Hi, I have made 5 machines so far and I am working on my sixth.
Of the two most economically successful parts I have made so far, one costs 50 cents to buy and I use about 20 a month, the other one costs about 9 dollars to buy and I use about 4 a month. Each month CNC saves me approximately 46$ gross. I have also done a few 100$ jobs, nothing steady or big. I have not pursued more jobs because I am busy making the next machine or furthering my knowledge. Over the last 18 months I have spent in the neighborhood of 5000$ on CNC parts. The return on investment is looking at something like 4 years at current rates. However it is the most engaging "hobby" I have ever had. In fact I feel like I got a better deal than my friends who are currently getting degrees from Florida State at ten times the cost, in a third of the time. I know I am going to make some good money off this eventually, but in the meantime it has completely changed my outlook, given me a tremendous amount of pleasure and it put a stop to my self-destructive midlife crisis. I am constantly learning new things; electronics, Linux, machine design, etc. Averaged out it only costs about twice what I pay for cigarettes, and much less than I used to spend on beer in a given week. Currently I have a giant sagging shelf full of steppers and drives and caps and diodes transformers and gears and racks and XL belts and pulleys. Versus a lot of hangovers. :( I love think of all the people exploring this, building machines, asking questions, offering help, starting businesses and building these amazing communities. The only conclusion I can draw is that this is going to change the economy for the better. No, for the amazing. The best part is that this giant home grown industry got it's start on message boards and Ebay using mostly discarded 80's technology and the free exchange of information. Technology abandoned by big corporations, that were either leaving the country or upgrading. Creating my favorite industry, hi-tech machine breakers also known as asset recovery services. Does anybody else have thoughts about this and where it's going? Dan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email is sponsored by the Moblin Your Move Developer's challenge Build the coolest Linux based applications with Moblin SDK & win great prizes Grand prize is a trip for two to an Open Source event anywhere in the world http://moblin-contest.org/redirect.php?banner_id=100&url=/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
