A new study heralds a "bright" future for backyard mechanics

[kcwayne]

All you need is $1,000,000 in equipment, and you too can produce parts in your spare time and be the vanguard of the future and the engine for revitalization of an economy that cannot compete with slave labor.

The new economy

Can the person that wrote this article possibly be serious? Can the august consultants and academics that study ways to enhance economic competitiveness really think that a couple of guys with very expensive equipment working part time are a model for the future, and are in their words "On the right track"?

Is this the definition of "thriving"?

The writer of this article is either incredibly stupid, or on the payroll of some hack in Washington with the ministry of propaganda.

Can you just see the look on the banker's face when Gomer and Goober roll in to ask for 2 million bucks to set up a CNC center in their backyard so that they can produce parts in their spare time for customers that suddenly have a need for a new gizmo and don't have time to wait for it to be processed through their manufacturing center in China?

And why do Gomer and Goober need 2 million? Because they will not be able to save that money on their own in their lifetime, when they are working for $8 an hour at Walmart, selling products that are produced in China on machines that are set up to run volume, which is where the profits are.

So let me get this straight. The right track is to invest very heavily in equipment to provide quick turnaround on opportunistic jobs that pop up when someone is pressed for time, have to have that gizmo produced right now, and are willing to pay $30,000-$50,000 now, as opposed to $2,000 had they planned properly and gotten the design scheduled through their factory in China. And obviously, this happens infrequently, which is why you can only do it part time.

And there are high minded academics and politicians in Indiana that swallow this crap and promote this as a vision for the future?

Welcome to Jesusland, where you don't need common sense when just faith will do.

[ret5hd]

1. my only quibbles wth your post...

1) todays machinists are hardly gomers and/or goobers. speaking as one of over 25 years todays machinists are smart computer-savvy technicians that are often called on to program engineer and design. we use very complex cad/cam programs that can cost tens of thousands of dollars and run machines that most here would find very intimidating. while sweat shops certainly still exist many shops are clean and well lit.

2) a shop such as that described n the article s hardly "part time" (or if they are they wont be there long). many shops bread and butter is the short-run fast turn-time items that the customer cant wait on. everythng from custom wheels or aircraft repair parts to those items described in the article.

[kcwayne]

4. Clarification

My post was not intended as an insult to the people that are doing this. I work in the industry and know very well the level of skill and capital it takes.

But when your busines model for something this capital and knowledge intensive is this small scale, you are a Gomer in the industry. Try walking into any major company and get respect and the commensurate pricing for your services. It is very, very tough.

What blew me away is that the professor from Purdue says these guys are on the right track. And they ARE part timers according to the article.

So in the 1920's any guy with a wrench and a shade tree to work under could set up shop and repair cars along the roadside. Hence the term "shade tree mechanic". Cars were unreliable, and broke down constantly, so one could pick up a few bucks hanging around the tree on a Sunday afternoon helping people that broke down in the area.

Now, you need an engineering degree and 3 million in net worth to set up your shade tree. And the business proposition is that you can deliver quicker than the highly capitalized, governmentally subsidized, and evironmentally/legally unregulated operations that have been set up in China.

That is not a vision for a future, unless you envision failure.

[Bonhomme Richard]

2. This is only a variation of outsourcing.........

If this is the future then look out. What the article doesn't say is that because these guys do this part-time out of a garage they have No Overhead, No Employees, No benefits, and little likelyhood of hiring anyone. They are only taking business away from companies that have to factor all those cost into the price of thier product. Therefore more people laid off and put out of work.

I have my own company and individually I take my hat off to these type of entrepreneurs but the reality is that this is no solution to the continuing spiral of job loss.

[jmowreader]

3. I don't consider this "manufacturing"

To me, manufacturing means volume. What they're doing is more like machinist's art.

This is a job shop--a company that makes every order custom. The products they're making--modulator wheels for radiation therapy machines--CAN'T be made in volume. They're designed specifically for one tumor; if you have three tumors in three different places, you'll get three different wheels.

