take 5-8 hours to machine from billet.
Glad everyone is enjoying the video!
Thanks for sharing, that was awesome! I love learning how things are made.
Great video. Thanks for posting. Love watching stuff like that.
@ $70 a bolt you’d earn your money back for the machine in just 3,000 bolts, but there are many factors.
It’s almost hypnotic watching that. Like watching snow fall. You just sit and
stare and stare and watch it over and over.