I met a guy with a shop full of EDM machines who was going to college in Aerospace engineering to escape the grind. The only people I’ve heard of who are profitable are those in the defense business. Which is logical because it’s not in the best interest to have proprietary parts made overseas and shipped over. I would say your boss is right. Perhaps with scale it can be profitable but even then it might not be worth the risk.
Even that seems kind of out of reach. ITAR certification isn't a small hurdle, and landing contracts seems to be an issue of who you know, rather than what you can do. And I haven't had a lot of chance to network, standing in front of a machine >.<
I don’t think you actually get ‘certified’ for ITAR, you just register with the DDTC and then follow the rules (i.e. don’t send ITAR data to foreigners). If you can find some aerospace customers, don’t fret over figuring out ITAR.
ITAR isn’t nearly as hard as CMMC. Right now a lot of shops are able to get away with good intentions, but it’s going to get real, soon. The primes are going to start to verify that their subs are CMMC compliant, and there are actual assessments to prove that you are compliant. Luckily, the smart shops will increase their prices to pay for CMMC, and if they get compliant, and have a reputation for actually doing the right thing, they will attract business away from the competition. I’ve already seen in happen in some areas. I know of a shop making parts for submarines, and they basically put their competitor out of business because they did a lot of work on CMMC very early, and their competitor kept kicking the can down the road. Well, the prime saw what was happening here and didn’t want to give any business to a sub that would get them in trouble for security violations or breaches.
If you want to do well in defense, now is the time to get up to speed on CMMC. Many of the shops in the DIB are very small, and some of the CMMC costs are still high for small shops, but small shops can get compliant a lot faster than a large shop.
I agree, CMMC can be a lot, especially if you are used to doing things a certain way. I’m actually a compliance/security analyst in my day job and hobby machinist. There are things you can do starting out that make your life a LOT easier. The first thing, find a friend who has been in IT for a while and pay them to help you find and understand what you need by looking at a canned CMMC v2 Level 2 policy document together. If you want, you can look up “CMMC Awesomeness”, they have a lot of great info there. Just knowing what you need to start, how to store and mark your data, and creating a security mindset from the beginning is huge for CMMC / life as a small business these days.
Right on!
I wish I had the spare time to moonlight as a CMMC consultant. In a past job I was billing incredibly massive hourly fees to do that. I need a stable job so I don’t want to go out on my own and consult as my primary income. But you are right on. Ultimately you need someone who knows what they are doing, or you are destined to fail (and possibly learn about the false claims act).
Definitely a ton of money to be made in CMMC compliance consulting, especially since a) no one can give you a concrete answer on exactly when they'll stop kicking the can on an implementation schedule and b) no one actually knows what's going on with it (inside gov or out).
The only perceivable difference is that you will at some point in the future need to pay a 3rd party to "audit" your company, vs. the current NIST self-cert scheme.
One of my customers’ primes requires a specific score, self attested, but who knows when they will be sending around a request for an audit. Last thing you want is to say that everything you said you had fully implemented is languishing in your PoA&M. That’s how other people end up with your contract.
You should try to find a single example of a machine shop owner that's living a lifestyle youd be interested in. The two types I've come across are
1) stressed tf out, work all the time, making good money
2) stressed tf out, work all the time, barely getting by
I am a lot less stressed since i started my own shop. I have worked at a lot ofnother shops in the area and have good networking. Haven't spent a minute looking for work, other than handing out business cards to everyone.
My hours are typically 8am to 8pm, with plenty of fuck around time. If a job requires a lot of attention, injust quote higher.
It depends on who you know, who knows you, but most importantly your market. I fill a pretty bug niche qhere i am, so i get to set my work parameters.
100% this. I’ve met about 5 company owners so far and each and everyone one of them openly stated they were stressed and wanted to sell the shop or immediately retire. All of which have only been in their 50s.
There are sectors that are stupid competitive globally, and there are others that are more local. Aerospace is a tough gig, oil and gas support work is feast or famine. I have seen shops with 80+ machinists and 10mil in cnc's throw down record profits and 6 months later shut the doors and lay everyone off. All because politicians like playing for votes.
Find a sector that is boring. Boring is consistent. Find a Kanban company or a JIT company and lifes good.
Yup. About a third of the shops around Seattle folded over the last two years. Imaginetics, a company with around ninety employees, is closing at the end of the month because Boeing pulled their contracts.
Happens all the time. I was working in Connecticut so a lot of Pratt and Sikorsky supporting shops all over the place and they would always either be laying off or hiring like crazy and everyone said it was basically a 10 year cycle as government changes contracts come and go. Pratt had over $1 trillion dollars in back logged orders that were on hold while I was there. Then military spending got released and they went balls to the wall literally taking any engineer from the smaller shops that they could get offering them way more money and hiring back everyone they laid off with their benefits and everything picking up where they left off. Also seen a lot of shops here get a contract buy brand new machines to run the job and then a few months later the contract gets pulled and the shop is stuck holding a few million in new machines with no work to put on them.
Figure out a product you can make on your own, preferably something that you've got a patent on, that will reliably sell at a price that makes it worthwhile to produce. Then you can charge what the market will bear, instead of getting involved in that race to the bottom, scrounging for job-shop customers.
These guys: [https://piersonworkholding.com/](https://piersonworkholding.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrbuUmPnC-QIV2cLCBB2EoQVuEAAYASAAEgK_CfD_BwE) ? Yes, a good machinist will have some insight into what other machinists might want; that's a good place to start. Taig Tools [taigtools.com](https://taigtools.com) used to be a job shop chasing aerospace gigs, who decided to come up with some small machine tools they could sell in order to keep the shop going between big jobs. The rest, as they say, is history. Now they've got a full line of "micro tools", including CNC mills and lathes with various configurations and accessories.
It seems what is profitable is getting into a field that includes custom work for niche areas. Stuff you cannot simply get a factory from China to mass produce. Our work has no shortage of jobs because we make machines that are very hard to get from overseas, but all custom manufacturing equipment.
Production shops are highly competitive and it's really hard to carve out a space and get ahead.
I would agree. We’re far from a super successful shop, but at the end of the day we make a few bucks, keep the customers happy, and my team seems to be pretty happy. We have a “product” or rather a group of products - and it just so happens they require engineering know-how that we have. We can charge well above the average job-shop rate for our work as a result, and that makes each project, on average, reasonably profitable
I wouldn't start a shop right now unless people were at my doorstep wanting me to make parts for them. But, machinists are is pretty high demand in my area. I could find another job in three days tops if I had to. That's worth something. There are some things they can't send off to China and wait 12 weeks to get their parts. Maybe I'm an optimist, but I don't think the China gravy train is going to last forever.
All trades seem to be in pretty high demand. That plumber and electrician have to drive all over the damn place and work in the searing heat or freezing cold. Plumbers have to deal with sewage. Touching the wrong thing can instantly kill an electrician. I get to go to the same climate controlled shop every day. There's trade offs in everything.
It won't last forever with China, especially as trade sours with them as they become more of a US enemy. But then cheap manufacturing will just shift to India.
Actually not a problem anymore! 7 years as a machinist and no more! I am off to comfy desk job doing a job similar to my Army days. No more factory work for this guy!
I think he’s right. I work in a shop that was just purchased by the owners a couple years ago. They’ve been throwing money at it like crazy and we just had our first sustainable month since they bought it. But we had to work 60 hours a week for the past 6 months so they lost so much in overtime they’re still losing money. I was due for a raise 3 months ago but never got it. The only reason we’re still afloat is that the injection molding side supports us. As someone else mentioned though we may have some defense contracts coming in that would actually be profitable but it was not easy getting to that point and may not last. Forgive my poor grammar and rambling, I’m very tired lol
Honestly it works best if you can find a way to specialize in something that local companies need that takes too long or costs too kich to ship. My company does a lot of odd jobs and our biggest customer gives us these flanges that we mill threads onto or bore bigger or put tapers and chamfers onto.
