I am looking for someone who can take a existing pattern and reproduce it on a CNC machine. What companies preform this type of work??

Thanks RNS

Neal,
you are looking for a stock duplicator, that has a CNC 4th axis, along with cnc-level machine duplicator software.. It's NOT the best way in the world to enter gcode by runnign a stylus over the stock.. and requires tuning....

a good stock duplicator, NOT cnc, can make you a gnat's hiney copy... and if you don't need 5 instances, this will be far quicker and simpler

jeffe

I was thinking along the same lines as above. I was kinda looking at getting a semi-inlet and building up/'shaping/glass bedding it for perfect fit. Then sending it off and have it duplicated. I have heard doing it that way works beautifully.

But who does that kind of work?

Mike Kokolus does fine work. Search the site for his name......his contact info has been posted before.

How many stocks are you planning to run?

If you are trying to eliminate inletting and shaping then you are chasing something that doesn't exist. While working out west, I programmed inlets, shaped patterns, digitized patterns, ran CNC stocks and inlet and shaped them. The CNC inlet, when run properly was more accurate than some of the metal work. So, even with the perfect inlet, there are too many variables to consider for a "drop in" CNC stock. The stocks I ran on the manual duplicator took about the same time to inlet and shape.

If you're looking for a drop in inlet and don't mind some minor gaps then you can eliminate some inletting time by running the CNC or manual duplicator inlet barely oversize. They will still require some hand work to get them correctly bedded. Another problem is some blanks will move after being cut and a perfect CNC inlet is then too large. All this said, there still isn't a good CNC tool that will make a square corner like in the front of the receiver ring or around the recoil lug. These areas are squared by hand.

If you want top notch gap free inletting then it's NOT possible to remove the talent behind running a chisel and scraper. As for the outside shape goes, if it is cut with a ball mill then you have to remove the dent caused by the center of the tool not cutting and showing up in the final finish. This is done by hand.

I do have a friend that works at Thorne Brothers in St Paul that has a CNC router at home and cubic dollars invested in software to draw solid models and extract G code from them. I don't think he has a digitizer to copy an existing pattern and would have to draw the stock from scratch. This would be very expensive to do for a small run but for a 100 stocks it would pay for it self.

gunmaker