Manufacturer Said This Part is $700, So I Replicated it for MUCH Less
Welcome back to the latest installment of the CNC Plasma Series! This week we are going to be showing you what it takes to perfectly replicate a metal part using a CNC Plasma Cutter!
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That little piece shuts off the flow of milk by pinching a rubber tube that you feed though the assembly. And the weight of the handle keeps it pinched off. And… at the end you figure it out 😂
What he said
spot on its a milkpak valve must must must not have any sharp edges
What I came here to say. I remember these from the mess decks in the Navy. The tight tolerances really aren't necessary. You literally could make this thing with a drill and hand file in less than a half hour.
@@RichSobocinski lol Im watching this and like 6 minutes in im yawning at the whole fusion 360 programming thinking We could have made this in 5 minutes with our hand tools
@@Hammerjockeyrepair Simple drill presss and sander! ...OR, weld the broken part and finish.
First, thank you for helping support your local business! Second, thank you for taking the time to film a small victory over the “just trash and replace” culture. Third, thank you for being a maker.
Your gonna need to replace the bolt with a longer stainless steel one and a self-locking nut. It needs to be able to come apart to CLEAN it. You also need to polish it to a mirror finish or else the health inspector will ding her for that tooi!
That's exactly what I was going to say. We had these in college dorms back in the 70s. Everything needs to come apart for cleaning. And stainless should look spotless like any other piece of food handling equipment.
i could be wrong but i am guessing since he had to weld it the mechanism was not built to be taken apart like he did. i do agree that using a stainless steel bolt would have made things easier to fix in the future and easier to clean if needed but i don't think it would be a big deal especially if it just acts like a guillotine pinching off the hose. i would guess for health reason the hose it pinches has to be cleaned or replaced regularly but doubt the side where you don't touch would be a big issue.
@@crazzywolfie That makes perfect sense, but my recollection (it's been awhile) is that food-related equipment has to really be stripped down to every little piece for sanitation, much farther than one might expect. That's why that "sh*** bolt" he refers to at 17:12 was not permanently installed in the first place. Perhaps it had been threaded and the threads stripped, I don't know. In terms of the milk tube, unless things have changed, each container of milk has its own rubber tube. Back in the day, milk came in special boxes that had a 5 or 6-gallon bag inside, with its own tube. You lifted this heavy box of milk (milk weighs around 8-1/2 lbs/gallon) into the refrigerated dispenser and threaded the tube down into the valve mechanism, and then removed some kind of clip (my memory is hazy) so that the milk was then controlled by the dispenser valve. When it was empty, you pulled out the box and replaced it. I saw an example of a similar machine online; search for Silver King SKMAJ1/C3. Sorry to ramble.
@@crazzywolfie it did not have to be welded, it is built to come apart.
@@crazzywolfie The housing was zinc and I think the threads were chowdered. I'm confused as to why he didn't just drill it all the way through and use a new bolt and lock nut. I mean the hole went all the way through anyway for him to be able to weld it. That would be kind of embarrassing to leave a little weld blob on the side of the end of a bolt holding it in place. You could also probably just use a quick release pin.
It has been a long time since my food service days, but that should be able to be disassembled for cleaning.
I always preach that it is critical to fully understand/communicate the function of anything being designed or fabricated.
"I'm going to take an hour out of my day to replicate a part out of stainless" also "Instead of buying a 25 cent fastener, watch me fuck weld the entire thing"
I wish i could give this comment 3 thumbs up.
An hour is a stretch. ITs like 20-30 minutes to mesuare small part like that and than cut it. If he did it off cam it would be faster.
"Walker's happy place" is the most relatable thing ever.
Nice 944 in the background!
I also would've made the part over buying one. But lacking all the fancy machinery and software, I would've scribed lines in layout blue, and used drills, a saw and a grinding wheel. Old school. Nice work.
Software = free, fancy machinery = DIY-able with pretty decent quality and precision (great for hobbyists, not all that great for extremely precise commercial stuff) for less than 500 bucks if you buy everything new, using none of your own spare stuff, and keep the expensive components (like a spindle motor) to sites like Aliexpress, banggood etc. Mostly though, its a great thing to make for fun, and the reward is a finished product and the ability to make MORE things for fun! Highly recommend giving it a shot if you're a handyman type of guy, for some people a little project like that can lead to amazing things
I would've just bought a thin bit of sheet steel from a DIY store and used a hacksaw and drill. Mind you, I do charge $700 an hour so...