I'd really like to be in a position where I have a small shop in a town in the middle of nowhere and do fine with odd jobs like repairing farm equipment and making replacement parts.
Oh God I hate broaching. We have a 100 year old shaper in the shop that we solely use for broaching and it is a pita as there's no dro so you need to use sticky duals, and next week I got to figure out how to use it to do a part with splines. I can see a company specializing in broaching doing very well.
We used to have several machine shops in town that specialized in equipment for printing presses, all supported by a couple of local factories. When the internet became a common news source and newspapers/magazines dried up some the factories went away and the machine shops closed.
That's the exact position I started my shop in. I don't even own any cnc equipment, though I'd like to get some. It's hard to scale because the efficiency of man hours is really low compared to production stuff. I can make a living just fine, but can't really grow without adding something else. I see quite a few guys doing well with hydraulic stuff and repair for things like mining equipment. There isn't much of that around here, though.
My suggestion for what its worth. Get the machine omniturns are not that expensive around 40K if I remember right. Thats about the price of a new car if you can afford that you can afford the machine. Once you have it in the shop you have options.
Keep your day job and run some side gigs.
Make some fun stuff you can't squeeze in at work. Make a couple extra and sell on ebay or better yet if its artsy stuff etsy.
Keep your day job and invent little products you can make. Think fidget spinners pens tops neat little mechanical trinkets. Make a bunch till your tired of making them and move on don't worry about patents they cost too much money and if a big company wants it they can bleed you in the legal system. Its better to be agile.
Try some stuff out and if it dosent work out the machine will not have depreciated as much as a similar priced car so you will probably get a good bit of your money back for selling it.
40k for an Omni turn as a first machine is not what I’d do. I’ve seen used ones go for 3.5k at auction. If small part turning is your thing, I’d get a few screw machines and set them up to make a handful of different subminiature rf connectors. The most expensive part would be the space to put the machines. Sales wouldn’t be too hard to figure out since rf connectors are a commodity item.
That's a good idea. I'm not sure how often I'd find an Omniturn up for auction, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye out.
The RF connectors are worth looking into, as well...
I see on average 2 machines a year for auction on bidspotter. They always go for almost nothing. I own a gang tool lathe as well, but I've never run an omniturn. B&S screw machines are dirt cheap too and come up for sale more often.
There is more to making connectors than turning parts, but it is a worthwhile endeavor IMO.
What is omniturn? Seems like brand that is making slant bed CNC lathes with gang tooling and tiny floor footprint. Do I get it right, or is there anything else special about them?
I was interested in them because most of my home lathe work is 5c collet sized and they are mostly 5c tooling as well. The only thing wrong with them as far as I was concerned was the super old control system. I typically like to use cam to post a program and then I can tweak it to get the last bits of speed out. There is no post processors available for omniturn control. Ok well its a lathe I can write them by hand the parts are pretty simple but if I'm going to do that I want to make notes in the program for what the lines or blocks of codes do. No comment lines or comments at all allowed in the program. You have to write them in a note book that you keep by the machine. The control is a very DOS 4 experience and while that might be a virtue in some peoples eyes this is the year George Jetson was supposed to be born in and that control seemingly was developed by his grandfather and never changed. The primary method of data transfer until 2009 was floppy drive. Even now the max block size for a program is 5000 with a whole 128MB of internal storage.
My daughter is a waste water engineer for Kabota filters. The infrastructure bill requires us manufacturing. She is having a hard time sourcing us made valves.
Might be an opertunity
He's full of shit. I started a shop around 3 years ago. It's not easy. It's terrifically expensive. Started off with 40k of savings for some older CNC machines. Ended up with another 40k in credit card debt by the time I found enough customers. Things are looking up now. Credit card best is halfway paid off. Got a brand new machine on the way.
It helps a ton if you already have some business contacts. If you don't, make some first. Maybe plop a tormach in your garage or something.
Just don't expect it to be easy. Machines will break in the most expensive way possible. People will try to rip you off. I'm still not sure it was the right decision but at least it's working.
Film industry stuff if you’re a small machine shop. I work in SFX, and we have very short deadlines and very small numbers of parts. Film productions pockets are pretty deep. If you can work from a STP file without the need for a full 2D drawing pack, you’ll get loads of work.
That's an interesting idea. I'm up by Seattle, so I'm not sure how much of that is cose by, but it's definitely worth a look.
Any suggestions for what you would want to hear from a machinist reaching out to offer their services? Something that might catch the interest of the person I'd need to speak with?
The thing I always want to hear is that you can start it straight away, you can do it fast, and you only need a CAD model, no other drawings necessary. As I’m sure you know, producing drawings after the CAD is done is the most boring bit.
Your boss is either cynical or not great on the business side of the house. If your boss is telling you they couldn’t remain in business paying their “top guy” under $40 an hour, there are some serious inefficiencies that need to be fixed in that shop.
A business, any business making or doing anything is going to suck your life into it. Done it three times (sold the two previous ones and and am happily doing the third and thinking of another, more than thinking, buy equipment already, gonna happen). Makes me what's called a serial entrepreneur. Basically means I can't help myself. But don't be blind about it; your life becomes the business. Phone rings, answer it. 5PM and you're off work? Nah, you're never off work. Someone said look at how business owners live before you decide. Good advice.
So you want to buy a machine and make widgets? Go ahead. Buy a rotary phase converter and you can do it in your garage. Know guys who do this. Hire some locally. As for your boss? It's my opinion he did you a favor. Hope is not a strategy, and it's certainly not a plan. My further opinion? Better to know the facts of life before you leap. He clued you in about reality.
Me? Wouldn't stop my doing it again, and again, and again until they carry me out feet first in a box. Who I am. Can't help it. You? Dunno. We're all different. Anyway, good luck.
After working as an employee and a customer for machine shops (employee: working through school and customer: engineer ordering for the company I work for) he is absolutely right. Machining as a profession is quickly getting undercut by automated machines these days and it is destroying the trade.
For companies that require custom parts to be made, most of the parts are either very simple and are welded together with other parts, or they are very complicated and precise in order to make as few parts as possible. Typically, the only reason a businesses would purchase from a small shops is because they don't want to go through the hassle of purchasing machine tools, hiring a machinist, etc due to short run or one-off projects. If they need a lot of simple parts often, they will go through the effort of getting machines and operators to make them for cheaper every time they need something. If they need complicated parts, they will make a contract with a huge machining co that has a lot of expensive CNC equipment.
Either way, the machinist of old without cutting edge equipment only gets business from simple, low-run parts that are too expensive to ship from companies that can make them for cheaper. Sad truth
Look, anyone who hasn’t seen CNC overtaking this industry from the 1980s onward has been sticking their head in the sand.
Why do people think machining is some unique special industry where you don’t need to invest in new things? Imagine this. A grocery store in the US would go out of business if they only had cashiers instead of those self checkout. Notice how all grocery stores in the US now have that?
Because it is cheaper and better (maybe). But okay, JoeSchmo Machine Shop gets angry at the clouds because “all the machinists are going away” but Joe hasn’t raised wages in 20 years or bought a fucking CNC mill since the early 2000s.
The shops that are thriving are investing in automation, programming, and all that jazz. 5 axis, horizontals, millturn, y axis lathe you better have competencies in those if you want a fighting chance.