There are a lot of job shops around the country; this one just happens to have some very expensive gear in it.

I will tell you what they're doing wrong: they don't have enough customers. Their biggest customer seems to be the oncology center at Indiana University. We have FedEx and high-speed Internet; they should be making these wheels for every oncology center in America that uses them. That's how you become a full-time business.

[hatrack]

5. This year's community college "retraining" talking point

Yeah, I'll just put up my milling machine back by the dryer and be my own boss. :eyes:

[stopbush]

6. Just another "you only have yourself to blame for failure" screed.

Yep. If you're not an entrepreneur, then don't come cryin' when your corporate job is shipped out.

I was out of work for over 3 years. I don't know how many assholes told me "you should start your own business." With what? My average looks? Entreprenuerial-ism isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Don't something like 95% of new businesses fail in three years? But you only hear about the success stories from the corporate media. And if you're supporting a family and trying to get by at your job, why, then you're anti-capitalism/American for not gambling the whole thing on a venture with a 5% success rate. Oh, yes. The banks just love to hand out those new business loans to the willing suckers. They may as well add that debt to the car loan, your credit cards and the mortgage. Now, they own everything...unless you're one of the few who actually succeeds.

Absolute bullshit.

Americans forget that the reason they have always admired the self-made man is because we used to know that it was nearly impossible to BE a self-made man. Nowadays, such a strategy/life choice is bandied about with all the concern of picking a soup over a salad at lunch. Enterprenuerial-ism rewards risk taking. It doesn't guarantee success.

Horatio Alger's myth is alive and well in these United States.

[karlrschneider]

7. "lathe as expensive as a house"...no shit

As much as a very NICE house in L.A. I can't imagine them ever getting enough business to pay for that thing.
:eyes:

[uncle ray]

8. wrong wrong wrong.

you claim to be in the industry? then you would know it doesn't take a million plus nestegg to get started with your own dirt floor machine shop. very good, yet still entry level machines can be had for well under 50 grand, and much less for a few yerars old used machine. i was at a garage sale not long ago, where a teenager was running a screw machine in his garage, cranking out fittings. with affordable lease payments, and almost zero overhead, if you have the credit to get financing, you can have the macnine paid for within a year, and be making a relativley easy $30 an hour or more, considering machine rates in the $50 to $75 an hour rate, there is money to be made at the expense of large shops that have an overhead double most peoples saleries. many big businesses LOVE to farm out their work now, it makes it easier for them to ignore actually following things like ISO procedures etc. by sending them outside where they do not have to have the same controls.

done all cash, equipment bought and paid for, in your exisiting building, a person could have a very nice 1-2 man shop for $100,000. not exactly pocket change, but with the proper knowhow and work ethic, that can be paid off is a fairly short time. anybody want to invest? i'll do it for 50g. i'm a tight ass.

yes, many shops have closed their doors in recent years, but it's due more to them being behind the times, poor management, not having a niche to fill, etc., more than it is the economy, the strong are surviving.

part of what we are seeing happening, is the actual skilled people being driven from large companies, where they work for slave wages, they are smart, they see that they can make a go at it themselves, it doesn't take an engineer to see that one man in his backyard shop, who knows what the hell he is doing, is going to operate more effeciently at what he does, than these corporations can with literally thousands of non-productive employees, huge facilites to pay for, training of idiots, etc.

certainly the work is out there for those who know how to do it.

[kcwayne]

9. You are not going to do what the article is suggesting

with a 50 year old Bergmaster and a milling machine made in 1973.
These guys have a sophisticated CNC milling center and 3D CAD software packages and computers. Their investment in this gear is easily 1 million, unless they bought it at auction from some other company that was liquidating.

Sure, you can set up a low tech shop with used equipment and join the list of shops that are chasing low volume/low margin work. And you will get underbid by companies everywhere in the race to the bottom.

The companies that reside in places like Mexico and China that don't have to worry about getting fined when they dump their solvents into the river, or pay workman's comp, or carry liability insurance will cut your price and eat you alive.