Even cheaper
Why not use a 316 bolt and nylar lock nut so it can easily be repaired instead of welding it ?
I was literally screaming that at the screen when he said he was going to weld it.
The first time I saw this milk system was at Great Lakes Training Center when I was a Recruit - 1965. It used a 5 gal. milk container and a plastic hose like the one you saw (as others have noted). They have been using this system for many years, and I suspect the company has found this to be a nice expensive replacement part.
I used to make tooling for the Cooke and candy industry. One of the tricks I used in AutoCAD 2000 was to take a picture of the design and import it into the system as a “jpg” file on a special layer then draw a rectangle or circle around the part. Then scale both to the measured size of the real part. Then I can trace and locate details. Small parts are easy, big parts you have move back and be sure the camera and part are parallel and on the same centerline. To avoid parallax. Try it you’ll like it.
This is not a put down but this is a perfect example of book learning crossed over to practical application. Great job. Too many of the products we have are made by people who are totally disconnected from these two aspects of engineering. I say again Great job. Plus this is the best way I know of to convey my thoughts.
This comment meant the world to me, thank you! -Tay
@@LiftArcStudios You are welcome!
I first found your channel and watched the 4 hour video of the clean up and making of the shop. I loved it. and when you placed the front door on the office you said you made it a no latch because it will be used the most. I said to myself "yea right he will be going through that bathroom door the most to get into the shop. And now on this video I see you going back and forth so much you have the bathroom door propped open. LOL . I still love your videos
Bad move on weld disassembly is required for cleaning as you discovered slide just pinches tube from milk carton. Good job on part replication.
55 years ago we had a milk dispenser in our kitchen a.k.a. the cow. Anybody that owned one of these dispensers knew the how it worked long before minute 19. I love my cow 35° milk chasing Oreo cookies. That was when Oreos Cooks had trans fats they tasted so much better. Great memories of a interesting childhood.
I'd imagine the $700 was for the whole assembly not the tiny plate you made.
1.8625… bananas 🙄
@@brucelarcombe4679 I have no idea what that means ???
@@H4rleyBoy Here in Australia ‘banana’ is a metric-elitist term for ‘inches’. So I was having a giggle about decimal inches. Not sure why it wound up as a comment on your post, sorry about that 🙏
@@brucelarcombe4679 Yes I knew about the inches thing from watching CEE channel, but didn't see a connection to my comment :) :)
@@H4rleyBoy yup, I watch CEE too. Just a lack of talent on my part 🤣
Can we have a little context here, did they actually say that .50 cent piece was 700 dollars or did they say they couldn't sell just that part and the entire assembly was for 700 dollars?
Does it matter?
@@AlliPrice371 not really 700 dollars for that assembly is still ridiculous. 700 dollars for the little piece he made should be criminal. But if the machine is 700 and they don't piece it out I understand. So I was just curious what actually came with the 700 dollar price.
20:21…. “That’s a cut point” had me cracking up! Love your videos… and the injokes like “oh you’re brilliant!” Then making that Walkers Happy Place! Watched that over and over! Great videos guys… thanks for sharing all you do!
Absolutely fantastic and love how you explain everything you do and how it’s done top bloke and full respect 👍👍👍
Thank you for the kind words friend! We go back and forth on whether or not people will find videos like these boring or interesting, glad you found it interesting! Cheers, Tay
Great job. A suggestion - instead of welding the retaining bolt how about replacing it with a longer one and putting a retaining clip on the end?
Yes! That was exactly what I was thinking. That would have been so simple. A pin with a cotter pin costs like 50 cents at the hardware store. Or even just a longer bolt with just the end threaded. There are a bunch of different ways to accomplish that, all of them better than welding it in place.
Yea, milk machine valves usually pinch off a rubber "nipple" that is built into the 5 gallon milk "bags" that go into them. I've had to babysit milk machines like that many times during my time in the Navy. You have to cut the end off the tube of the new bag to open it.
Very nice video this week Tay and the gang. Can't wait to see more videos soon. Keep up the great craftsmanship and hard work my friends weld on. Fab on. Keep making. God bless.
As always Jared, you're the man! Thank you! - Tay
@@LiftArcStudios your very welcome.
Great tutorial on using a plasma cutter! Thanks!
