I recently ordered a small batch of stainless sheet parts and the best quotes were from people with laser cutters. As I learned more about laser cutting, I realized:
1) Cutting things from sheet material is a fairly cheap way to do small production runs (50-500 items).
2) I don't know enough about the different methods.
What I would really like is a "CNC Sheet Manufacturing Guide for Wacky-Inventor-Types" book, but doubt anything like that exists.
Another option would be a spreadsheet showing each method and a series of attributes for comparison:
Material it can cut
And then, per material:
Max Thickness
Min Thickness
Accuracy
Smallest hole it can cut
Smallest slot it can cut
Smallest feature it can cut (how narrow a "fork tine" can it cut)
Any taper of cut (thinking plasma)
Relative cost of basic machine
Estimated cutting speeds
Does anyone know of any resources, or if I put together an online-spreadsheet of some sort, would people volunteer to fill in the blanks?
-Jeff