Tube-O-Matic

[ScaleBirdsScott]

A tool like the Tube-O-Matic would go over gangbusters on a makerspace router table.

I've been there done that with the communal tool shops. They have their uses, but there's a reason people still like having their own tools in a lot of cases.

If I do move to an urban area someday I would indeed make sure there was a decent makerspace with access to CNC equipment.

 

[Winginitt]

Basically it seems to be like a club or partenership. Someone has to actually buy the equipment and then leave it on site for other people to use ? Personally I would not trust strangers to use what I paid for. Then there is the question about "tooling" rather than just the main tool. I sure wouldn't leave expensive tooling there even if I had a machine there. What about liability if someone gets hurt operating your machine? When you are dealing with a specific group like airplane builders there is probably a lot of room for trust. Dealing with the general public, I wouldn't trust just anyone to have access to my stuff.Perhaps there is something I don't understand about how this actually works.

Myself, I would rather take that money and put it toward something I keep. If you pay attention, you can buy and sell and end up with not too much money in some nice equipment. You have to recognize good deals and step up with a little saved cash. Use it for a while, save some more money and buy a better one and resell the less desirable one. You can actually MAKE money sometimes. Most old tools are well built and last virtually forever with the minimal use we give them. I admit that I have been very lucky in acquiring some of the stuff that makes up my shop, but you have to look in order to find. Friend of mine wanted a brake and two were for sale at the auction. I told him one of the little tricks to bidding, and he let it bid to $500 and then dropped out. I had told him that whoever bids the round number ($500) will usually get the item.......but if you are willing to go one or two bids past the round number you often will get the item. People pick a round number and won't go past that number. So if you bid the round number or go one/two bids past it.....you win. He stood there and wouldn't bid. Now the thing to realize here is that this was a very heavy duty older brake. It was much stronger than most of the ones you see. IT WILL ALWAYS BE WORTH WHAT YOU GAVE FOR IT. (I have only seen a couple of similar brakes sell since then and they went for several thousand dollars because they were so heavy duty and were finger brakes. Just can't hardly find those.
So the next brake comes up for sale. Its a 10' leaf brake. Bidding stalls again at $500.......and I'm staring at my friend encouraging him to bid. He turns away, so I bid. I wasn't looking for a brake at that time, but wth.....So I bid $600, get countered with $700 and rebid $800. I won! My friend comes over a little later and offers me a $100 profit, which I declined. Paid the taxes and $30 to get it loaded on my trailer. So for less than $900 I have a very nice brake. (I already had a 14' brake that I drove to Michigan to get.....but it only had a thin capacity)
Anyway, the auction progresses and there is a nice little work table about 16' long and maybe 2' wide that I want. It has a bunch of blacksmith tools on it. I don't know anything about blacksmith tools. Bids go up to about $250. Thats way more than the table is worth, but I figure the blacksmith tools might be handy for forming aluminum. I get the table home and its perfect for putting tools like a chop saw and drill sharpener on. Start selling the blacksmith tools and find they are a veritable gold mine. I sold most of them and took in about $1500. So I have nothing in the table or the 12' brake and am actually several hundred dollars ahead. I still have a couple blacksmith items worth maybe $150 and a brake worth $2000. You just have to save a little money to bid.

My point here is that this is a true story and I have done similar things many times. Sometimes I just buy something and keep it....but its always worth similar money later, and maybe even more.
That 12' brake I bought for $800 can be sold any time I want for $2000 or more. And "YES", I do admit that once in a while I pay too much for something and loose a "little" later. Overall though I am way ahead of the curve.



I think this shows I do more than "talk" about making chips.

 

[Winginitt]

Just to show the progression, here are most of the brakes I have bought and traded up. I bought the little red one at a car show. Finger Brake. Think bought $400 Sold $250 (?)

Bought the second one at an auction for about $400 (I think) and sold the red one. (Fingerbrake) The one in the picture is not the actual one I had but can't find a picture.Bought $400 Sold $600

Bought the green Asian 4' heavy duty finger brake at auction. Stole it for about $300. Worked OK but kinda rough looking and missing a couple fingers. Couple other fingers were not in best shape but I could bend heavier stuff. (Bought appx $300 Sold $1500) (Bought new one below for $1800 off Ebay)

NEW heavy duty finger brake Bought $1800 Its a keeper

Bought 14' light duty leaf brake appx $2000 drove 300 miles to get it had it for several years resold it for about $2000 (thats the point....this stuff doesn't depreciate any further)

Bought 10' Leaf Brake for $800 worth $2000 don't plan to resell

Its all about putting money in stuff that has bottomed out in value. Its like putting money in your piggy bank. A lot of this stuff increases in value.




The last picture is the workbench I bought with the blacksmith tools on it. Its great for power tools like a chop saw and drill sharpener. You can outfit your shop if you just continuously look for industrial auctions, estate auctions, school auctions. I bought a complete paint booth for about $150 because no one wanted to take it down. The school was going to have to pay $5k/$10k to get it taken down and figured auctioning it would save them money. You just have to keep a little money on hand to make deals with.