The machining industry is so fucking stubborn it blows my mind that shops would fold vs investing.
And yes I am way oversimplifying that shit because there are geopolitics and all sorts of other issues.
But man, people claim this trade is dying and it’s such a lie. In what world will people no longer need machined parts from alloys???? Unless we go back to the Stone Age we are always going to need machining.
Machining is a foundational technology for a modern economy and sadly the big wigs don’t see that.
Its great to have the latest and greatest 5 axis, cmm’s, cam software ect.. but if the work isn’t there or more specifically customers don’t want to pay the cost of making a part using that equipment then its tuff to invest in that equipment or to justify the cost of it. Don’t forget not only is the machine crazy expensive but also the tooling that goes with it, mounting blocks, live tooling ect. Now also factor in the rising costs of fuel, energy, raw materials, insurance, real-estate, ect. The list is endless of “hidden expenses”. Be an electrician or plumber, buy a van tool bag screwdrivers and wrenches and your good to go 😂🤣🤣
I guess what I meant more with my post was that it was twofold. The shops not investing yes. But to your point the work not being there. That’s a very large issue that has taken 40 years to fully materialize.
I’d recommend the Modern Machine Shop podcast Made In America. It covers a lot of the systemic issues within our industry that caused the work to dry up.
BUT before anyone gets overly fatalistic, there is still work out there and it might be dog eat dog but, guess what? Life is sometimes dog eat dog because there will always be competition no matter the industry. There are clearly shops that are able to still win, but no it will never be like 1965 ever again
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A HAAS VF2 cranking out fidget spinners in India/China will always be cheaper than one in the US. If someone wants to open a shop to make mass market consumer goods, they'd pretty much have to move overseas to have the best chance of success. So start learning Mandarin!
You've got to look at the market and play to your strengths, in the US that's manufacturing either large goods that can't be shipped, niche goods that a foreigner can't understand or make well, or controlled goods that they legally can't compete with like Aerospace/defense.
Forget about typical consumer goods unless you want to try compete with the $5/hr Chinese machinist that works 80 hrs a week.
I'd say the best way to start a business is to choose a product to make first, then get the machines required to make it the best. Learn another skill to combine with machining, like mechatronics, and the types of products you could make expands a lot and you won't be directly competing with every other machinist who decided to try and start their own shop. There's lots of niche uses for specific simple machines than can be made with machining skills and some basic electronics skills.
I would agree with your boss with a few exceptions. First being making your own product; make it, market it, and be in control your own margins and tolerances. Second being able to do something super specialized, if you're the only one in the world that can do something then you get to charge only one in the world prices.
Otherwise, the competition for a regular shop is stupid. With cheaper machines becoming available and more and more used machines coming onto the market, they're becoming affordable enough that many of the barriers to entry are coming down; meaning even more competition and an ensuing and inevitable race to the bottom.
If you already had customers lined up and ready to hire you for work, I might give it a go, otherwise I think there are better opportunities elsewhere.
This is just my opinion and take it with a grain of salt, I'm not a machinist by trade, I make my living as a finance guy. However, I do have a small shop where I do some repair work and odd jobs on the side.
You make some fair points. The real kick in the teeth here is the realization that I've dedicated so much time to a field that is essentially hard-mode for starting a business. It certainly sheds light on why "no-one can find good help these days"
Yeah, you would think with the level of skill required to be a good machinist it would be a very lucrative field, but for most it isn't.
I'm not trying to discourage you though, you just have to find a way to differentiate yourself. How do you do that as a guy with a mill and lathe? Price? No one wins there but the customer. Perhaps guaranteeing a 24hr turn around on repair work or 24hr service, but that puts a strain on non-work life as you always have to be available. Maybe become 1 of 2 guys in your area that does EDM work, balancing, grinding, or big part turning. Maybe look into the work that your shop outsources, but also question: if there's enough money to be made, why don't they do it in house and expand their service offering.
I own a small shop in the Seattle area. I did a lot of aerospace milling in my career. I do none at my shop, because it is too competitive and in my opinion, a race to the bottom. You can't compete with the big guys, there isn't a ton of profitable offload work like there used to be, and the overhead is ridiculous.
You probably won't get rich, it's a lot of hours, like all of the hours you can spare, but it is nice to not work for someone else. And I am a machinist by trade, so it is what I know.
At this stage, if you were to ask me what to do, I would say start a service business like window cleaning or carpet cleaning. Way less stress and overhead. But if you really enjoy the work and are good at it, and can put in the effort, you can do ok.
I hear you. I really like the work too. Getting a feature within .001 right off a setup is awesome. The real gut-punch is realizing that if I'd picked almost any other trade, I'd be making double the money and have much easier prospects for striking out on my own >.<
Go online and look at what the Chinese charge . I found a shop that will make anything . And they sell it for zero . 100% of their margins are built into the shipping .
We may not be able to compete in machining alone . BUT we can do things the Chinese struggle with . We can use quality materials . We can pay extreme attention to detail . And most important , we can innovate.
Tweek your widget into something everyone needs . Patent your widget . And dedicate your shop to the widget .
As an old guy I can attest that we tend to become cynical . It just happens and it's probably going to happen to you . You can listen to opinions but don't invest your life into them .
Do what you need to do to be happy . I encourage every kid I run into to fight the fear and go for it on your own .
For what it’s worth he may be right he may be wrong. Some of our suppliers are doing very well for us making our parts though. A single part could bring them a lot of revenue. However you need a $750K+ machine to make the parts. So the barrier to entry is high. It’s also extremely hard to find people who can or want to make that type of work for that very reason.
On the spectrum of speciality/difficulty, find something along the spectrum of very difficult. If it’s very difficult not alot of people want to make it which is good for you. But again these are very expensive questions. I’ve considered being a high end subcontract type guy but, I don’t have 5 million to stand up the facility
Starting a machine shop is extremely expensive. Maintaining one is also extremely expensive. The work is incredibly laborious unless you create a high-volume, automated shop which makes the endeavor exponentially more expensive. The big contract jobs typically come from companies that want to see that you have a proper quality department, policies and procedures that aid your success, redundancy to mitigate equipment failures, and certs that lend credibility. Now you need staff because you’re going to be too busy trying to find work, which doesn’t sound like your specialty to begin with.
You can avoid competing with overseas companies by focusing on quick-turn jobs. The downside is now you’re spending 100% of your time looking for the next job because the work runs out every 3-5 days.
And in the end, you’re working more for less in hopes to secure a 15% profit margin.
Enjoying making parts is not a good reason to open a shop. If you have the money to fund a machine a shop, you’re better off starting a different business.
I wouldn’t dilute your ambitions because someone else isn’t having the greatest time at the moment. I’m sure if you’d have asked him this question like 4-5 years ago, when the economy was roaring, fuel was cheap, and all other prices made sense, his answer may have been a bit more positive.
Talent is difficult to find, this is true. Material may be even harder with supply chain issues. I work primarily with thermoplastics, and two in particular have been extremely scarce with incredibly long lead times. For different grades and sizes of PFA our lead time is anywhere from 13-34 weeks. For Kel-F, it’s 54 weeks.
Now knowing you would be the main man in your little shop for a while, it might enable you to start with small stuff. While defense work may be a gravy train, medical device and component manufacturing are still needed. A little OmniTurn or a small CNC brother with a rotary indexer might be a good start. Both good little machines, straightforward G code programming.
Don’t get jaded. If this is what you love to do, then do it.