It is great having a CNC plasma cutter. I have a small one at home and I have used to make parts and art. It is nice that you were able to help this lady. I was a laser operator in a small metal fabrication shop. After 22 years, I was replaced by a faster laser. I sure miss my job. I miss my home business. Thanks for the video.
Gemini Laser 3015 co2. Ran it 15 years. Production. Good job kid.
Finally a work case that totally justifies me buying a $25K CNC plasma for my garage shop... Jokes... Great Video and great solution. Stainless for the win.
HAHAHA right!? It is the little things, however, like this that make me thankful to have this machine in the shop, fast track prototyping! Cheers, Tay
I've been trying to justify it too. I know it would just sit there most of the time. I'd need to find another building for the tractor too.
I understand the instructional value ….but. I could have made that part by hand in half the time in 1.5 beers and an episode of Columbo. Did enjoy the episode
Right, we have determined this is some horrid cast metal....let's TIG it 🤣 Longer bolt and a nyloc nut on the other side
As much as I like tigging, sometimes a nut is all you need.
My method has always been to bolt it... Frames busted? Bolt some C channel or angle iron to it! Presto! Like new again!
Sweet repair, I dream of having a shop sabre!
Don't dream of it. Get a business license as an LLC or corporation (not a sole proprietor), be in business for at least one year and cashflow, and then you can finance one. Done.
Agree, it does feel good to fix something rather than throwing it away. 👍
I was with you until you started welding on a chromed visible part of the mechanism to retain a removable fastener
I wasnt even with him since the beginning... The effort and time spent just measuring and programming into the computer was so much more complicated than just making the part on the bench with the same files, a grinder and drill! And then once he tried welding that crap instead of fixing the threads I just paused and went to the comments ahaha
@@Hammerjockeyrepair for a one off, i agree with you. However, that would have made a boring video, and now he can produce aftermarket replacement parts, more or less ad libitum, could be a tidy sum all on it's own if he can just reach customers.
@@Hammerjockeyrepair effort? That like 20-30 minutes to measure it and cut on plasma table. With such simple detail it takes no time at all., Welding part of the other hand made me suffer,
Right to repair is important! Support local mechanics and engineers
Great video nice job!
Thank you! Cheers!
How about a small radius in corners of the square pocket. May prevent cutting tube.
A trick to keep the construction lines from showing up in the DXF is to project the face of the part to a new sketch and create a DXF from the projection. It will only project the edges and nothing more.
This is brilliant.
Good process.
Great Video Man!
Hey could you make a video of more detail software controller info? Nice video :)
What is your shielding gas? I run N2 to shield and water to clean all of my stainless cuts and I don’t usually end up with that much dross.
aaaaaaand by the time you got to the 8 minute mark putting all that info into fusion I already had the piece made on my bench with a drill grinder and hand file lol
You are brilliant cameraman
The valve pinches a hose that comes out of a milk bag. I love the chocolate milk!
Darn that works just like nature LOL!
American ingenuity at its finest
I'm glad I have a Westcott plasma table. The program on my machine does everything for you lol. Just tell it what thickness and material.
Life of luxury! haha
a nice clevis pin was needed , but hey ho , its up and running . Interesting to watch the full process.
milk bag has a rubber hose that fits into the spigot that the part squeezes close,, not needing a water tight seal.. just the ability to pinch off hose.
Get yourself a wireless pendant - you can leave that keyboard in the cabinet and stick the pendant on the side of the cabinet.
Try wire eroder next time. Finishing in one hit. No filing necessary. Job done.
I want one of those hats!
I am thinking that it isn't pure zinc but something called Silumine aka Aluminum-zinc alloy or even Magnesium alloy because it momentarily burned with a super bright light
Ok serious question I was shopping for a waterjet to avoid draft on thick parts (3/4 inch) and hole ovalisation along with edge hardening Im building motorcycles and a cnc would save me a ton of time on brackets and frame parts that are critically dimensioned The question is, how much control do you have over the kerf angle ? Could you ream the holes and still have them precisely positionned ? And do you need to normalize the edge after its been cut when you tig weld it ?