What does all this have to do with a Tube O Matic......

It just shows that there are lots of tools that anyone can get for their shop, and by a little selective judgement you can have rugged ridgid and reliable stuff. The Tube O Matic may do a fine job but its severely limited in a lot ways. I can put tubing in my milling machine and get precise cuts pretty quickly and I can do a whole lot of other jobs with it. It can be converted to do the CNC stuff just like the light duty Tube O Matic. 10 years from now my milling machine will be worth just as much if not more than its worth today. So will most of the other tools I posted. Thats the relevance........

 

[daveklingler]

No problem ........ I don't know of any near me but that doesn't mean there isn't any. Sounds good in theory but I have to wonder about how well it actually works.

Pretty well. There are MakerSpaces all over the country now. One of my local MakerSpaces has been around for at least 10 years now. The newer one has been around for around four or five years, I think.

Check out their websites:
https://quelab.net/

https://fusemakerspace.org/

They accumulate nice tools pretty quickly. A lot of people are happy to donate a big machine tool to a non-profit.

Generally speaking, they function as a club until they get large enough that somebody writes up some bylaws and incorporates them as a non-profit. Various companies will donate tools and other things - Samsung donated a big refrigerator to the Quelab so people could hack into its networking capabilities, and Intel sponsors Quelab's Maker Faire every year.

If you live in Albuquerque, and you'd like to have 24-hour access to a laser cutter, several 3d printers, very nice machine and woodworking shops, or a 4'x8' CNC router table, it's a pretty good way to go.

The point here is that if you're building a Ranger, say, and you need a CNC router table, you can build one or buy one. But when you're done cutting your pieces, you won't need it any more, and it's going to sit in your garage or shop waiting for the next time you think of something to do with it. Meanwhile, you're on to making controls, and you need a mill and a lathe. It's nice to have a big shop, but it takes a long time to build one up. Wouldn't it be nice to put that money into your plane instead of the tools to build it?

It's something like having an EAA chapter nearby, complete with community, but with a warehouse full of tools. Or if you're at an auction, and you see a tool you need at a price that's too good to pass up, you can always buy it and park it where it'll get used.

Obviously, you've got a lot of tools and a big space to store them. If you really don't have a MakerSpace near you, maybe you should start one. But first check Google.

 

[Winginitt]

Here is an example of a "small" industrial auction thats online. I prefer going to live auctions where you can see better what you are bidding on. The really large industrial auctions last all day and sometimes have two auctioneers. Usually dealers are interested in the large high dollar stuff and the things that home builders want don't catch their eye. Get some really good buys that way, but again each auction is different and you have to judge for yourself if its worth your time. Might want to watch this auction just to see what kind of prices things go for.
https://www.proxibid.com/Iowa-Auction-Group-LLC/Goesch-Hand-Crafted-Engines/event-catalog/169674?p=3&sort=0#cnTb

 

[FritzW]

This thread is specifically about a 3D printed 4th. axis mod for a simple home CNC machine that's meant for cutting thin wall aircraft tube.

You guys have hijacked the hell out of this thread and totally stopped all discussion about developing and building a Tube-O-Matic.

 

[addicted2climbing]

Hey Fritz,
SO have you printed more parts for this? Getting close to trying it out.

One question to get this thread back on track, in Solidworks when you trim the tubes on a fuselage assy it trims them to match the mating tube profile exactly and its not a planar cut to the wall thickness. I know VR3 would take my files and fix this, but curious what your method will be? Maybe just redo the cut profile on the mid plane between both inner and outer walls? I am sure they have solved this with some method plus fudge factor clearance and it may be the secret to making this work on the first try.

Thoughts?

 

[Aerowerx]

Haven't seen any informational postings from you for several days to keep the input going.....

Because it has been clogged up with pictures of expensive machines!

 

[FritzW]

Haven't seen any informational postings from you for several days to keep the input going.

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with it. This thread can sit idle for months until someone has something related to add. Even if nothing ever gets added to it again, it's a specific thread about a specific topic. It's NOT your used equipment thread

If you don't know how to start your own thread for your unrelated traffic I'd be happy to walk you through it.

 

[Aerowerx]

By the way, the original Heath Super Parasol required pliers, screwdriver, hacksaw , hammer, small hand drill, chisel, center punch, and a file. The way I see it, Fritz is bringing this into the 21st century.

 

[FritzW]

It's amazing how much cleaner threads are and how on topic they stay if you click ignore on just one profile

Thanks! I'd forgotten you could do that.

 

[FritzW]

SO have you printed more parts for this? Getting close to trying it out.

No, but I ordered a 100 pack of skateboard *bearings on Amazon this morning. I know I've got a spare NEMA 34 stepper and motor controller somewhere in the garage but they haven't turned up yet. NEMA 34 is way too big for this but it's what (I hope) I have on hand.
*I made some changes to the steady rests, they'll have bearings now but they'll be "one size fits all". My original plan would have required 6 or 8 inserts per tube size. It would have cost more in printer filament than the bearings cost. (a 100 pack of bearings only cost $18)

...its not a planar cut to the wall thickness. ...Maybe just redo the cut profile on the mid plane between both inner and outer walls? ...it may be the secret to making this work on the first try.