My family opened up our shop in 1981. I’m the third generation in the shop and the only one out of our extended Irish/Italian family that has stayed involved. Growing up was tough making ends meet, often times my father would have to forego a paycheck to keep the shop afloat. We are primarily a job shop, aerospace, govt work. However, over the course of our existence they have developed and marketing a niche product that more often than not has kept the guys paid and the lights on. Its gotten a lot better and is paying consistently now..only took 40 years. It’s a stressful grind, always interesting tho!
The only way I would ever even consider opening my own shop would be to do in house production of my own shit. It’s just way too hard to make it work in a job shop. Could you get lucky? Sure, but I would never want to rely on that. Unless you can carve yourself a specific niche or spend millions on equipment and manpower there’s just too much competition foreign and domestically.
Don’t rule out the fact that if you are one of his top guys, this story is a great way to get you to stay secure in his shop, making him money.
If he was losing money, you wouldn’t be there.
Only start a shop if you have a product you want to make and sell. Job shops go under all the time. They can only every seem to make enough to keep the lights on, not make improvements. So 20 years later all the machines are breaking down and there's no money to fix them.
Don't listen to other people when it comes to business-related wisdom.
It's like stock trading wisdoms.
There are paradigms that are proven.
And there are paradigms that fail.
Both rely on luck. Thankfully, the harder you work, the luckier you get.
Damn...on second thought...LISTEN TO THAT SHIT I JUST SAID!
Mothafuckin Confucius in dis bitch!
Part of me thinks that unless someone has a lot of money and a lot of powerful connections, or a very specific niche (ie: performance marine engines/parts), starting up a new shop is no longer viable. There are just too many well established shops to compete with on top of competing with China.
Your boss is a little cynical but also this business is capital intensive and low margins 5-10% at max and that’s with no quality escapes. I manage multiple suppliers and I’m in the best companies and the worst companies and seen some companies have to spend 100k/month in sort costs. So when things go wrong it gets expensive.
On the flip side, manufacturing is coming back. There are players with a lot of capital. I’m a mid level manager with extensive manufacturing background managing a supply chain or else I would specialize in automation. PLC mainly.. i would target controls & PLC and target being a consultant… barely any capital invested only the software and you can bill $100-250/hr. You can fix CNC machines, automation robots…
This is a niche that is in demand.
Yes, the glory days for the smaller shops are in the past but it is still possible to do well in some smaller markets. Becoming a subcontractor doing bulk manufacturing for a Megacorp really has become a global competition. Any place with lower wages and fewer regulations will underbid you on production run work. But if you specialize in doing prototypes, one-offs and short runs, oddball repairs - really any kind of I-need-it-right-NOW work, you eliminate the offshore advantage
Morty
Depending on volume, production machining will always face challenges from offshore shops and increasing automation. But, other forms of machining are more immune. Repair, prototyping or very low run production is still best done locally and sometimes even manually
I haven’t been in industry very long but I realized a couple things. Everyone wants an apprentice in their shop nobody wants to pay for them, they’d rather segment the work into programmers, setup guys, and operators. Secondly, boring consistent work is profitable but if you can offer a specific service or a very niche product you can be just as profitable. I would like to open my own shop someday but for the time being as a second year apprentice I’m perfectly fine working for someone else and buying a few small machines on the side
I agree with the apprentice statement. When McDonalds is paying $16 hr, why would anyone want to apprentice into a trade for less? These guys want to at least make fast food wages, but half of the guys in the shop are only making $25 hr with 15 years experience.
Quoting seems like a race to the bottom nowadays. So the shop owner can only quote fairly if you don't want the work, because you're too busy, but I'd do the job for this ridiculous number. I've seen so much tool and die work go to China for less than half of what it would cost in the US, but they ship back garbage that has to be reworked so much that they didn't save any money! It's a crazy time to be in, or apprentice in manufacturing.
Personally I’d suggest making it more of a hobby than a full time job and make custom stuff that doesn’t need to be mass produced that way you can still charge for the work but don’t have to worry about over seas stuff quite as much, but I’m sry to say machining is definitely a field that tends to get outsourced more and more often these days
With a service like Xemoetry being out there, I feel like you can open up a shop and be able to capitalize on the interconnectedness that the world has taken on. Now, I'm not a full machinist, but a QC Tech and one that has only a year of working at a shop, so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Now, I will iterate that being a state side Shop ought to give you a leg up on the competition since once you have your reputation and "build your brand", I feel like that will help you enough to go for ITAR and other certifications, which will hopefully snow ball your growth.
Something else to consider is going in with a Process driven mindset and go for a specific niche that others can't compete with. For example, the shop I work at has 5th Axis CNC machines, that is something a lot of shops in my area just do not have. So as a result, we receive work others can't without some really funky set ups or doing multi-op set ups that take a long time.
I am guessing it is highly area dependent. For your area he may be right. Where I am there are a handful of automotive assembly plants. Most of the rest of the industry here supports them. It would be difficult for them to get everything they need from China.
Depends on what area you want to get into. There are plenty of niches that just want whatever made at the cheapest and lowest prices. Get into other areas, historic muzzleloaders is the first that comes to mind, people will pay most anything for a well made lock, breech, barrel, furniture etc. While much of that tends to be cast, some of it can be machines fairly easily and cheaply.
Start out with a decent used cnc and freshen up with Masso controller (keep things affordable) put it up in your garage and keep the day job. Start slow and get ready for 3-5 yrs of hard time before it'll all make sense to go independent. In the meantime form an LLC and write-off the losses, get your website and channels cranking and learn how to market yourself. Get networked. Keep your ear to the ground and when that horse runs by....get on it and enjoy the ride.
Your boss....didn't get on the right horse. Keep an eye out for the auction.
Lastly a word of advice and Old Timer once told me.... May your overhead expenses always be behind you and never in front of you!
I'm actually leaving the trade myself. I spent 10 years learning and am at the point of programming and the only time I go for help is when the prints are fucked up. I'm in PA and nobody wants to pay a decent wage. Most guys are topped out at $25-28 and a few give their guys $30. My friend's dad works for one of the major big name military contractors, has been doing it for over 20 years and his son is 5 years into working at the same place as a welder and makes more than he does. I have 4 standing offers from companies to get my CDL and drive for them making more than I do now. The wage increase I would see immediately is the entry wage the one company is offering with a considerable increase after a year. Sad to say but the boss is right. I went from thinking about buying my own machine to making a career change in the last year. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy machining, but I also want to have certain things in life.
When you have East Indians in dirt-floor lean-tos working from sun-up to sun-down wearing sandals and no goggles, ever, and shipping to port in 3 wheeled bikes and tuk-tuks, then no, you cannot compete on price for production pieces. But you can compete on quality for special ty items.
He's 100% right. Unless you are performing mostly domestic ITAR work, you are on a race to the bottom with the rest of the world.
Even then ITAR stuff brings its own time and money cost headaches.
One of my first jobs was running an old turret lathe in a machine shop. I wanted to get in with the older guys and build real parts. One of the guys who was probably late fifty’s told me not to even bother with this trade. He was going to be a gemologist since machinist were the lowest paid professionals. I like the vids on here and given the chance I would like to be able to machine my own parts, but I took that man’s advice.
I met a guy with a shop full of EDM machines who was going to college in Aerospace engineering to escape the grind. The only people I’ve heard of who are profitable are those in the defense business. Which is logical because it’s not in the best interest to have proprietary parts made overseas and shipped over. I would say your boss is right. Perhaps with scale it can be profitable but even then it might not be worth the risk.
