Wheel design?

Im trying to learn about wheel design. Anyone know anything bout designing wheels. Mostly what programs most companies use. Ive tried emailing some companies to ask what prorgams they use but nobody wants to respond. I want to start taking some classes but am unsure what program i want to learn.

Dont waste your time. There is no money in wheels.

I use solidworks for my desings... But good luck, I have tried selling my designs to a few companies and as of yet no luck...

Edited: 6/28/2008 1:05:30 PM by LowBlazin

not really looking to sell my designs but eventually get my own company going someday. this is more for a side hobby right now, not a daily. But very serious about getting something going.

I am currently looking into starting my own company... you had better have a great investor to back you, it will take somewhere in the area of 250 000 for me to get up and going, including machines, forged blanks, and the initial DOT testing on my designs...

For a hobby that's cool though, I still think solidworks is a good start for you, it is a very easy program to use, and I can give you lots of tips and tricks for setting up wheel designs.

3dsmax, maya, solidworks, all will work for what u want to do.

we have designed 4 to 5 wheels for companies over the past few years. there is no money in it for the amount of money it will take to start up a wheel company. you are talkin hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yeah and that is hundreds of thousands, with absolutely no guarantee of ever getting any return. I talk from time to time with the guys from MHT, and the amount of wheels that thye produce, then re melt down if they don't sell is staggereing.

I have given them around 10 designs, and only 1 was market viable, I have a good 20 more finished on my computer right now, but I just don't know if the time spent in designing them is worth the money you get from selling them.

What about just having someone cut your wheels. Like bonspeed and others do. I was thinking more along the lines of something like that to start. Im sure it would take a lot of money to just start up an actual manufacturing company.

I looked into it years ago, even if you went super duper budget your still looking at over 100k to start cutting wheels and thats just a used cnc machine and some other equipment. Not even getting into a shop to hold it all, dot stuff, insurance to cover your ass if a wheel you build breaks, etc. Some CNC machines that would be affordable could take 8hrs to cut a wheel, so 4 days to cut a set of wheels in some cases longer. Litterly to make a "wheel company" work, you would need several machines and some great designs and a huge warehouse. I wouldn't even consider starting a wheel company correctly without 300-500k + working capital. Less than that and you would find yourself behind like a lot of companies out there. Farming out your cutting to "other" companies also isn't so great of a idea, some of them are super duper slow and would just ruin your name. If you have good designs your likely to be able to make more money just selling your design to someone that already makes wheels.