If you select the outer line on the DXF for your tool path the tubes will fit together without any slop. One wall edge will be touching the mating tube and the other will have a little gap ( ~.017" on an .035 wall tube at 45 degrees. That's about the tube diameter and roundness tolerance of OTS tubing anyway).

 

[Winginitt]

Thanks! I'd forgotten you could do that.

Then you just have to click the "show ignored content" button ........probably to read this

You guys miss the point entirely. You want to build something that's reasonably expensive to build and spend months doing it because it's a popular fad. You are enamored by the technology of precision movement. I think when you begin cutting steel you will not get the results as quickly and easily as you think..... There is a method to mechanically producing a chip. There are reasons for certain things like mass and ridigity.....but you ignore those basics. It seems to me that you are overlooking some important things......but maybe you can find a way to make it work. I simply pointed out that there are simpler ways to do the same thing and the tools can be used for more than one thing. I also explained how to get those tools with minimal expense. MY POINT is that I don't want to see builders do something that may not work . So like I said, show me how to do it and I'll gladly congratulate you ...... But one thing for sure, people reading this thread got the full. story and can decide based on real information.

 

[akwrencher]

Or, readers could watch the thread to see how it worked out in the end, and then decide if they would like to do something similar. Fritz has contributed useful stuff to this forum more than many. Perhaps his experiment will workz and perhaps not. Still, it's a thread he started, and the OP should be respected. It sucks following these threads when people keep dragging them off topic and trashing them. Takes the fun out of it.

Rant off. ...

Fritz, keep us updated.

 

[addicted2climbing]

No, but I ordered a 100 pack of skateboard *bearings on Amazon this morning. I know I've got a spare NEMA 34 stepper and motor controller somewhere in the garage but they haven't turned up yet. NEMA 34 is way too big for this but it's what (I hope) I have on hand.
*I made some changes to the steady rests, they'll have bearings now but they'll be "one size fits all". My original plan would have required 6 or 8 inserts per tube size. It would have cost more in printer filament than the bearings cost. (a 100 pack of bearings only cost $18)



If you select the outer line on the DXF for your tool path the tubes will fit together without any slop. One wall edge will be touching the mating tube and the other will have a little gap ( ~.017" on an .035 wall tube at 45 degrees. That's about the tube diameter and roundness tolerance of OTS tubing anyway).

View attachment 90054

Hello Fritz,

Maybe I did not explain myself well in regards to my concern. On tubes on off angles and shallow angles. Solidowrks trims the tube in a way that would be more of a profiled cut than one with the edges 90 to the material thickness. Hard to explain but here is a tube from the skylite.


On the blue surface you can see it matches the mating tube perfectly and that is not what the tube cuter will do and also VR3 would have taken my files to fix this on each end. It seems that solidworks will give you the rough geometry of the cope, but it would require a new path to be followed to cut the tube at 90 degree to the wall thickness. Please forgive me if I am not explaining this well. This issue was one of the reasons I decided to abandon the machine I wanted to build. That and not having any software.

Marc

 

[Hot Wings]

Maybe this will help? I slit and unwrapped a simple tube and tried using both the upper and lower edge for the wrap surface. SW didn't care which edge I chose and used the longest face to unwrap about.


One of the below flats was using the top edge, the other the lower and the original tube is set on top.


If we want a perfectly fish-mouthed tube we are going to need a 4 axis machine. But for a 1/16 thick inch tube it seems to me like more technology than really needed. For a usable tube just fudge the offset, or tool diameter, by half the thickness of the tube and cut?

 

[pictsidhe]

I had the same problem as 12 notes, couldn't see what people were upset about...

 

[proppastie]

Maybe I did not explain myself well in regards to my concern. On tubes on off angles and shallow angles. Solidowrks trims the tube in a way that would be more of a profiled cut than one with the edges 90 to the material thickness. Hard to explain but here is a tube from the skylite.

software wise seems like we are talking about some form of intersection of the two tubes (solids).... it can be the intersection of the two or the subtraction of one from the other....in either case you will not have a 90 degree normal to the tube for cutting as the tube-o-matic cuts.....for exact fit lengthwise understanding what is drawn vs what is cut may or may not be important depending on how you plan to locate the positions of the tubes. With a good fixture it probably will not matter...but if you plan on just clamping up the tubes against the cut edges it might be a problem if it is not done correctly.

 

[FritzW]

...it took me a minute to "smell what you were stepping in"

When you convert the tube to sheet metal you just need to set the tubes K factor to 1.


It'll give the tube 100% contact along the edge, like the bad drawing in post #74 (I hope the post numbers stay the same when you have some of the posts "ignored")











EDIT: here's a cutaway showing the tube cuts are 90 degrees to the face of the tube like they need to be and that there are no overlaps or gaps.

 

[proppastie]

so you convert the tube to flat to cut it with the tub-o-matic?......must have missed that one.
you did talk about converting axis to rotation....went right over my head.