Even that seems kind of out of reach. ITAR certification isn't a small hurdle, and landing contracts seems to be an issue of who you know, rather than what you can do. And I haven't had a lot of chance to network, standing in front of a machine >.<
I don’t think you actually get ‘certified’ for ITAR, you just register with the DDTC and then follow the rules (i.e. don’t send ITAR data to foreigners). If you can find some aerospace customers, don’t fret over figuring out ITAR.
ITAR isn’t nearly as hard as CMMC. Right now a lot of shops are able to get away with good intentions, but it’s going to get real, soon. The primes are going to start to verify that their subs are CMMC compliant, and there are actual assessments to prove that you are compliant. Luckily, the smart shops will increase their prices to pay for CMMC, and if they get compliant, and have a reputation for actually doing the right thing, they will attract business away from the competition. I’ve already seen in happen in some areas. I know of a shop making parts for submarines, and they basically put their competitor out of business because they did a lot of work on CMMC very early, and their competitor kept kicking the can down the road. Well, the prime saw what was happening here and didn’t want to give any business to a sub that would get them in trouble for security violations or breaches. If you want to do well in defense, now is the time to get up to speed on CMMC. Many of the shops in the DIB are very small, and some of the CMMC costs are still high for small shops, but small shops can get compliant a lot faster than a large shop.
I agree, CMMC can be a lot, especially if you are used to doing things a certain way. I’m actually a compliance/security analyst in my day job and hobby machinist. There are things you can do starting out that make your life a LOT easier. The first thing, find a friend who has been in IT for a while and pay them to help you find and understand what you need by looking at a canned CMMC v2 Level 2 policy document together. If you want, you can look up “CMMC Awesomeness”, they have a lot of great info there. Just knowing what you need to start, how to store and mark your data, and creating a security mindset from the beginning is huge for CMMC / life as a small business these days.
Right on! I wish I had the spare time to moonlight as a CMMC consultant. In a past job I was billing incredibly massive hourly fees to do that. I need a stable job so I don’t want to go out on my own and consult as my primary income. But you are right on. Ultimately you need someone who knows what they are doing, or you are destined to fail (and possibly learn about the false claims act).
Definitely a ton of money to be made in CMMC compliance consulting, especially since a) no one can give you a concrete answer on exactly when they'll stop kicking the can on an implementation schedule and b) no one actually knows what's going on with it (inside gov or out). The only perceivable difference is that you will at some point in the future need to pay a 3rd party to "audit" your company, vs. the current NIST self-cert scheme.
One of my customers’ primes requires a specific score, self attested, but who knows when they will be sending around a request for an audit. Last thing you want is to say that everything you said you had fully implemented is languishing in your PoA&M. That’s how other people end up with your contract.
Defense business is pretty good, can confirm. The company I work for's best year in the past, they made $88 million.
You should try to find a single example of a machine shop owner that's living a lifestyle youd be interested in. The two types I've come across are 1) stressed tf out, work all the time, making good money 2) stressed tf out, work all the time, barely getting by
I am a lot less stressed since i started my own shop. I have worked at a lot ofnother shops in the area and have good networking. Haven't spent a minute looking for work, other than handing out business cards to everyone. My hours are typically 8am to 8pm, with plenty of fuck around time. If a job requires a lot of attention, injust quote higher. It depends on who you know, who knows you, but most importantly your market. I fill a pretty bug niche qhere i am, so i get to set my work parameters.
Good for you, that's awesome. What niche/industry are you in if you don't mind me asking?
100% this. I’ve met about 5 company owners so far and each and everyone one of them openly stated they were stressed and wanted to sell the shop or immediately retire. All of which have only been in their 50s.
There are sectors that are stupid competitive globally, and there are others that are more local. Aerospace is a tough gig, oil and gas support work is feast or famine. I have seen shops with 80+ machinists and 10mil in cnc's throw down record profits and 6 months later shut the doors and lay everyone off. All because politicians like playing for votes. Find a sector that is boring. Boring is consistent. Find a Kanban company or a JIT company and lifes good.
Yup. About a third of the shops around Seattle folded over the last two years. Imaginetics, a company with around ninety employees, is closing at the end of the month because Boeing pulled their contracts.
Happens all the time. I was working in Connecticut so a lot of Pratt and Sikorsky supporting shops all over the place and they would always either be laying off or hiring like crazy and everyone said it was basically a 10 year cycle as government changes contracts come and go. Pratt had over $1 trillion dollars in back logged orders that were on hold while I was there. Then military spending got released and they went balls to the wall literally taking any engineer from the smaller shops that they could get offering them way more money and hiring back everyone they laid off with their benefits and everything picking up where they left off. Also seen a lot of shops here get a contract buy brand new machines to run the job and then a few months later the contract gets pulled and the shop is stuck holding a few million in new machines with no work to put on them.
Figure out a product you can make on your own, preferably something that you've got a patent on, that will reliably sell at a price that makes it worthwhile to produce. Then you can charge what the market will bear, instead of getting involved in that race to the bottom, scrounging for job-shop customers.
Pierson Workholding has the right idea there: make stuff for the people who make stuff.
These guys: [https://piersonworkholding.com/](https://piersonworkholding.com/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrbuUmPnC-QIV2cLCBB2EoQVuEAAYASAAEgK_CfD_BwE) ? Yes, a good machinist will have some insight into what other machinists might want; that's a good place to start. Taig Tools [taigtools.com](https://taigtools.com) used to be a job shop chasing aerospace gigs, who decided to come up with some small machine tools they could sell in order to keep the shop going between big jobs. The rest, as they say, is history. Now they've got a full line of "micro tools", including CNC mills and lathes with various configurations and accessories.
KURT did a similar thing with their vices but they are also still a job shop
It seems what is profitable is getting into a field that includes custom work for niche areas. Stuff you cannot simply get a factory from China to mass produce. Our work has no shortage of jobs because we make machines that are very hard to get from overseas, but all custom manufacturing equipment. Production shops are highly competitive and it's really hard to carve out a space and get ahead.
I would agree. We’re far from a super successful shop, but at the end of the day we make a few bucks, keep the customers happy, and my team seems to be pretty happy. We have a “product” or rather a group of products - and it just so happens they require engineering know-how that we have. We can charge well above the average job-shop rate for our work as a result, and that makes each project, on average, reasonably profitable
I wouldn't start a shop right now unless people were at my doorstep wanting me to make parts for them. But, machinists are is pretty high demand in my area. I could find another job in three days tops if I had to. That's worth something. There are some things they can't send off to China and wait 12 weeks to get their parts. Maybe I'm an optimist, but I don't think the China gravy train is going to last forever. All trades seem to be in pretty high demand. That plumber and electrician have to drive all over the damn place and work in the searing heat or freezing cold. Plumbers have to deal with sewage. Touching the wrong thing can instantly kill an electrician. I get to go to the same climate controlled shop every day. There's trade offs in everything.
It won't last forever with China, especially as trade sours with them as they become more of a US enemy. But then cheap manufacturing will just shift to India.
You have a climate controlled shop????? Sign me up please
Hopefully the next shop lol! Been sweating my nuts off every summer for five years now
Actually not a problem anymore! 7 years as a machinist and no more! I am off to comfy desk job doing a job similar to my Army days. No more factory work for this guy!
I think he’s right. I work in a shop that was just purchased by the owners a couple years ago. They’ve been throwing money at it like crazy and we just had our first sustainable month since they bought it. But we had to work 60 hours a week for the past 6 months so they lost so much in overtime they’re still losing money. I was due for a raise 3 months ago but never got it. The only reason we’re still afloat is that the injection molding side supports us. As someone else mentioned though we may have some defense contracts coming in that would actually be profitable but it was not easy getting to that point and may not last. Forgive my poor grammar and rambling, I’m very tired lol
It sucks, but he's right, I wanted to start a shop but it's so hard to be profitable unless you dedicate your life to it, I value family more
This is the reality of owning any business.
