New Home Shop - Side Hustle

MtnBiker

MtnBiker

H-M Supporter - Diamond Member
H-M Lifetime Diamond Member
Joined
May 7, 2020
Messages
263
Have spent some quality time on the PM forum but this one is a better fit for our business. My oldest, Mikkel, and I have jumped feet first into a serious side hustle (Scorched Earth MetalWorks, LLC). He's a welding engineer, CWI, experienced welder and works in the defense armoring business (think up-armoring vehicles for DOD). I'm a career business/IT guy with experience in aerospace engineering and financial services. Neither of us wants to work for the man forever. Attaching some pictures of the shop so far. Blessed with an 800 sq ft garage. Insulated on all walls, ceiling and now garage door. Neighbors have no complaints on noise and the city has given us their blessing. We had an electrician put a sub-panel in the garage and we've taken it from there...bending conduit and installing 2 50 amp circuits for the welders, a 6-20 for our 20amp 230v equipment and bunch of dedicated 120's (yes, you can run multiple circuits through conduit according to code). More to come.

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This is the new weld table (the beater table above will still come in handy). Siegmund System 28 Imperial (4x8). 2,200 lbs of flatness. Quantum is running really good intro deals on this new model (about $3k less than a comparable and smaller metric version).

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Plans and supplies for the new weld cart (will hold two welders, two full size gas bottles and more). Based on the commercial carts Mikkel is using at work. I like that he's a CAD/CAM pro!


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Playing with the fixturing package that came with:

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Looking forward to getting to know everyone here and sharing ideas/projects.
 
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Welcome to the forum and kudos for launching a new venture!
 
That is awesome! Do you give tours? Maybe next trip to PHX?
Robert
 
Just a note on the Spanco crane. We looked hard and most everything out there explicitly states that the crane cannot be moved while loaded (trolley only). This overbuilt unit is rated to 3 tons and can be moved under full load. Has 8" casters and worked great moving the weld table off the trailer. The Spanco e-series is also pretty economical (especially if you can pick it up at the factory - we saved $600 on shipping by driving to Las Vegas). Anyway - this allows us to pull big items off our trailer for repair or fab and deliver to customers. Very important when the city won't allow you to run a storefront out of a suburban garage. Startups like low overhead - and this solution allows us a very large work envelope while staying cheap for now.
 
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What a bargain, the Siegmund System 28 tables are only $500/sq. ft.

Makes Certiflat's $50/sq. ft. tables seem like a screaming deal. I want to put a welding top on a 28x60 bench real bad.
 
pontiac428 said:
What a bargain, the Siegmund System 28 tables are only $500/sq. ft.

Makes Certiflat's $50/sq. ft. tables seem like a screaming deal. I want to put a welding top on a 28x60 bench real bad.
Click to expand...

The Certiflats are awesome...incredible value for sure. We went with Siegmund for the whole fixturing ecosystem (their catalog is weld porn). The ability to dramatically expand our work envelope is kind of amazing (if not stupidly expensive). Figured we'd amortize the purchase over a lot of years.

(btw...did the math and the Siegmund Imperial, with the discount, was only $178/sq ft)
 
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Wow, congrats!

Make sure the insurance man knows what you're doing in there, and how much it all costs. It'd be a cryin' shame to have a claim denied because they didn't know you were running a business, and then found out about it after-the-fact.
 
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