Custom Alloys

[chawksey]

hi people im bored at work as was thinking of starting up my own business producing custom alloy wheels. what do you people think. would any of you on here like to have a set of custom alloys.
let me know
cheers

[munky30]

what equipment would you use?

You'd need a cnc miller, and a sh*t load of other things. Not exactly something you can start without a lot of money behind you.

[Retro_wheels]

3d cnc machine....... and the rest, hope you've got deep pockets buddy!

If you do, id sell them

[chawksey]

as luck would have it im a cnc machinist/programer and at present i manufacture aircraft engine parts so i got the background knowledge and a few contacts so just got to get the backing

[playo]

I'd be interested.

What design ideas have you got, or would you do rep style wheels?

[munky30]

Fair enough then!

I'd be interested, but it all depends on price I guess... the zone is full of skinflints and iirc a good set of made to order wheels costs a sh*tload.

I want a set of solid discs with a big fat dish when you're ready... I expect them to be free, in return I will whore out your business to every single person I see and put stickers on my car

[chawksey]

yeah was thiknig of doing replicas to start with and if anyone had some design ideas i would produce a one off to see if they like it

[fuzzy]

the zone is full of skinflints and iirc a good set of made to order wheels costs a sh*tload.

exactly. a site catering for 15+ year old cars isnt really the best market for this sort of thing as although 95% will express 'genuine' interest only about 5% will actually be able to follow through financially

[chawksey]

advertising advertising i like it. have you got any designs drawn out and i will have a look into it

[chawksey]

im just seeing what type of feed back i was going to get and if there is actually a market for this sort of thing

[fuzzy]

as a cnc machinist im sure you will have a rough figure as to what a set of custom wheels would cost to make. care to enlighten us? although obviously design will determine exact prices but just a general ball park figure for the complete process for a set of 5

[munky30]

advertising advertising i like it. have you got any designs drawn out and i will have a look into it

Solid discs. No design. Like old skool 'moon discs'.

Just a solid milled piece of alloy in a big dished outer. Admittedly it wont show off your skills very much, but it will get attention.


Though actually, having some sort of design milled into the face of it would be kinda cool.. let me have a think and get back to you.

[Retro_wheels]

hmm, im even more intrested now, tbh, you'd make a killing just like image do and they produce some of the shittiest quality wheels ive ever seen.

If you can produce high quality wheels or even split rim outer rims id be willing to do business with you, infact drop me a pm mate

[Turbo-Brown]

I've looked into this in the not too distant past.

There are two main things to consider:

1) the cost of the materials
2) the time it takes to remove a mountain of material from a big block.

I have a friend who owns a precision engineering company so I spoke to him about the capacity of his machines. He said he could do it easily enough, but the time to do it would be prohibitive.

I also looked at the cost of material (he did recommend me a grade which was treated so that it shouldn't warp when you're bollocking masses of material out of it) The cheapest supplier I found was in the states and for 4No. blanks of the correct spec (which elludes me at the mo) they'd charge something like $8000, plus shipping, then tax when it arrives here. Of course that price would come down a massive amount if you were buying tonnes of the stuff which is no doubt how Image can sell sets of finished wheels for the amount they do.

Now that's only for the centres, the rim sections I was gonna buy from Image as getting big bits of metal custom spun would cost another fortune.

Here's the design I'd come up with:



I was all excited about having a unique set of wheels until I found out how much it'd cost to do a one off.

Other considerations are things like getting your designs checked out by a qualified engineer, and subsequently making sure you're covered in the event of a failure.

Forget how much my mate said the machine he'd have to use cost, but it was over £200k so you'd wanna be sure that you were gonne get a steady supply of orders in to cover the considerable costs involved.

EDIT> what on earth's wrong with Image's wheels?! The set I've got look great to me!

[chawksey]

as i work in the areospace industrie i can have a word with our materials supplier to see where i can source the alluminium billets from and of course i would have to have a british standard i would have to work to iso90003 i think as long as everything is traceable and i can get the wheels certified it should be a runner. we currently use 5 axis maching centers which could easily produce the wheels but as you all said i need to get a lot of oreders to make this fesable, although saying that it doesnt just have to be alloys anythiong can be made pretty much