My Graphtec machine does a fine job with these files. You can print a lifetime supply of these gaskets -- that should be about 2 -- for mere pennies.
In all honesty, the thrill of making gaskets is not really much greater than the thrill of punching holes to make loose leaf paper. I make it exciting by picturing a magnificent waterjet cutter plowing through a quarter inch of stainless steel in place of a swivel knife through gasket paper.
In all honesty, the thrill of making gaskets is not really much greater than the thrill of punching holes to make loose leaf paper. I make it exciting by picturing a magnificent waterjet cutter plowing through a quarter inch of stainless steel in place of a swivel knife through gasket paper.
My current interest is more expansive and expensive. I would like to graduate from gaskets to the flanges themselves. The FIAT factory exhaust was a relatively high quality stainless unit. Mine features a two foot pipe that holds the place reserved for a catalytic converter in cars destined for California. Each end of the pipe has a flange with three bolts that engage the rest of the exhaust system.
I removed my pipe last week to drill a hole for a wideband oxygen sensor. The pipe itself is in fine shape after almost forty years. The flanges are heavily corroded. If waterjet cutting were cheap, I would simply have new flanges cut -- in stainless this time -- and assemble a new exhaust pipe designed for indefinite service.
I wrote last month about Matt Brannon's Midwest-Bayless. They sell a replacement pipe for a slightly later car. His pipe is made from a new length of 2 inch diameter pipe. His flanges are thirty year old flanges cut off dead catalytic converters. His pipe costs $79.
I wish him luck and happiness in the flange recycling business. Businesses like it are responsible for the survival of a thousand kinds of obsolete machines. I'm not interested. It's cargo cult capitalism. An army of American entrepreneurs jump through administrative hoops, pay taxes, operate web sites, and even hire employees as part of a frantic effort to lure wealth back to our shores. Many of these entrepreneurs, as ensigns of industry, have no more control over the means of production than they did before they enlisted.
The Senate passed their version of the Internet sales tax bill yesterday. Maybe this is the ritual that will bring the wealth back. It could be worse. We could be setting up giant fires in dummy smokestacks or just dumping barrels of goo into rivers to lure the wealth back.
Water jet cutting is not cheap yet but it is getting easier. Big Blue Saw, an Atlanta firm, accepts drawings online and generates quotes instantly. They even offer a dummy object you can use to get sample quotes without even drawing a widget. It's brilliant.
Their demo object is about a quarter of the area of my flanges. I can get one or two made in quarter inch stainless for $92.10 each. I could get five made for $21.16 each. Ten for $16.36. It's cheaper to get ten and throw away eight than it is to get two and keep two.
If I got ten flanges and made five pipes, I could probably sell them for less than Brannon's $79 pipe. That's an even dumber form of capitalism than the cargo cult kind. It's coffee club capitalism. It's barely different from a bunch of co-workers running an office coffee pot. These schemes do nothing but mask inefficiencies in the status quo.
Why am I holding my FIAT and poor Midwest hostage to an insane economic philosophy? Better still, why am I writing about it to strangers? I'm doing it because I can see the future where I control the means of production and I can't stand the waiting. In the meantime, I'll see if Shapeways can rent me the means for less. Their price for 3d printed stainless steel is $8 per cubic centimeter. My flange is about 7 cubic centimeters. With a per-model fee, my flanges are about $61 each. That's cheaper than two or ten but not five from Big Blue. Five is right out.
No comments:
Post a Comment