I have now also made .69 tubes. These things are sweet!
I have now also made .69 tubes. These things are sweet!
Steve Sheldon
Commander, 4th Louisiana Delta Rifles
Deputy Commander, Deep South Region
NRA Certified Muzzleloading Instructor
Just curious Steve, have you crunched any numbers on individual tube cost? It looks like you made a 3D bullet holder for your pouch...do you have a price on that?
Take care.
Keith A. Williams
15th. Reg VA Vol Cav
Keith,
Crunching the numbers when I was tinkering with tubes and making the cartridge box inserts, the tubes worked out to about 300 tubes per KG of PETG filament. That's about 6.67 cents per tube, or half the price per caplug from S&S just in materials. That doesn't count power, machine wear and tear, time, and failed parts. By the time I sorted it out, got it down, and did the math, it was going to be cheaper to throw away one or two red tubes every skirmish than print them. Especially as a business and not for myself. There's a reason they are injection molded!
My cartridge box inserts were a touch over a dollar a piece in materials with PLA filament. About 14 inserts per 1KG roll. Steve, last I saw, was using a slightly different design, but I'd wager they're about the same in material cost. I will say that the repetitive motion of doing the inserts like I was a few years ago SMOKED my printer at the time. But I must have printed the same file, 5 inserts, several dozen times. I think I sold almost 200 of them over the last few years before I called it quits just about a year ago when that printer finally gave up the ghost. A decent 3d printer is only 200 or so dollars these days, and I'll happily send the files to anyone interested in making them for their personal use.
John Westenberger
Co. B. 1st PA Cav.
Thanks John for the info...were you making cavalry, infantry or both of the pouch inserts?
Keith A. Williams
15th. Reg VA Vol Cav
I was making primarily cavalry inserts. They fit into the infantry box, they just need a spacer put in so they aren't all the way at the bottom, most people used a chunk of 2x4 cut to size. I was making them 6 3/4 x a touch under 1 1/2 and 1 1/4 inches tall. It fits my cavalry box snug, and I haven't head complaints from anyone using an infantry box yet. The footprint of the inside of the infantry and cav boxes are close enough it worked in both. It seems that most people preferred the cav box so that's what I made it fit for, just a happy accident it fits the infantry boxes too.
I had this whole trick system I worked out to hold 6 inserts of 14 rounds of smith or .58 each and 3x refills of 12x each in a 30 cal ammo can. Easy to just walk back from the line and swap inserts out. Also means I load for two shoots at a time, or have 2 events in a can. But they were expensive to ship, and really hard on my printer and materials to do en masse, so I have my prototypes, and that's it. May bring my 3d printed skirmishing solutions back again at some point, but not at the moment.
John Westenberger
Co. B. 1st PA Cav.
The Bambu Studio software actually computes price-per-part based on the cost you plug in per KG of the filament.
A single .69 caliber tube costs $.12 in filament only. A .58 tube is $.11. I'd probably sell them for $.30 a piece, or $30 per 100. When I get a little stockpile of these built up I'll put them up on my web site for sale. It takes 8 hours to print 25 tubes. It takes 70 hours to print 144 .69 tubes, which is the max my printer could do at one go.
I uploaded my carbine box insert to Thingiverse here:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4575355
Bambu says it would cost about $2 in filament.
The above is with $30/kg filament, which is TPU cost. I guess it's actually more like $25/kg. Drops the price per tube to like $.10 each.
Steve Sheldon
Commander, 4th Louisiana Delta Rifles
Deputy Commander, Deep South Region
NRA Certified Muzzleloading Instructor
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