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- Time is money for the shop, so the less work they have to do, the better. Thus, simple is almost always better.
- Design your part to be made from a generic piece of stock material. This will lessen the total amount of machining required to make the part. Look around at supplier websites such as McMaster.com to see what is available. If you are unsure, ask the shop.
- Although you are a scientist and have unconditional love for the metric system, American Machinists use the Imperial system. You should design your part in inches from the beginning as opposed to designing in metric and converting at the end to minimize potential errors/oversights (think about what happened with the Hubble telescope). Also, designing in inches will also make it easier to find generic stock pieces close to the dimensions you want.
Pro-Tips
- If you are a grad student or staff member, ask to sign up and take the Machine Shop class. Although it is more of a crash course, it will allow you to be hands on and see how simple parts are made. This will give you some perspective and show you things to keep in mind while designing so your part doesn't end up looking beautiful on the computer but impossible to bring to life.
- Also, it is a good idea to ask the machinists if you can watch them work, or to describe how they would make something. It is very important to keep the way in which the part will be machined in mind during the design process so to not engineer yourself into a corner, or for the machining process to take unreasonable time/effort. Remember, CAD software will allow you to design just about anything on any scale, so if the part is impossible to make, it just becomes a pretty picture.