28 replies to this topic

[minitomfoolery]

You do the drawings and get it cast and i'll knock you up a prototype.

Programming, setting and manufacture will take the best part of a few weeks. The current costs is £80 an hour machine rent, tooling and fixtures look to spend around £10,000....However project lead time at the moment is fantasticly low with having not much to do with the recession and all that jive..

[bmcecosse]

Heh heh - is that for just one off ??

[minitomfoolery]

Heh heh - is that for just one off ??

That would be for a prototype before going into manufacture. To get something off the drawing boards to an actually finished product to be sold costs huge amounts.

Of course you could do it all manually, but that just doesn't really exist nowadays.

Edited by minitomfoolery, 01 October 2009 - 10:33 PM.

[bmcecosse]

You're joking!

[minitomfoolery]

If you think thats expensive you really don't want to know how much getting it cast will cost!

[bmcecosse]

I don't - Trog does - but he probably know anyway - since he is a highly experienced Automotive Design Engineer!

[MRA]

Casting I can get a cylinder head cast from a CAD model for about £3000 then the machining starts, we charge machining on the latest state of the arachinery at £55 per hour anything more than that is just not competitive these days, this also keeps the work in the UK and not in China

[MRA]

Unfortunately, CADD5 is simply not capable of performing the gasd flow analysis to make this viable, you really need a Nastran or Ansys "seat" at about £40k

Still if you are interested I have the technology

I do

Will you share them with me?

I know CAD data exists, as I had a friend who worked at Rover for a while... The Mini was re-engineered well into the 1990's when everything was CAD based. Only issue would be for me is that it was all done in "CADD5". but i think I have access to a translator that will give me .iges or .step files.

Can we also assume that I know what I am doing? Like I said I am an experienced design engineer who has seen a number of programs through from beginning to end and understand the size of this task.

Right now I would be interested in the data so I can investigate some concepts etc..

[Trog]

OK, Assuming no-one has data or drawings to share with me...

Still worth an ask!

To be honest at this stage all I wanted to do was a high level cost and feasability study, just to see where it would lead. Like I said at the beginning I feel that the cost being charged for the Arden or the minisport 7 port are too high...

[MRA]

Interesting as it is, try looking at it this way......

Write down your own hourly rate, whatever it is, then divide the most expensive of the two cylinder head's price by your hourly rate this gives you the hours that you have to design and manufacture your product to be cost effective....... oh and don't forget to deduct the hour or so already used on this forum asking questions.... as you will know it's all part of the development costs and must be accounted for

[Cooperman]

And add the amortisation of the CAD hardware and the CAD licence costs (0ver £20k per annum for a typical CATIA seat when I was in that business a few years ago).
It doesn't half add up.

[MRA]

It's nearer £40K now..... and this is the basic suit of packages which doesn't include the fluid dynamics element

[Cooperman]

I thought that the annual fee had come down for Catia V5, even with the CFD package. I guess if you're running a very extensive suite, like 5-axis, solids, surfaces, thermal analysis, CFD, etc, etc., it would be expensive.
IBM, hmmmm.....

[MRA]

No not IBM.......... PC based Catia V5 .... I think V6 has just been launched Thermal is part of the CFD, manufacturing CAM (very basic is included) Harness is extra ..... but it's much of a muchness as it were... all of the top end software packages have similar price tags ....... Pro-E and Autocad are cheaper... but then I rest my case