Ouch my eye!

Do not look at LASER with remaining eye!


budget



  • Possibilities

    For those of you that have been following along, you will remember that the X rail for my old ULS-M25 is badly warped from the fire. To replace it with an official part from ULS will cost me $365 + taxes [or about $13.50/inch for the 27 inch extrusion]. Needless to say, this is a unpalatable price for an aluminum extrusion. So I’ve been trying to come up with possible replacement solutions that are more cost effective. The first step was to create a CAD model for the existing part to serve as a reference. While my model isn’t exact, as it is based on measurements of the damaged part, it should be close enough to serve its purpose.


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  • Second Sourcing: Belts

    So now that I have my quote in from the ULS rep for my list of parts, I thought I’d go through the list and see how much of it I can second source from other suppliers outside of the ULS umbrella. So for starters I decided to go with what is most-likely the easiest part to find elsewhere… the timing belts. Now I don’t know much about timing belts, but figured they were an off the shelf component. So after doing a little research online, I discovered that the pitch/profile for the belt is known as MXL (Miniature Extra Light). I wasn’t sure on the material of the belt, but I did come across a spec that stated it was Kevlar re-enforced. After searching he usual retail suspects [McMaster Carr & SDP/SI as well as few others] it became apparent that the material must be urethane. So armed with that information, as well as the length  and width specifications for the replacement belts, I came up with some pricing:

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  • The price of admission

    So I finally got my quote back for all the ULS parts this week. It came in quite a bit higher than I anticipated. While most of the items are tolerable, some aren’t. [all prices are Canadian, and don’t include the 13% tax I need to pay as well]

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