How the work required to make a part, bears no relationship whatsoever to the apparent value of the part??? I just made a couple of small stepped keys from mild steel to register my rotary table in the T-slots of my mill. I started out with a peice of 3/4" square hotrolled---Because I had it---thats why. First I set it up in the mill and used a flycutter to cut it down to 5/8" thick---at .005" per pass, to fit the slot in the base of my rotary table.. Then I cut the stepped section down to 0.445" thick to fit the T-slot in my mill. The slot in the rotary table was only 0.125" deep, which meant that the "stepped" area on both sides of the key had to be 0.625" deep. Then I had to drill a hole through each peice for an M5 socket head capscrew to hold it in place in the slot in the rotary table. And of course then I had to counterbore each part for the head of the socket head cap screw. Both of these small peices are about 1" long, and will fit in my closed fist. If I went to buy a pair of these, I would expect to pay about $6 for the pair of them. In reality, it has taken me about 3 1/2 hours to make them. At a nominal $30 per hour, they would cost a minimum of $105 to make them.---And the last time I seen a machine shop that charged $30 an hour was about 1965!!
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