Originally Posted by
Lynn Livings
This enclosure is undoubtedly one of the nicest I've seen for a Taig, especially considering it is shop built. I have no doubt, not being a carpenter or fabricator, how difficult this could be.
However, I just think it is over-priced some what, and maybe, just maybe, a little overkill for me. I'm thinking I would like to invest around $700 - $900 on a nice enclosure. I guess that depends on how much money you have available to invest in your shop/tools/equipment, but still you'd have probably at least $1500 - $2000 or so in this enclosure before your done. I certainly have more money now, as compared to when I bought my Taig 12 years ago, but I guess having to be super conservative for most of my life has me feeling this way about this enclosure. For that kind of money I'm getting close to my target price for an 10hp air compressor.
I've always suspected that commercial products rarely, if ever, translate well into the hobby arena, and I believe this is a good example. 8020 products are nice (I have used them for projects), but are priced pretty high, I'm thinking because they are mostly aiming toward the commercial market, where using the products may save money. In my day job we sell and service fabricated equipment and I'm familiar with how products can become very costly just because it is attached to a commercial device. For instance, a gas strut that say would hold your hood up on your vehicle is an off-the-shelf item that rarely is actually manufactured for that particular use, and is priced accordingly. However, when the supplier sells it to us to use on our product, it's higher priced than what we would pay at a local auto parts store for the same (exact) item. Without getting too deep into this, I don't need to be educated on why this is, it's been explained to me for as many years as I've been crying "foul" about it. In reality it's more like the infamous case where Microsoft got sued for the pricing on some of their "commercial" software, that was in reality, the same software essentially that cost far, far less to the PC manufacturer and even to the public.
Anyway, I would like to see a much lighter weight, thinner walled product for an enclosure build that would cost considerably less. Anyone know of any products like that? When I Google searched fairly hard last year, I didn't see anything available. 8020 products and the like are a lot alike in several ways, including pricing (I did find more expensive products to be sure).
However, it sure is a nice cabinet isn't it!?
Lynn