Your customers come to you and say, "I can get it for .37 a part in Chihuahua, you need to get your price down to no more than .50 a part to make it worthwhile for us". And at .50 a part, you lose money so you walk away, or go bankrupt hoping the customer will eventually give you projects that you do make money on.

It's not that there is no market for someone willing to play in the race to the bottom where labor and legislation is the only bargaining chip. But that is not a prospect that will create leveragable economies that add employment and wealth to a nation.

The article was suggesting that by increasing the capitalization and technological sophistication you can reverse the trend that is making manufacturing in general an evaporating enterprise in the US. My take is that the shade tree machine shops just don't get started as often, and when they do, they go out of business a whole lot faster.

[Igel]

11. You don't need a CNC lathe if you're making a few spare

parts for a company. If you're making a bunch, you don't know which machinist is the machine op, and you need to maintain consistency; or if the part is very, very complicated ... CNC's the way to go.

[kcwayne]

14. Right, so you also need to buy a bunch of standard mills, lathes, and

boring machines when it will be quicker to do that work out the fixturing on the CNC.

In a backyard shop, you are never going to run volume. Volume means doing hundreds of thousands or millions of parts per year. And you don't use CNC on that type of volume because the cycle time is too slow. You have special machines designed for that.

CNC is great when you can go from digitized design to part with complete automation. On some parts that is simply not possible, and you have to train the machine and work up fixturing.

But the point of the article is that small firms with the ability to use technolgy to do rapid response with high quality production can energize a larger economy. The point is not that hard working guys in small shops that are willing to work hard for less using whatever equipment they can scrounge together on a small budget herald a turning point in the decline of manufacturing.

My point is that neither well capitalized gargage shops nor undercapitalized hard workers will turn around what has already happened, namely, manufactured goods are not going to make a comeback to the US until either China looks more like we do, or we look like them. I am guessing the later is the most probable.

[uncle ray]

16. the machine doesn't make the parts, the machinist does.

you DO NOT need a million dollar machine to make high dollar parts! i do it every day on a 20 year old Fadal, that i have to change tools by hand. parts for medical and aerospace etc. more work than i know what to do with, and the machine runs flawlessly, and could be picked up used for probably five grand. no i don't do the parts these guys do, but it apparently would shock you the amount of work there is for such a simple machine, run by an experienced operator.

my point is, it is still very possible to get into this field, at the entry level, and if you have the knack for it, the move up to that level of equipment is very easy. there are many relationships started at the lowest levels. employee Joe works for Fabco, a sub contractor for a multi billion dollar Chimp Aerospace company. Joe is the guy making the parts, and has frequent contact with the engineers, etc. at the aerospace company, if he has an issue with a part he is making, he calls someone direct, so he is well known. well he eventually leaves Fabco, and of course his replacement is not near as quality minded as Joe was. Joe left to start his own shop, because he was sick of making money for the Suits at Fabco that he had to bypass anyway, because they got nothing done. so the work follows Joe. Chimp Aerospace appreciates the work they get from Joe, and will invest almost anything to get more of his work.

meanwhile, Fabco is watching their work go to Joe, the guy who started out with a modest investment, and they hear of his new million dollar machine, so they come to the conclusion that that million dollar machine made him a success, so they go out and buy their own machine, but why stop at the one million dollar machine? the two million one is so much more productive! problem is, they have no "Joe". nobody is willing/capable to run it properly, so it actually costs the company money, eating up what was a fair profit from their older paid for equipment. soon Fabco folds. and they can't figure out why.

stuff like this happens everyday. on all levels. there is much more to it that buy expensive machine, get contract, get rich. i haven't been in this field long, i'm only 30, but i've seen shops come and go, and i've seen many good men take good customers with them when the go out on their own.

i guess you see this article as a sign that all manufacturing takes big dollars, i see the current times as about the best in many years for a small time machinist to make a go at it, IF he knows what he's doing! as you mentioned, excellent high dollar machines can be had for a fraction of their new price, at auctions.