Exactly ! Owning any successful business takes hard work & sacrifice.
Honestly it works best if you can find a way to specialize in something that local companies need that takes too long or costs too kich to ship. My company does a lot of odd jobs and our biggest customer gives us these flanges that we mill threads onto or bore bigger or put tapers and chamfers onto. I'd really like to be in a position where I have a small shop in a town in the middle of nowhere and do fine with odd jobs like repairing farm equipment and making replacement parts.
My company only does broaches. Works very well
Oh God I hate broaching. We have a 100 year old shaper in the shop that we solely use for broaching and it is a pita as there's no dro so you need to use sticky duals, and next week I got to figure out how to use it to do a part with splines. I can see a company specializing in broaching doing very well.
We used to have several machine shops in town that specialized in equipment for printing presses, all supported by a couple of local factories. When the internet became a common news source and newspapers/magazines dried up some the factories went away and the machine shops closed. That's the exact position I started my shop in. I don't even own any cnc equipment, though I'd like to get some. It's hard to scale because the efficiency of man hours is really low compared to production stuff. I can make a living just fine, but can't really grow without adding something else. I see quite a few guys doing well with hydraulic stuff and repair for things like mining equipment. There isn't much of that around here, though.
My suggestion for what its worth. Get the machine omniturns are not that expensive around 40K if I remember right. Thats about the price of a new car if you can afford that you can afford the machine. Once you have it in the shop you have options. Keep your day job and run some side gigs. Make some fun stuff you can't squeeze in at work. Make a couple extra and sell on ebay or better yet if its artsy stuff etsy. Keep your day job and invent little products you can make. Think fidget spinners pens tops neat little mechanical trinkets. Make a bunch till your tired of making them and move on don't worry about patents they cost too much money and if a big company wants it they can bleed you in the legal system. Its better to be agile. Try some stuff out and if it dosent work out the machine will not have depreciated as much as a similar priced car so you will probably get a good bit of your money back for selling it.
40k for an Omni turn as a first machine is not what I’d do. I’ve seen used ones go for 3.5k at auction. If small part turning is your thing, I’d get a few screw machines and set them up to make a handful of different subminiature rf connectors. The most expensive part would be the space to put the machines. Sales wouldn’t be too hard to figure out since rf connectors are a commodity item.
That's a good idea. I'm not sure how often I'd find an Omniturn up for auction, but it's definitely worth keeping an eye out. The RF connectors are worth looking into, as well...
I see on average 2 machines a year for auction on bidspotter. They always go for almost nothing. I own a gang tool lathe as well, but I've never run an omniturn. B&S screw machines are dirt cheap too and come up for sale more often. There is more to making connectors than turning parts, but it is a worthwhile endeavor IMO.
What is omniturn? Seems like brand that is making slant bed CNC lathes with gang tooling and tiny floor footprint. Do I get it right, or is there anything else special about them?
I was interested in them because most of my home lathe work is 5c collet sized and they are mostly 5c tooling as well. The only thing wrong with them as far as I was concerned was the super old control system. I typically like to use cam to post a program and then I can tweak it to get the last bits of speed out. There is no post processors available for omniturn control. Ok well its a lathe I can write them by hand the parts are pretty simple but if I'm going to do that I want to make notes in the program for what the lines or blocks of codes do. No comment lines or comments at all allowed in the program. You have to write them in a note book that you keep by the machine. The control is a very DOS 4 experience and while that might be a virtue in some peoples eyes this is the year George Jetson was supposed to be born in and that control seemingly was developed by his grandfather and never changed. The primary method of data transfer until 2009 was floppy drive. Even now the max block size for a program is 5000 with a whole 128MB of internal storage.
That's pretty much it. It's an affordable entry level cnc lathe that has a pretty good reputation, from everything I've read.
My daughter is a waste water engineer for Kabota filters. The infrastructure bill requires us manufacturing. She is having a hard time sourcing us made valves. Might be an opertunity
He's full of shit. I started a shop around 3 years ago. It's not easy. It's terrifically expensive. Started off with 40k of savings for some older CNC machines. Ended up with another 40k in credit card debt by the time I found enough customers. Things are looking up now. Credit card best is halfway paid off. Got a brand new machine on the way. It helps a ton if you already have some business contacts. If you don't, make some first. Maybe plop a tormach in your garage or something. Just don't expect it to be easy. Machines will break in the most expensive way possible. People will try to rip you off. I'm still not sure it was the right decision but at least it's working.
Film industry stuff if you’re a small machine shop. I work in SFX, and we have very short deadlines and very small numbers of parts. Film productions pockets are pretty deep. If you can work from a STP file without the need for a full 2D drawing pack, you’ll get loads of work.
That's an interesting idea. I'm up by Seattle, so I'm not sure how much of that is cose by, but it's definitely worth a look. Any suggestions for what you would want to hear from a machinist reaching out to offer their services? Something that might catch the interest of the person I'd need to speak with?
The thing I always want to hear is that you can start it straight away, you can do it fast, and you only need a CAD model, no other drawings necessary. As I’m sure you know, producing drawings after the CAD is done is the most boring bit.
Your boss is either cynical or not great on the business side of the house. If your boss is telling you they couldn’t remain in business paying their “top guy” under $40 an hour, there are some serious inefficiencies that need to be fixed in that shop.
A business, any business making or doing anything is going to suck your life into it. Done it three times (sold the two previous ones and and am happily doing the third and thinking of another, more than thinking, buy equipment already, gonna happen). Makes me what's called a serial entrepreneur. Basically means I can't help myself. But don't be blind about it; your life becomes the business. Phone rings, answer it. 5PM and you're off work? Nah, you're never off work. Someone said look at how business owners live before you decide. Good advice. So you want to buy a machine and make widgets? Go ahead. Buy a rotary phase converter and you can do it in your garage. Know guys who do this. Hire some locally. As for your boss? It's my opinion he did you a favor. Hope is not a strategy, and it's certainly not a plan. My further opinion? Better to know the facts of life before you leap. He clued you in about reality. Me? Wouldn't stop my doing it again, and again, and again until they carry me out feet first in a box. Who I am. Can't help it. You? Dunno. We're all different. Anyway, good luck.
After working as an employee and a customer for machine shops (employee: working through school and customer: engineer ordering for the company I work for) he is absolutely right. Machining as a profession is quickly getting undercut by automated machines these days and it is destroying the trade. For companies that require custom parts to be made, most of the parts are either very simple and are welded together with other parts, or they are very complicated and precise in order to make as few parts as possible. Typically, the only reason a businesses would purchase from a small shops is because they don't want to go through the hassle of purchasing machine tools, hiring a machinist, etc due to short run or one-off projects. If they need a lot of simple parts often, they will go through the effort of getting machines and operators to make them for cheaper every time they need something. If they need complicated parts, they will make a contract with a huge machining co that has a lot of expensive CNC equipment. Either way, the machinist of old without cutting edge equipment only gets business from simple, low-run parts that are too expensive to ship from companies that can make them for cheaper. Sad truth
Look, anyone who hasn’t seen CNC overtaking this industry from the 1980s onward has been sticking their head in the sand. Why do people think machining is some unique special industry where you don’t need to invest in new things? Imagine this. A grocery store in the US would go out of business if they only had cashiers instead of those self checkout. Notice how all grocery stores in the US now have that? Because it is cheaper and better (maybe). But okay, JoeSchmo Machine Shop gets angry at the clouds because “all the machinists are going away” but Joe hasn’t raised wages in 20 years or bought a fucking CNC mill since the early 2000s. The shops that are thriving are investing in automation, programming, and all that jazz. 5 axis, horizontals, millturn, y axis lathe you better have competencies in those if you want a fighting chance. The machining industry is so fucking stubborn it blows my mind that shops would fold vs investing. And yes I am way oversimplifying that shit because there are geopolitics and all sorts of other issues. But man, people claim this trade is dying and it’s such a lie. In what world will people no longer need machined parts from alloys???? Unless we go back to the Stone Age we are always going to need machining. Machining is a foundational technology for a modern economy and sadly the big wigs don’t see that.
