Hi All, I’m considering upgrading my venerable LR2 to an LR4. Shipping those aluminium plates to Australia is a non-trivial expense, so I’m wondering how others who’ve done the build in this part in the world have managed. Found a reasonable laser cutting service? Printed plates and used them to mill your own? Bought from the US and swallowed the cost? I’ll be buying a Jackpot board, at least, from the V1 Shop, so it may be that with combined shipping I can make it work, but keen to hear what others’ experiences have been.
Having them made in Aus is non- trivial!
I just buy from @Ryan - it’s the very least we can do, and the cost is just a small percentage of the build cost anyway.
As you say, if you ae buying a board, you may as well fill the box!
Also, paying someone to have them cut is against the license.
You could print them and cut them yourself, but if you are going to order the board anyway, if makes sense to get the plates as well. 
You already have an LR2 - you should be able to use that to cut your own. Not too difficult, use Trochoidal Milling.
Welcome @Dan_Gordon ! (even though you’ve been a crew member for > 1.7 yrs).
Is there an Australasia based reasonably priced online milling service with instant quotes, something like USA based sendcutsend? If so, is their shipped to your door service significantly lower cost than ordering from Ryan (taking into account shipping + taxes/tariff) ? If so, consider asking Ryan if he’s open to you buying locally and splitting the savings between you, or something else that’s fair to Ryan, and helps minimize $$ being wasted on shipping/other overheads.
Ideally, sendcutsend and similar businesses would have fixed/percentage royalty kickback for designer/IP-owners, and B2B setup for a V1E Shop order to trigger a cut job in sendcutsend, or nearest fab-distrib partner. Shipping costs aren’t getting cheaper, and tariffs/taxes are looking to getting more exciting going forward.
Not that I have found. I will undoubtedly be buying from Ryan when the time comes.
My initial price (two years ago for the LR3) was - (not including postage)
Price for 2 off 6 mm Aluminium Plates as per your DXF File $ 137.00 AUD
At the time, Ryan had stopped selling aluminium plates, but I could have had his delivered for less.
I ended up getting the other plates too delivered for around $150.00 but that was because another forum member had a contact and that was on the basis of three sets being supplied. You may remember that they weren’t the fanciest things - plasma cut (or laser?) but they took a lot of fiddling to get them right.
Just tell Ryan to bringt some to the next RMRRF. 
No better way to save on postage than to spend a few thousand on flights. 
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I like your thinking.
Thanks for all the replies. Yeah, I got a preliminary quote from an online laser cutting service which claims to be the Australian answer to Send Cut Send, but they maxed out at 5 mm alu (which is probably okay), said there were some features in the dxfs that were too small to cut (probably not okay) and came in at somewhere around half the delivered cost from the V1 store (which I think will work out somewhere around AU$120 depending on currency fluctuations). It feels like cutting aluminium to spec should be within our colonial grasp, but will probably get them from V1 before the tariff wall goes up. Happy for Ryan to get his share, FedEx’s much bigger share, not so much.
It’s really only the through hole spacing that has to be spot on. You could print/3D print a template for that and use a pillar drill.
The shape could easily be cut with ordinary metalworking tools. You don’t necessarily need any kind of CNC
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I’ve discovered that people cutting aluminium to spec seem to like the good things in life, and want me to pay for them.
On the other hand, if you buy a full kit from Ryan, you can pretend that the shipping on the aluminium bits was free, so there’s that! 
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Australia group buy?
I havn’t done the maths but perhaps If we got enough together it could be worth it. Then Ryan gets a good bunch of sales with only 1 trip to the post office.
Hehe I did that last time, including the 3D printed parts. This time around I’ve at least got a printer and a bunch of parts I can reuse.
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I’d be up for it, I guess especially if there’s a bunch that are fairly local and can do pick up. I can imagine if we had to do a lot of reposting the benefit could get pretty marginal.
(I’m in Geelong, fwiw)
That’s interesting. So the holes only need to be accurate relative to each other, and not to any feature on the edge of the plate?
Hmm, Geelong only a few Km from Springwood NSW 
Could make it tricky
I just ordered the kit from Ryan and included his alu plates in the order. If you are ordering the board from him anyway any potential savings you’d make wouldn’t be worth the hassle. Just add them to cart and be done with it IMHO.
The shipping cost for me, for the full kit including the plates to Sydney was only 82 USD, which I thought wasn’t too bad considering it was a heavy box full of motors, bolts, magnets and two alu plates.
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The only other feature that interacts with anything else is the ‘tab’ the z stop hits
It’s surprising - the last time I did a comparison, which admittedly is a few years ago, it doesn’t take long to rack up $100Aus on shipping if you are ordering all the parts from separate vendors.
Even buying bolts from my local supplier 12k away means a 24k road trip, which is fine, unless you are an accountant and work out that the real cost of that @ the official ATO (Australian Tax Office) reimbursement rate is $21.12 , then there’s the tubing 120k $105.00.
Thinking about the real cost makes shipping from the US look like a great option! (But it doesn’t take away the pain…)