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Topic: Dale Pond
Collected Articles Section: Why Dynaspheres Cost So Much Table of Contents to this Topic |
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During the past several years I've had numerous complaints about the high cost of dynaspheres. This is because most people are unfamiliar with custom metal working. We've grown accustomed to and spoiled by mass produced everything. And that is where the difficulty lies. Yesterday I made a part for my brother's classic Mazda RX-7. New parts are no longer available and junk yard parts break when removed and re-installed. So a part had to be made. Starting with a $4 piece of bronze, a 1/4"-20 bolt and washer I spent three intensive hours machining and building a replacement part. If I applied a modest shop time charge of $50 per hour his new part cost him $150 in shop time and $4 for materials. I do not know of any shop that charges as little as $50 per hour. They are usually $70-$100 per hour. All this to replace a nylon bushing that would sell for about $1.99 from Mazda if it were available. High volume, high production of modern manufacturing can crank out parts for pennies. While custom machine work is low volume and expensive. The other day I asked for an estimate from a local machine shop for boring one of the dynasphere uprights. Their quote was $450, just to bore this one precision tapered hole! This is one of two uprights needed and the part needed additional turning on the outside and several other assembly tasks like attaching it to two other custom machined parts, then more borings and fittings. All in all I estimate the cost of this one upright when complete would easily exceed $2,000. Which seems like an absurdity in today's mass production oriented world. One must keep in mind we are not making these for mass consumption. If we were to do so we would need several million dollars in tooling and equipment for mass producing them. Then we could anticipate a much lower cost. My modest machines and tooling cost about $30,000. This is an insignificant number when considering mass production machines which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for EACH machine center. These high costs are offset because such a machine can automatically turn out many dozens or hundreds of parts per time interval whereas a manually operated machine like mine can only do one part in the same time frame. The shop time cost of $50 is really too low. The wear and tear on tools is a fact of machining hard metals. Cutting tools are expensive and I'm not even using the best quality which cost several times more. One tool bit can cost $85 and should it break like one did the other day it must be replaced. Another high cost factor is "set-up time". It can take anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so to set the part on the machine, align it properly, set the tool in the machine, align it to the part to be worked. Every cut on every part must be set-up while the actual cutting can be a one time pass of seconds or a series of repeated passes lasting hours. Computer controlled machining is a big deal these days. Most all of this set up time is eliminated. But computer controlled maching is a magnitude(s) more costly to acquire than hand-operated machines. The building of Atlin was a shot in the dark. Those who've read my new book "Atlin - Knowing I AM" are familiar with that part of the story. These first units are unavoidably expensive. They are prototypes and proof of concept units which are notoriously expensive because everything is hand made and usually modified, remade, tweeked and fiddled with time and time again. From these initial units we are learning "Keely's Secrets" of how they work. From this knowledge we will be able to re-engineer and redesign dynasphere models more suited to today's mass production capabilities. |
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