When to turn a hobby into a side job.

Brento

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When i decided to get my own machines i knew i could possibly make it into a hobby as well as get a little extra cash here and there to either further the hobby or just spending cash for the wife and I.

I havent gotten the machines up and running yet due to looking into houses right now and do not want to do all of the work to set up and tear down to move and set up again. With this in mind i have time to atleast plan out projects i would like to do as in make some tooling to make life easier, make tools so i dont have to buy the like a fly cutter or a dovetail cutter, make fixtures for setting up angles in a vice or even a fixture plate to grip onto the stock while machining to full depth of a part. The more i get into planning these jobs i am seeing ill have projects to do for a while to keep me busy however the materials. Oh the materials will cost me a fortune.

As seeing how much material i would need to do these jobs i wonder when is the best time to try and get a little side work for extra cash for these projects. Does everyone think i should make these fixture and tooling projects first before trying to grab a side job?

What i have in my arsenal as of now would be just a 4 inch vice for a mill and a 3 jaw chuck for my lathe. A few of these fixture projects would include an index using spare lathe gears as well as maybe turning it into a rotary table.

Just looking for opinions from some of you experience guys as it was a thought that popped into my head while mowing the lawn this afternoon.


*EDIT* sorry for the long wall of text/rant. If this question isnt allowed then admins may delete this thread.
 
The short answer is no, however if you manage to befriend someone in a high position in the maintenance department of a VERY LARGE COMPANY they will throw you work that you consider large money and they consider the cost of lunch for the office everyday.

I owned a small shop for 20+ years, a friend was promoted to head of maintenance at a DC for a VERY LARGE COMPANY, I got a good deal of their work when they changed a process or there was an equipment failure. This was one of their smaller DC's moving $4,000,000/6,000,000 per day of product. Eventually all the work that I did was for this one customer because it was just so wildly profitable you simply could not turn it down. This lasted for 10 years.

Then they built a new DC several miles away and promoted everyone that I knew , I could have spent 3 or 4 years waiting for the new place to need my services but didn't have the money for a dry spell that long, so I closed shop and went to work for one of my competitors just making parts on the clock, this is much less stressful.
 
Well i am an apprentice cnc machinist as a small company right now and im sure i could get work from them maybe dont know yet bc the stuff i do at work im not sure if i could do yet doing manual. Ive seen a guy say he would post on craigslist and say looking for side machinist work as a hobby but would look at the job up front to see if he could do it. I was thinking of doing this but again when to do this is the opinion im looking for.
 
I am an apprentice "CNC" machinist at 60 years old, I used manual machines for a living for 30+ years until I closed shop and went to work for the shop where I am now, about 5/6 years ago give or take a year. My new employer new that I had no experience with NC machines but was very competent with lathe work, he threw me to the wolves straight away.
Here is the machine, here is the part drawing, I need 20 by the end of today.
Needless to say this did not happen, I knew exactly what was needed to make the parts, feeds, speeds, doc, tooling, work holding, order of operations, exactly the same as a manual op but without all of the tedious knob turning. It took me about 4 hours to figure out basic turning op's and the another 6 months or so to become fast at fingercad.
After several years I can now bang out a fairly complicated 2 axis multi tool lathe program in minutes.

Good luck
 
I would have to say im doing good where i am now but i sometimes still feel like i know nothing when i set up jobs and such.
 
As seeing how much material i would need to do these jobs i wonder when is the best time to try and get a little side work for extra cash for these projects. Does everyone think i should make these fixture and tooling projects first before trying to grab a side job?

Anytime is a good time to take on some side work.

I just made fixtures and tooling as needed for specific jobs as they came up. Some tooling I buy, some I make. For instance, I've had my lathe for about 25 years, but it wasn't until last year that I needed a steady rest for it for a job. So first I built the steady rest then did the job, I have used it twice now. Nothing wrong with building tools, doing so can only increase your skills, but they are pretty useless sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

I wouldn't get too far ahead on specialized tooling, you might wind up building things that you never use. I've had a whole set of fly cutter holders on my shelf for about 25 years, only used them a couple of times. It is a good idea to stock up on lathe bits, end mills, and other tooling when you can find deals on them at garage sales, Craigslist, and Ebay. I'm guessing I have 300 to 400 end mills in stock right now, most of them bought from Craigslist sellers.
 
When you had the job with the steady rest did it push your job back a little? Did the customer care that it had to be pushed back a little?
 
For work, schedule is THE MOST IMPORTANT item. Make a promise and keep it is the only way to keep me as a happy customer (that and parts to print).
If I am having something done for personal use I want the best value for the project, I let schedule slide and value price and quality higher.

So it depends on who your customers are.
 
When you had the job with the steady rest did it push your job back a little? Did the customer care that it had to be pushed back a little?

It pushed the job back a week. But in this case it didn't really matter because I was doing a machine design/build and this was only a small part of the overall project.

If the customer would have asked me to just drill the hole through the part and wanted it ''today'', I wouldn't have accepted the job or I would have told him he could have it ''next week''. I'm not afraid to turn down a job that there isn't enough money in, or conditions won't allow me to meet a schedule.
 
For work, schedule is THE MOST IMPORTANT item. Make a promise and keep it is the only way to keep me as a happy customer (that and parts to print).

This cannot be overstated. I shop out a fair amount of work at my day job, either when our guys can't meet our schedule, or it's cheaper to do so. I've personally blacklisted a half dozen or more shops because they agreed on a delivery date, then missed it wildly. There's enough competition out there that if you miss the first job I give you, I will never give you my business again. Under promise and over deliver. If you don't think you can meet someone's deadline, tell them as much. They'll either work with you to see if you can find a date that works for both of you, or they'll find someone else for this job, but they almost certainly won't write you off completely for being up front about your limitations.

I've now found a local shop who often cannot meet my deadlines (fault for this is on "our" end, since we prefer waiting until we're late before we start), but they're accurate in their time estimates, often delivering earlier than quoted. I don't even entertain other shops at this point, I just bring them the work directly. The more work I give them, the more able to fit me into their schedule they are. Needless to say, they also do very high quality work. It's a winning situation for everyone involved when you can establish these relationships, like P.Waller said.

You won't get a returning customer out of every job, but every job has the potential to steer other customers away. If I've learned anything through my own time in the shop, it's that I will underestimate how long a given job will take me, 100% of the time. Bidding jobs accurately is not easy.
 
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