Tim,

After studying this, I have a question:

It seems to me that I should basically have a standard design with
options. I could then post the drawings as a webpage for people to
look at and specify those options. It will be a while before I can
consider making one-of-a-kinds for people, but standard specs and
stackable configurations I could do on a JIT basis.

Would that be acceptable for now until I could afford greater
sophistication?

Thanks,

The Eternal Squire


Tim Shoppa wrote:
wrote:
Tim Shoppa wrote:
Maybe our eternal squire wants to use CNC machines to make boxes out of
aluminum ingot? :-). Take the scraps, melt them down, repeat!

Got it in one guess! That, or you've been reading more newsgroups
than homebrewers.
I'll be happy for specs.

Look at how, for example http://www.pcbexpress.com/ and
http://www.frontpanelexpress.com/ do business. I could imagine a
business model not too different working for custom-machined enclosures
(and CNC'ed metal widgets in general.) Target audience would be
engineering firms that don't do this in-house and aren't set up with a
local vendor, hobbyists, etc. Maybe some customers that don't do this
at all yet (amateur jewelers? who knows!!!!?!!!)

One thing that those outfits have is free CAD software for
design/specifying. If you kept your options really straightforward
(e.g. boxes with round holes and square holes for example) maybe design
could be done over the web. (Dynamic graphic generation, or maybe SVG
with user interface.)

Tim.