developing parts

[typhoon noob]

Hi all,

I am noticing that a lot of you make custom parts for our cars. This is awesome! I always have some sort of idea and think that I could contribute if I just knew the basics of transferring a 3D cad drawing to CNC code.

I am an absolute wiz in AutoCAD 3D and can literrally produce anything that I can imagine. I know about cfm flow testing for the 3D design that would probably give good insight on actual flow rates of a part.

I really want to help, I don't have AutoCAD at home and don't have a lathe. What can I do?

 

[MikeRenz]

Re: developing parts

you can do a few things....contact some of the vendors/people that do produce parts with your ideas and suggest a partnership of sorts for your idea(s). Problem is as soon as you mention the idea there's no way to fully control where the idea goes from there.

It's also a fairly good possibility that things you have thought of have already been thought of, designed, prototyped, tested, failed, under construction, in some sort of design stage, etc, etc.

I know when people come to me with ideas that i haven't thought of i usually offer to make them one for free in lieu of me getting to produce/sell them for others. I've bought designs, i've also just had one-off ideas that were just produced for just that one person since they were too unique or not marketable. All comes down really to what your ideas are.

I'd be happy to speak/email with you privately if you'd want to pursue possibilities, or just wanted some general guidance on possible feasability of your idea(s).

 

[MikeRenz]

Re: developing parts

you'd also have to make sure that your work is ok with you using their software to design products of your own, without any chance of them trying to say that they'd deserve royalties for use of their $$ software/computers/etc.

 

[typhoon noob]

Re: developing parts

Thanks Mike,

Are you familiar with inventor and solidworks? I have always used autocad to create my 3D, but would these other softwares be better for converting to CNC values?

 

[MikeRenz]

Re: developing parts

i've never used inventor, but am familiar with autocad and solidworks. any should convert just fine to cnc