Well I just had to do something about the broken sander that DocBlake talked me into buying. So here is what I did.
First, I traced the broken part onto paper, took all the critical measurements and did the annotation. This took about an hour.
Then I drew the part up from scratch in my CAD software. For this I used Vectric Aspire 10. The drawing and toolpathing took me about 3 hours.
Then I cut the part out on my CNC machine. This operation only took 2 minutes per part. Making the second part was easy as all I had to do was mirror-copy the first part.
I removed the parts from the billet, hand sanded and cleaned up. The parts are cut from 1/4" walnut. The cleanup took about 10 minutes.
Finally, I reassembled the parts onto the bed and sander. The tool is now stronger than before and looks better too. As you can see, about 4 hours went into making these relatively simple parts. If I were going into production, I now have the basis to produce hundreds of parts from the same CAD files. Couple of things I wanted to point out that Dave Stevens has been saying... 1) it takes a TON of work to copy and fabricate existing parts. Almost as much work as designing them from scratch. 2) Many people are quick to say this type of work when done on models is a form of "piracy". Perhaps, if the intention is to sell for profit. But the point is... it still takes a LOT of work, skill, knowledge, and expensive tools. It's not like making a Xerox copy.. LOL
Ok Doc!!! You are out of the dog house for making me buy cheap tools!! LOL