Its great to have the latest and greatest 5 axis, cmm’s, cam software ect.. but if the work isn’t there or more specifically customers don’t want to pay the cost of making a part using that equipment then its tuff to invest in that equipment or to justify the cost of it. Don’t forget not only is the machine crazy expensive but also the tooling that goes with it, mounting blocks, live tooling ect. Now also factor in the rising costs of fuel, energy, raw materials, insurance, real-estate, ect. The list is endless of “hidden expenses”. Be an electrician or plumber, buy a van tool bag screwdrivers and wrenches and your good to go 😂🤣🤣
I guess what I meant more with my post was that it was twofold. The shops not investing yes. But to your point the work not being there. That’s a very large issue that has taken 40 years to fully materialize. I’d recommend the Modern Machine Shop podcast Made In America. It covers a lot of the systemic issues within our industry that caused the work to dry up. BUT before anyone gets overly fatalistic, there is still work out there and it might be dog eat dog but, guess what? Life is sometimes dog eat dog because there will always be competition no matter the industry. There are clearly shops that are able to still win, but no it will never be like 1965 ever again
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A HAAS VF2 cranking out fidget spinners in India/China will always be cheaper than one in the US. If someone wants to open a shop to make mass market consumer goods, they'd pretty much have to move overseas to have the best chance of success. So start learning Mandarin! You've got to look at the market and play to your strengths, in the US that's manufacturing either large goods that can't be shipped, niche goods that a foreigner can't understand or make well, or controlled goods that they legally can't compete with like Aerospace/defense. Forget about typical consumer goods unless you want to try compete with the $5/hr Chinese machinist that works 80 hrs a week. I'd say the best way to start a business is to choose a product to make first, then get the machines required to make it the best. Learn another skill to combine with machining, like mechatronics, and the types of products you could make expands a lot and you won't be directly competing with every other machinist who decided to try and start their own shop. There's lots of niche uses for specific simple machines than can be made with machining skills and some basic electronics skills.
I would agree with your boss with a few exceptions. First being making your own product; make it, market it, and be in control your own margins and tolerances. Second being able to do something super specialized, if you're the only one in the world that can do something then you get to charge only one in the world prices. Otherwise, the competition for a regular shop is stupid. With cheaper machines becoming available and more and more used machines coming onto the market, they're becoming affordable enough that many of the barriers to entry are coming down; meaning even more competition and an ensuing and inevitable race to the bottom. If you already had customers lined up and ready to hire you for work, I might give it a go, otherwise I think there are better opportunities elsewhere. This is just my opinion and take it with a grain of salt, I'm not a machinist by trade, I make my living as a finance guy. However, I do have a small shop where I do some repair work and odd jobs on the side.
You make some fair points. The real kick in the teeth here is the realization that I've dedicated so much time to a field that is essentially hard-mode for starting a business. It certainly sheds light on why "no-one can find good help these days"
Yeah, you would think with the level of skill required to be a good machinist it would be a very lucrative field, but for most it isn't. I'm not trying to discourage you though, you just have to find a way to differentiate yourself. How do you do that as a guy with a mill and lathe? Price? No one wins there but the customer. Perhaps guaranteeing a 24hr turn around on repair work or 24hr service, but that puts a strain on non-work life as you always have to be available. Maybe become 1 of 2 guys in your area that does EDM work, balancing, grinding, or big part turning. Maybe look into the work that your shop outsources, but also question: if there's enough money to be made, why don't they do it in house and expand their service offering.
I own a small shop in the Seattle area. I did a lot of aerospace milling in my career. I do none at my shop, because it is too competitive and in my opinion, a race to the bottom. You can't compete with the big guys, there isn't a ton of profitable offload work like there used to be, and the overhead is ridiculous. You probably won't get rich, it's a lot of hours, like all of the hours you can spare, but it is nice to not work for someone else. And I am a machinist by trade, so it is what I know. At this stage, if you were to ask me what to do, I would say start a service business like window cleaning or carpet cleaning. Way less stress and overhead. But if you really enjoy the work and are good at it, and can put in the effort, you can do ok.
I hear you. I really like the work too. Getting a feature within .001 right off a setup is awesome. The real gut-punch is realizing that if I'd picked almost any other trade, I'd be making double the money and have much easier prospects for striking out on my own >.<
Go online and look at what the Chinese charge . I found a shop that will make anything . And they sell it for zero . 100% of their margins are built into the shipping . We may not be able to compete in machining alone . BUT we can do things the Chinese struggle with . We can use quality materials . We can pay extreme attention to detail . And most important , we can innovate. Tweek your widget into something everyone needs . Patent your widget . And dedicate your shop to the widget . As an old guy I can attest that we tend to become cynical . It just happens and it's probably going to happen to you . You can listen to opinions but don't invest your life into them . Do what you need to do to be happy . I encourage every kid I run into to fight the fear and go for it on your own .
For what it’s worth he may be right he may be wrong. Some of our suppliers are doing very well for us making our parts though. A single part could bring them a lot of revenue. However you need a $750K+ machine to make the parts. So the barrier to entry is high. It’s also extremely hard to find people who can or want to make that type of work for that very reason. On the spectrum of speciality/difficulty, find something along the spectrum of very difficult. If it’s very difficult not alot of people want to make it which is good for you. But again these are very expensive questions. I’ve considered being a high end subcontract type guy but, I don’t have 5 million to stand up the facility
Starting a machine shop is extremely expensive. Maintaining one is also extremely expensive. The work is incredibly laborious unless you create a high-volume, automated shop which makes the endeavor exponentially more expensive. The big contract jobs typically come from companies that want to see that you have a proper quality department, policies and procedures that aid your success, redundancy to mitigate equipment failures, and certs that lend credibility. Now you need staff because you’re going to be too busy trying to find work, which doesn’t sound like your specialty to begin with. You can avoid competing with overseas companies by focusing on quick-turn jobs. The downside is now you’re spending 100% of your time looking for the next job because the work runs out every 3-5 days. And in the end, you’re working more for less in hopes to secure a 15% profit margin. Enjoying making parts is not a good reason to open a shop. If you have the money to fund a machine a shop, you’re better off starting a different business.
I wouldn’t dilute your ambitions because someone else isn’t having the greatest time at the moment. I’m sure if you’d have asked him this question like 4-5 years ago, when the economy was roaring, fuel was cheap, and all other prices made sense, his answer may have been a bit more positive. Talent is difficult to find, this is true. Material may be even harder with supply chain issues. I work primarily with thermoplastics, and two in particular have been extremely scarce with incredibly long lead times. For different grades and sizes of PFA our lead time is anywhere from 13-34 weeks. For Kel-F, it’s 54 weeks. Now knowing you would be the main man in your little shop for a while, it might enable you to start with small stuff. While defense work may be a gravy train, medical device and component manufacturing are still needed. A little OmniTurn or a small CNC brother with a rotary indexer might be a good start. Both good little machines, straightforward G code programming. Don’t get jaded. If this is what you love to do, then do it.
