I’d love to meet more of the folks out at RMRRF next year 
Maybe what we really need is to crowdfund Ryan to travel the world to each of these wonderful places and host a meet-up and parts making festival.
How’s that for signing Ryan up for extra work? 
Alright, I thought maybe I should harden up, order an off cut of aluminium and put the LR3 to work.
That’s about $70US including postage.
Or maybe I will eventually come to my senses and have a chat to @vicious1 !
I am all for more travel. If I can free up some time, I have an idea for this, I will definitely go to more *RRF’s!
That’s crazy. I got a similar size off-cut of 9mm alu from a local machine shop for $20 all-in. (They wanted $30 plus tax, but I showed them a $20 bill and they were happy to take it). And that’s in $CAD, which is almost as worthless as $AUD.
BTW, the $76 AUD ($62 + 14 S&H) works out to around $49 USD, according to online currency converters. Unless you’re getting a smoking deal from your local money changer 
Ahh yes, perhaps it wasn’t a money changer’s deal I was smoking? 
That was a typo, so well caught.
I don’t really calculate the cost of things including “car mileage”, and I will consider the 240 k return trip to pick up my tubing as an “outing” not a delivery cost, but perhaps with similar mileage needed to find a machine shop with ali stock, (surely not?), I guess my point about delivery cost from the US is just reinforced!
I’m i the same boat here, the postage is a killer for ordering just 2 plates.
I have turned the dxf files into a 3d printable template.
I plan to rough cut the outline using a bandsaw before trimming the final shape using a flush trim bit in a router table.
If this fails I will just order a set from the store
That should work if access to aluminium plate at a reasonable cost, but the solution to the killer postage is to order more stuff and average the cost a bit.
My plates came from amazon!
Are there any local online shops you guys might recommend I ask to carry some of my parts I can send a larger box to?
There are shops that carry 3d printed parts (even Prusa bits) but my experience is that the savings are non-existent. Delivery and margins (because everyone wants to drive a Porsche! 
) take care of that.
I have ordered a couple of bits from these guys, and the prices seem to be pretty much in line with what we’d expect, lots of stuff appears to be out of stock, which may well be a seasonal thing (remember this is our summer holidays as well so we’ve pretty much been shut down for a month) - delivery by post starts at $10 AUD (which is what we’d expect.
