Design flaw? Maybe someone out there likes the noise. With all the ball rattling I hear plenty of people like that noise:wink:
Delta rack
- Thread starter LILJOHN30
- Start date
Design flaw? Maybe someone out there likes the noise. With all the ball rattling I hear plenty of people like that noise:wink:
I agree that employees are expensive but you are completely overlooking my comments about who is going to care for and run this CNC machining center. Your stance was that CNC made cues were not of value because they were not hand made which could hardly be further from the truth. If a cue was truly handmade it would be whittled out of a tree with a pocket knife. There is no machine on earth at this time where you load all of the cue parts in one end and a finished cue comes out of the other end.
I was not saying CNC cues are not of value. I was pointing out that equipment is used in making
the cue that automates the process. i.e., saves time, and thus the number of actual labor hours is
reduced. Without CNC, some of my designs would have cost am absurd amount of money due to
how long it would have taken to complete the cue. It always comes down to the amount of labor.
The Delta rack relies largely on the machine milling process and you can get away paying a
worker bee $15/hr to do the minion work but what skills are required versus a cue-maker? To buff
and polish? Confirm quality control before shipping? It is not the same and these racks are indeed
mass produced. My cues are not mass produced and CNC was needed to manufacture my cues &
it was the cue-maker that did the programming, not a $20/hr person you referred to. How much is the
cue-maker's time worth......a helluva lot more than $20/hr.....for product pricing, paid wages are marked
up for fully absorbed expenses which more than doubles the wages and often a lot higher.
Anytime you heavily rely on a machine to produce a rack with no distinction or differentiation in the item
other than color, it is going to be less expensive when large volumes of racks can be mass produced.....
machine costs can be capitalized and depreciated whereas people expenses cannot.
the cue that automates the process. i.e., saves time, and thus the number of actual labor hours is
reduced. Without CNC, some of my designs would have cost am absurd amount of money due to
how long it would have taken to complete the cue. It always comes down to the amount of labor.
The Delta rack relies largely on the machine milling process and you can get away paying a
worker bee $15/hr to do the minion work but what skills are required versus a cue-maker? To buff
and polish? Confirm quality control before shipping? It is not the same and these racks are indeed
mass produced. My cues are not mass produced and CNC was needed to manufacture my cues &
it was the cue-maker that did the programming, not a $20/hr person you referred to. How much is the
cue-maker's time worth......a helluva lot more than $20/hr.....for product pricing, paid wages are marked
up for fully absorbed expenses which more than doubles the wages and often a lot higher.
Anytime you heavily rely on a machine to produce a rack with no distinction or differentiation in the item
other than color, it is going to be less expensive when large volumes of racks can be mass produced.....
machine costs can be capitalized and depreciated whereas people expenses cannot.
I have and use the Select, will be getting an Elite soon. It does make noise but the Tight Rack and Resulting Breaks and Balls Made are worth it to me. Now if I can only get the other people that I play with to always use it I'd be happy.
Black Cat
Black Cat
I think even when using CNC equipment there is an awful lot of human handwork that goes into custom cues. If you a lathe dedicated to doing one operation in the cue making process you can pretty much have a person perform that task over and over even though they are neither a machinist or a cue builder. My local cue maker has somewhere around 20 lathes set up to do different operations of the cue building process. In many cases the machine set up time is actually longer than the actual machining process to be performed. I think that the real beauty of using a CNC, with a tool changing carousel a cue maker can let the CNC perform several different operations on the forearm or handle while he is doing something else.
I have never seen a cue being built using a CNC. I have seen how cues are built one at a time using non-CNC equipment. I really dont see where the CNC would save a whole lot of work as you still have many individual pieces of the cue to machine and assemble before you have a complete butt. It seems to me the real beauty of using CNC equipment is that there are, or at least should not be mistakes in the machining process.
The machine will only do what a human tells it to, so there's always room for error
More so in modern cnc shops where the level of skill needed is far less to operate the machines compared to manual machinists,
The most important quality to have when working machines, incidentally the most difficult to find in someone,
Is the ability to pay attention, above all else, paying attention to where you are, and how far your going
My own attention paying ability is not where it should be for my experience , can run operate program over a dozen or so machine makes and models, mill, to lathe, to swiss
Cadcam programming 2-4axis
Material ranges from thermoplastics to high temp exotics
i pay attention well enough, but no where near I feel I should, but I'm no simple operator, my job duties include alot and I do miss simple things time to time
More so in modern cnc shops where the level of skill needed is far less to operate the machines compared to manual machinists,
The most important quality to have when working machines, incidentally the most difficult to find in someone,
Is the ability to pay attention, above all else, paying attention to where you are, and how far your going
My own attention paying ability is not where it should be for my experience , can run operate program over a dozen or so machine makes and models, mill, to lathe, to swiss
Cadcam programming 2-4axis
Material ranges from thermoplastics to high temp exotics
i pay attention well enough, but no where near I feel I should, but I'm no simple operator, my job duties include alot and I do miss simple things time to time