Depends on the criticality of the weldment and/or part. If the weld needs to be aerospace spec and x-ray, then welding on a plasma cut edge may not be a great idea. For motorcycles you are most likely going to be fine, bring the edge back to shiny metal and it welds great. As far as edge bevel, you are always going to have that with plasma. 3 degrees is normal, but you can get a straighter edge with good settings. Dimensional tolerance on the top side of the cut is easily + - .005”, even less with a proper setup. So yes, you could ream the holes to their appropriate dimension post-cut. If you are making a lot of these parts and your tolerance is tighter than the above ☝️ details, water jet and/or laser cutting is the name of the game
The way I handle this is offseting the toolpath by half the kerf plus the taper- since almost all processes benefit from an edge sanding, I then do a quick second operation on a spindle sander just to take out the taper, working small side up the edge works as a visual guide and it takes very little time. Although I know people here with both laser and waterjet, I can actually get my parts laser cut in Madrid for roughly the cost of the steel here, with a two week lead time. So in most cases I do that and then deburr and second operations like profiling, milling, reaming, chamfers, or flycutting here in my shop. If you normally use 1/8" and 1/4" plate they call it 3mm and 6mm respectively over there, the 6mm 304 I get from there is actually toleranced closer to .250 than the domestic 1/4" I get here. My opinion is that getting a waterjet for metal is daft in today's market, they are so messy and PITA to maintain. For the cost of a waterjet you can get a hybrid laser, not have to deal with a water table or sludge, have a machine that can be left idle with no downside, etc. Plasma is cheapest, but also worst. Just as an example, he could have got that part in two days from Reno for $14 (OK, he would have had to order $29 total to cover shipping) in 304 SS, and that is from SendCutSend, they are TWICE the cost of my supplier. So if you are building motorcyles and not mass producing motorcycle parts, your floor space may be more valuable than a waterjet or plasma, don't forget with either you also need to inventory and store material and scrap. Precut parts arriving 30 at a time in a box may be a better solution. I know it is for me.
You dont. Even plasma manufaturer will tell you that metall 12+mm thick will have angled cut. Its in the nature of using plasma. Unlike pressure watter cutting or laser you electrical arc is dancing around a bit. You REALLY dont want to cut hole with diametres less that 4 time thickness of your metall unless you plan to finish them on the other tool. You will get angled cut on round holes. You might have 50 mm on one side and 49 mm hole on the other side, for example. They try to sell you "fine cut" torches and "true hole" addons but even so they would not promise you good results. You want perfect edges and holes? Use milling machine and drill holes afterwards. Plasma cutting is just a first step in making new part unless you do not require precision.
Why not 316 as as we know it is a much better grade stainless and price difference is negligible for the amount required .
whudabout that Porsche tho?... 😁
I'm welding a roll cage into in for a customer, being that it's only my second complete cage, i didnt have the confidence to film the whole thing and act like i know what im talking about haha. I will definitely post pictures to social media though! 1.75x.095 DOM tubing, completely TIG welded. Cheers! - Tay
Best little edit (IMBRILLIANT) 😆Love the videos.
I believe the "valve" is simply a rubberized tube that is pinched by the handle, hence the handle being relatively heavy.
the part: $700 the education and tools to self-manufacture the part: $80000 the satisfaction of not paying for the part: $priceless
My library got rid of their 3d printers. The local hackerspace sold their cnc machine.
im sure its a dumb question but could you put small parts like that in a scanner(like from a printer scanner) and import the object
Pure genius...I'm definitely trying that next time. Cheers! -Tay
@@LiftArcStudios You don't even need a scanner. Take a picture of it > Import pic into Fusion 360 > Scale the picture to the dimension and then sketch over top of the picture
@@V8Hunter7 This^^^ I have been able to perfectly replicate intricate small parts with various small holes this way. It creates a 1:1 image you use as a stencil you then simply model over.
@@V8Hunter7 you could have parallax issues with a camera photo, way less parallax with a flatbed scanner.
You kinda do it like that for small parts, yes. But you still need to measure it manually to check yourself.
The 1950's called, they want their caliper back. lol
but those are the good ones!
Thumbs up for “you’re brilliant” sketch.
I Miss the hell out of This old Tony..
You should have used a retaining pin
It isn't a contact with liquid type valve. This is built for hygiene as there is a rubber teat that is attached to the bottom of the milk bag which protrudes through the broken piece and the weight of the pendulum applies enough pressure to the teat to pinch the flow off....
Lets hope that this video becomes widely viewed and that a market for replacement parts is created. You could help pay for the plasma table. Set your part price at at least 4 times your costs. You will force the supplier to lower the price of this stamped part and find out if there is a patent infringement. If so make it square with round edges.
