Brent , I think I told you how I got started as well as why I got out of " making parts for money " . Main reason was , there was no money to be made , or I should say easy money . My machines have sat idle for years other than what I want to do with them . No money involved other than the occasional beer job for the neighbors or farmers . Three things will determine your future as a shop owner . Quality , cost , and delivery time . If you don't have two out of three of these , you're sunk . These days as in the past , I only consider breakdown work . If a plant manager or owner of a company approaches me about needing work performed , find out the details . If he has a line down that produces $2000 an hour and he needs a part immediately , yeah , I consider it. Production ? Forget it . Having a shop sit idle is not a bad thing . It's there when needed , just get the word out to the right people that it is available . As far as an hourly rate .......................................you may charge $30 an hour for say Bridgeport work . ou may charge $150 an hour for large lathe work . It depends on what equipment you have on hand . R&D , breakdown work , one offs should be what you're looking for . You know I am back at the company I managed 35 years ago . My plant manager used to give me work to do at home . I charged $75 an hour back in 1986 which was good money back then . The reason they would do this is my time was not fully burdened with the company's overhead costs , so we both made out well . As an example . One of the jobs was a 3" or so pipe connector with an internal taper pipe thread . We made 1000s of these for our larger pressure vessels . Typically , they went onto one of the huge LeBlonde VMCs and were thread milled . Did a nice job but tied the high dollar machines up for $hit work basically . I set the lathe up with the taper attachment and threaded these things every frikkin day for a year . Good money .
So fast forward 32 years . I'm back at this same company . I have a 10 minute drive to work vs. an hour or so on I 95 . The guy who worked in my basement shop and who I brought into the company , eventually ended up as plant manager over the years . He is now my boss !
I currently run the plant from 7pm-7am ( although at this point I'm off for this chemo and upcoming operation ) , but I'm in touch daily with what's going on within the plant . He knows I'll be back when I'm able to be back , we have some work to do . We make a product , we do not make " parts " . Myself being on nightshift , I do make parts when needed . A line goes down , emergency crap , improving production processes etc . Whatever , back to the point . I send jobs out , doesn't pay to make these parts in house . Easy crap . wide open tolerances for a mill . We go thru this stuff daily as part of the production process and these are expendable parts . Next time I get over there I'll get with my planner and see what they are paying for these parts , and I'll forward the info to you to see if you're interested . It's like I said , I couldn't care less as to who makes them , as long as I have them for my shop and people. Damn , long post . Sorry to bore you , and next time down , I'll run you thru the plant . Dave
BTW , my boss knows of you from the trips we've met up on . We are always recruiting new people interested in this trade . I told him I was hitting Cabin Fever over the weekend , he's up in New Freedom Pa. and we just had a new member join our website from that area . If you ever get the urge to explore , let me know . We pay good !
