Well, it’s December and MakerSlide isn’t here yet. The fabricator are telling me their saw had\u00a0been broken for more than a week back in November, which wrecked their schedule. They can’t even tell me when they might start working on my order. Meanwhile, gleaming new MakerSlide sits on a rack in their warehouse, extruded and anodized but uncut \u2014\u00a0and our store is empty.<\/p>\n
I’m doing two things to work around this: setting up an alternate supplier (long in the works, but these things take time); and re-cutting lengths with defects. I have many pieces of MakerSlide that I rejected because of a single dent or scratch. They can be cut into shorter lengths around the defect \u2014 they are otherwise perfectly good.\u00a0I’m working on cutting MakerSlide for the existing eShapeoko orders, so there may not be a lot left for the store, though. I’ll keep you posted.<\/p>\n
One can cut MakerSlide with a chop saw, but it’s hard to get a consistently straight, flat and square cut without spending a lot<\/em> of money on the saw. I’d rather not do that, but I want an accurate cut with a good finish, so I’m doing it in two steps: I cut it slightly long with a half-decent chop saw, then I face it very precisely with a milling machine I built for this purpose. In true RepRap form, the MakerSlide facing machine is built with MakerSlide. I’ll post some pictures soon\u00a0\u2014 right now I have rail to cut and kits to ship.<\/p>\nShare this:<\/h3>