Pretty sure no patent infringement on that one.. Milk-pack dispensers like that one have been around since the '80s at least, and the design looks like it's from the '50s or maybe even the '40s
My milk valve brings all the boys to the VoD
You drew this up and used a plasma table to cut it out? How long did that take? Do you own a manual mill?
20-30 minutes at worst. You take a part, measure it, draw in 2d in your cad programm (3d is just to self check unless you create an assebly from several parts), throw it into cnc programm (settings he set in that programm and merging of lines is supposed to be automatic in nornam apps), download it to your cnc controller thats it. Change your plasma ampertage and cutting materials if needed, press on button and chill. Depending on part and its configuration it might take much longer. 80% of time is spend on measuring and double checking yourself.
@@robertnomok9750 I could have made that part in ten minutes with a manual Bridgeport. CNC isn't really suited to simple one off parts. Now, if I had to make a thousand of them, yeah.
@@SomeGuyInSandy well yes, whole point to make a lot of them after wasting time on preparing cnc programm. When someone asks me to cut them one rectangle I poin them to the nearest saw,
I wonder if long term this piece is going to wear out the slot in which it rides because it's a much harder material.
Ugh. Just got to the bit where you started welding on the casting.. You could have turned up a pin with a clip or cotter without altering the device at all.
bro, thank you
When you find out how it works after making and it appears the tolerances weren't that important at all..... hell you could fix this point welding 2 O-rings together 🤣
Why on Earth did yo not put a longer bolt through and a washer/ nut on the end?
Why not polish to chrome like finish .
Certainly looked like a 944 in the background.. Nice
What does one of those cost?
Need clarification. You could have done the 2d cam in fusion360 but didn't. Why?
There is a quicker way to transfer this in an model. Just make a picture of it and then open the picture in light burn. Then you trace the image and correct the dimensions correctly. And then you can cut already.
I think the new part squeezes a nipple that's on the bottom of the milk bag inside the cooler. I've flipped a lot of those valves in chow halls all over the world. The camera guy is right!
You could’ve tried taking a picture of it, diameter one reference side and try that right off the bat.
Best way to copy stuff
at 17:30 instead of tack welding an ruining the whole unit. use a longer stud an pull pin.
Not sure welding that bolt was the right move, but nice job replicating the part!
heres a quicker idea. place the item on graph paper . take a photo of it . scan it into the slicer program . double check every then do a 3d print of it to make shure every work then cut.???
AKA Udder!
That piece is used to pinch a rubber tube open and close which milk flows through. .
there is a rubber tube that the valve pinches off
I’ve worked on that machine or a very similar one and the 700 dollars covered the entire assembly (plus some other parts) in my case. Which is its own form of obnoxious but from a business perspective makes a bit of sense I guess… having a SKU for every tiny part adds too much overhead in stocking, shipping, etc…
that powered my max sticker in the back though
no 3d scanner?
How much does a CNC plasma cutter cost?
Please tell me everything was sanitized before going back into commercial food service
it's a milkpak valve the item just squashes a pipe from the milk bag it doesn't touch the milk
I would have cranked out 4 of them because you know another one is going to break.
You can just take a picture of the pieces, import it on Fusion, calibrate it and you are rdy to go, you can sketch on top of the pic, you don't even need to use the caliper so often, why you weld the bolt and not put a larger bolt with a nut on it?
I wonder if the $700 was for the entire assembly. Which is still robbery, but less robbery. I deburr using a die grinder with a not so aggressive tool, sometimes rasps or files will leave a burr themselves I find.
Couldn’t you scan the old part? This would made it easier?
It was broken. So yes, but way harder. Than taking a few measurements. If he wasn’t explaining this to us, making the CAD file takes 2 minutes.
@@M21assult in the time you would measure it and do it in cad, i would have it already done with grinder, drill press and 2 files
All you need is a $60k plasma cnc table
You can't say presice mesurement and calipers in the same sentence unless its written mitutoyo on the calipers.
Silver King milk valve slide is 63 bucks.
Sweet Donkey 🤣
Why measure? parts like this i just put on the flatbed scanner, next to a ruler for scale, scan to jpg, then insert jpg into sketch. Trace it out in the sketch, and do a couple spot measurements to verify, but dont have to bother transcribing all the dims, or write out a diagram.
Yes, but I would still measure it with caliber manually to double check. Part like that are have high tolerance but if we talk about something more precise you woould rather check twice.