Machining Metal Parts?

[lotmr]

I have my FA-MAS and I am extremely happy with it with the exclusion of two things. Plastic and weight. To remedy this I wanted to ask around with some of my friends who are big into automotives and see if there is anywhere in town that would do custom machining for me. I would get the foregrip, handle and possibly the chassis redone in aluminum (preferably) or steel and automotive painted black by a friend. Does anyone have any experience doing something like this? What metal did you use if so? (steel vs aluminum)

Thanks

(and of course if i get it done I will post pictures)

[firemachine69]

How much are you willing to spend?

[Greylocks]

Unless you have lots of cash, you're better off buying a totally different and new gun.
Machinists are not cheap.

[Sgt_Lynch]

Heh, if your looking for a custom machined Receiver, the setup is $1000 alone.. and thats if you can provide the drawings for them to program from.

[Kokanee]

If you were really keen you could most likely fabricate some of those parts out of sheet aluminum with hand / power tools..

[GuRu]

Couldn't you just make metal casts of the original pieces? That'd be a LOT easier.

[Rich_A]

Do a search for LogicPaintball. The ower, Ryan, does amazing aluminum work and has made many custom paintball trigger frames and bodies from aluminum of all sorts.

I imagine if you sent him your gun he could whip off an aluminum body (might take a couple weeks) for maybe 500 ish. He does amazing work, uses top grade aluminum and will annodize it any way you like too.

I supported one of his newest projects and can testify for his work. Not sure how eager he'll be to take it on but throw from money at him and it makes all the difference.

[Krieg]

Machining should be the last resort.
It would be quite expensive to make a brand new frame for the gun.

I worked in a machine shop (was milling mostly High grade Aluminum) and it is quite time consuming to just do parts that doesnt involve multible angles and curves.
Do achive special curves and bends its a must to use CNC machines, because with regular Milling machines you cannot make "tight" turns.
CNC is expensive! (never done CNC) so you better off buying other gun.

[vondnik]

Originally Posted by mr.ptrap

Do achive special curves and bends its a must to use CNC machines, because with regular Milling machines you cannot make "tight" turns.
CNC is expensive! (never done CNC) so you better off buying other gun.

There is nothing a CNC can do that I can not do on a conventinnal machine... The only thing CNC has on me is speed. CNC rates area about 90$ a hour for std machine and up to 250$ on multiaxis machine, add to that the cost of materials, programing and tooling expenses ( yes they charge you for tooling) you looking at one hell of an expensive gun.