not all companies are looking for the cheapest part, some are willing to PAY for quality, there is still a market for quality American manufacturing, it just has largely gone underground. yes, it's been a tough time for BAD businesses, but new ones are popping up, but keeping a lower profile. i used to work in a midwest job shop, that fought for the bottom dollar work, i can understand how you can see the article as being unrealistic, that shop i was in failed. not for a lack of quality product, they just out cheaped themselves. i moved cross country, expecting to change fields the job situation sounded so bleak, only to kind of luck into a specialized field that is doing very well. find a niche other than the cheapest and you will thrive. we've been licked in the cheapest labor market, time to move on. i guess i see this article more of a success story, proving that the corporate model of manufacturing doesn't always work. what's the better answer?

[kcwayne]

18. The corporate model is working, its just that it is working in cheap labor

countries.

To drive cost out of production, corporations have moved their enterprises to China and other cheap labor countries, that is no secret.

You are talking about the boutique market. I am all for the people that get out there, find a niche, and a way to survive in it.

But what they are doing is not scalable to building large, sustainable economies. There is a huge difference between the small company that is making a living off of the chump change that a large industry has to spend, and the guy like Henry Ford who found a better way to do something and built an entire industry, if not country from that idea. The people slogging away in machine shops producing parts for large companies are on the path to extinction. It will take a hundred years or so, but they will be gone and replaced by counterparts in China or Vietnam who have also learned how to run machines, and are much closer to the customer base. The companies you are servicing today are transforming themselves into sales and distribution organizations, and these types of companies do not buy or need machinery.

Maybe you are in an industry that this has not happened to... yet. But just look at the furniture, textile, automotive, software, and steel industries. That is your future. There are still companies out there servicing them, but they are dying as their customers relocate overseas.

Hell, you cannot even buy a new American made machine tool anymore, that should tell you something.

On Edit: I meant American made CNC machine tool. I think GE was the last hold out and their Fanuc controllers are made overseas. There are still some manufacturers of specialized equipment out the based here, but last I looked, they are being bought out by foreign companies, or are struggling. (Like Kearney-Trecker,Sunstrand, Beloit Gear)

[datasuspect]

10. sounds like a variation of the "five year plan"

type of thinking in during the soviet era.

what next, do we all get to build iron forges in our backyards too?

[Igel]

12. My brother in Phoenix has done well enough for the last 25 years

or so with his backyard machine shop. Drill, lathe, milling machine ... uses his PC for CAD work and bookkeeping.

He's done some manufacturing for very small runs of high tech equipment. He's worked with engineers in small companies that are producing prototypes. He's done lots of machine repair, in which he has to re-design the broken part, make his own prototype, and then produce spares (and he keeps the designs so when the abused machinery breaks again, he can charge more than usual and still come in under the competition).

His turnaround time can be 24 hours, and he charges appropriately.

He doesn't need faith when his high school education, common sense and hard work will do.

[kcwayne]

13. And how many employees does your brother have?

The point of the article was that these backyard machine shops repesented a viable way to re-energize a moribund manufacturing community in Indiana. The total number of shops in Indiana is around 650. What will doubling the number of these shops due to increase economic activity and employment on a statewide scale, per the format described by the article, or your brother's business?

The answer is nothing, other than create a lot more competition where it is not needed and reduce the cost of parts to Ford and GM even further, which Ford and GM will take and invest in China.

[Igel]

17. None, on the other hand he's provided nicely for

his family, and filled a niche that larger machine shops wouldn't bother with, or would charge more for.

My point isn't that it'll produce a golden age of prosperity; just that it's possible for a person to make a decent living at this without requiring a large up-front investment.

[BrotherBuzz]

15. I think there are Gomers and Gobbers smarter than this...

I mean, if someone really knews the business inside and out, and knows the customer base and can make the connection and land the contracts, might just be smart enough to rent or contract time on underutilized CNC's and bypass the stop at the bank. Hey, don't we call them entrepreneurs.