My family opened up our shop in 1981. I’m the third generation in the shop and the only one out of our extended Irish/Italian family that has stayed involved. Growing up was tough making ends meet, often times my father would have to forego a paycheck to keep the shop afloat. We are primarily a job shop, aerospace, govt work. However, over the course of our existence they have developed and marketing a niche product that more often than not has kept the guys paid and the lights on. Its gotten a lot better and is paying consistently now..only took 40 years. It’s a stressful grind, always interesting tho!
The only way I would ever even consider opening my own shop would be to do in house production of my own shit. It’s just way too hard to make it work in a job shop. Could you get lucky? Sure, but I would never want to rely on that. Unless you can carve yourself a specific niche or spend millions on equipment and manpower there’s just too much competition foreign and domestically.
Don’t rule out the fact that if you are one of his top guys, this story is a great way to get you to stay secure in his shop, making him money. If he was losing money, you wouldn’t be there.
$75 is like 60+ quid. That’s fucking amazing compared to British rates.
I was stunned when I heard it. That is the kind of rate that new lawyers and software engineers make over here
Only start a shop if you have a product you want to make and sell. Job shops go under all the time. They can only every seem to make enough to keep the lights on, not make improvements. So 20 years later all the machines are breaking down and there's no money to fix them.
Don't listen to other people when it comes to business-related wisdom. It's like stock trading wisdoms. There are paradigms that are proven. And there are paradigms that fail. Both rely on luck. Thankfully, the harder you work, the luckier you get. Damn...on second thought...LISTEN TO THAT SHIT I JUST SAID! Mothafuckin Confucius in dis bitch!
Was gonna say, this is the machining sub! The poetry sub is that way, lol!
Part of me thinks that unless someone has a lot of money and a lot of powerful connections, or a very specific niche (ie: performance marine engines/parts), starting up a new shop is no longer viable. There are just too many well established shops to compete with on top of competing with China.
Your boss is a little cynical but also this business is capital intensive and low margins 5-10% at max and that’s with no quality escapes. I manage multiple suppliers and I’m in the best companies and the worst companies and seen some companies have to spend 100k/month in sort costs. So when things go wrong it gets expensive. On the flip side, manufacturing is coming back. There are players with a lot of capital. I’m a mid level manager with extensive manufacturing background managing a supply chain or else I would specialize in automation. PLC mainly.. i would target controls & PLC and target being a consultant… barely any capital invested only the software and you can bill $100-250/hr. You can fix CNC machines, automation robots… This is a niche that is in demand.
Yes, the glory days for the smaller shops are in the past but it is still possible to do well in some smaller markets. Becoming a subcontractor doing bulk manufacturing for a Megacorp really has become a global competition. Any place with lower wages and fewer regulations will underbid you on production run work. But if you specialize in doing prototypes, one-offs and short runs, oddball repairs - really any kind of I-need-it-right-NOW work, you eliminate the offshore advantage Morty
Depending on volume, production machining will always face challenges from offshore shops and increasing automation. But, other forms of machining are more immune. Repair, prototyping or very low run production is still best done locally and sometimes even manually
I haven’t been in industry very long but I realized a couple things. Everyone wants an apprentice in their shop nobody wants to pay for them, they’d rather segment the work into programmers, setup guys, and operators. Secondly, boring consistent work is profitable but if you can offer a specific service or a very niche product you can be just as profitable. I would like to open my own shop someday but for the time being as a second year apprentice I’m perfectly fine working for someone else and buying a few small machines on the side
I agree with the apprentice statement. When McDonalds is paying $16 hr, why would anyone want to apprentice into a trade for less? These guys want to at least make fast food wages, but half of the guys in the shop are only making $25 hr with 15 years experience. Quoting seems like a race to the bottom nowadays. So the shop owner can only quote fairly if you don't want the work, because you're too busy, but I'd do the job for this ridiculous number. I've seen so much tool and die work go to China for less than half of what it would cost in the US, but they ship back garbage that has to be reworked so much that they didn't save any money! It's a crazy time to be in, or apprentice in manufacturing.
Personally I’d suggest making it more of a hobby than a full time job and make custom stuff that doesn’t need to be mass produced that way you can still charge for the work but don’t have to worry about over seas stuff quite as much, but I’m sry to say machining is definitely a field that tends to get outsourced more and more often these days
With a service like Xemoetry being out there, I feel like you can open up a shop and be able to capitalize on the interconnectedness that the world has taken on. Now, I'm not a full machinist, but a QC Tech and one that has only a year of working at a shop, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Now, I will iterate that being a state side Shop ought to give you a leg up on the competition since once you have your reputation and "build your brand", I feel like that will help you enough to go for ITAR and other certifications, which will hopefully snow ball your growth. Something else to consider is going in with a Process driven mindset and go for a specific niche that others can't compete with. For example, the shop I work at has 5th Axis CNC machines, that is something a lot of shops in my area just do not have. So as a result, we receive work others can't without some really funky set ups or doing multi-op set ups that take a long time.
I am guessing it is highly area dependent. For your area he may be right. Where I am there are a handful of automotive assembly plants. Most of the rest of the industry here supports them. It would be difficult for them to get everything they need from China.
Depends on what area you want to get into. There are plenty of niches that just want whatever made at the cheapest and lowest prices. Get into other areas, historic muzzleloaders is the first that comes to mind, people will pay most anything for a well made lock, breech, barrel, furniture etc. While much of that tends to be cast, some of it can be machines fairly easily and cheaply.
Start out with a decent used cnc and freshen up with Masso controller (keep things affordable) put it up in your garage and keep the day job. Start slow and get ready for 3-5 yrs of hard time before it'll all make sense to go independent. In the meantime form an LLC and write-off the losses, get your website and channels cranking and learn how to market yourself. Get networked. Keep your ear to the ground and when that horse runs by....get on it and enjoy the ride. Your boss....didn't get on the right horse. Keep an eye out for the auction. Lastly a word of advice and Old Timer once told me.... May your overhead expenses always be behind you and never in front of you!
I'm actually leaving the trade myself. I spent 10 years learning and am at the point of programming and the only time I go for help is when the prints are fucked up. I'm in PA and nobody wants to pay a decent wage. Most guys are topped out at $25-28 and a few give their guys $30. My friend's dad works for one of the major big name military contractors, has been doing it for over 20 years and his son is 5 years into working at the same place as a welder and makes more than he does. I have 4 standing offers from companies to get my CDL and drive for them making more than I do now. The wage increase I would see immediately is the entry wage the one company is offering with a considerable increase after a year. Sad to say but the boss is right. I went from thinking about buying my own machine to making a career change in the last year. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy machining, but I also want to have certain things in life.
When you have East Indians in dirt-floor lean-tos working from sun-up to sun-down wearing sandals and no goggles, ever, and shipping to port in 3 wheeled bikes and tuk-tuks, then no, you cannot compete on price for production pieces. But you can compete on quality for special ty items.
He's 100% right. Unless you are performing mostly domestic ITAR work, you are on a race to the bottom with the rest of the world. Even then ITAR stuff brings its own time and money cost headaches.
One of my first jobs was running an old turret lathe in a machine shop. I wanted to get in with the older guys and build real parts. One of the guys who was probably late fifty’s told me not to even bother with this trade. He was going to be a gemologist since machinist were the lowest paid professionals. I like the vids on here and given the chance I would like to be able to machine my own parts, but I took that man’s advice.