Why so expensive?

[alan12013]

That's understandable depending on their buying power... My father owns a hobby business that does about 350k per year in sales from very similar items and he has to use similar equipment. The cost of repairs on the equipment is pretty steep as well especially the lasers. I'm a business owner as well so I know how hard it is to run a business. My margin is 10-40% of cost depending on the item.

[CORBIN911]

A dremel will not give you perfectly straight cuts like a machine will, and when building a rack or cage you want your cuts to be nice and straight so your seams will line up.




This is where I am at now. I am building lizard cages that allow for a deep substrate layer because there aren't any off the shelf cages like this. I bought 1 4x8 foot sheet of 1/4in XPVC and had it cut and it cost me around 138 bucks, turns out that it is way too flimsy and now I need to brace it with metal framing to get the structure to be sound, luckly I have a machine shop at my disposal, but because of needing the framing I am looking at about 300 bucks all said and done for a 4x2x2ft cage. That is only for materials that is not counting labor.

To build a rack you can use a basic table saw/skill saw, PVC cages are different specially with chemical welds.

But to say you cant without "Special machines" Someone doesnt seem very Mcguvery!

[jclaiborne]

To build a rack you can use a basic table saw/skill saw, PVC cages are different specially with chemical welds.

But to say you cant without "Special machines" Someone doesnt seem very Mcguvery!

Table Saw-yes, skill saw maybe, but I wouldn't use it for a cage for the reason you stated above welding seams. Everytime I cut something with a skill saw there is at least one small wave in it and it drives me insane. I'm all about Mcguver style fixes when its necessary but when I have access to the proper tools and am making display cages there is no reason to do it any other way than the correct way. Plus back to the OP if I paid a company hundreds for a cage/rack the last thing I would want it compared to is MCguvery haha.