Over the years I have produced a lot of one-offs; car parts, camera parts, tool parts and just plain weird stuff. Over this same timeframe, finding a machinist has become more and more difficult.
Years ago, machinists were a dime a dozen, most working out of horribly run-down buildings in the worst parts of town. You could tell a good machinist by the amount of metal scrap he had around his building. Stepping inside a machine shop was scary as hell. The vast majority - no - all of them that I ever visited were covered in decades of dirt and metal filings with stacks of material everywhere. You entered through a decrepit door and followed a wandering aisle between the junk and machines to find and talk to the owner, a cigar smoking, unshaven, filthy-overall-covered guy who talked to you like you were the last person in the world he wanted to deal with. But deal with you he did, making the part to your exact specifications and charging you a price that matched the time and materials he spent making them.
Fast forward to today, and things are completely different. Machine shops are now housed in buildings that equal IBM's head office, thats if you get to see the building at all. Mainly you deal with them through the Internet, attaching your drawings to forms that are more unfriendly than the actual human-variety of machinist of yore. If you are lucky, they will reply. If you are really lucky, their reply will include a quote. The one thing you don't need to count on luck for, though, is that the quotes you will receive will make the project ridiculously expensive and will force you to scuttle the whole idea.
Case in point is a project I am currently working on; a birthday present for my son. I can't state what it is here yet as sometimes he surprises me and actually checks out what his old man has to say on this blog, so I can't give the idea away before I actually give the result away, if you get my drift.
I have come up with an idea for what my old man used to call, a "dust collector". A dust collector is nothing more than something that looks good but doesn't do a damned thing, a concept my old man wasn't particularly enamoured with. For this particular dust collector idea, I need two steel discs, both 3" in diameter and 1/2" thick, each turned slightly different. It also requires 1 1/2" of 2 1/2" steel tubing. Attached is a drawing of how these three pieces are to fit together.
Of the 20 machine shops I sent out drawings to, 8 replied. Two of those that replied basically stated they were not interested in the job. The six actual quotes that I did receive ranged from a low of $275 to a high of $600.
$275 to $600 for three pieces of steel that I could buy at Metal Warehouse for less than $22. One piece, the steel tubing, requires no further working once it is cut to length and the remaining two parts are ones that I could turn myself in less than an hour if I had a simple metal lathe. If I, someone who works in metal once every 8 years or so, could turn these parts in less than an hour, someone who does this day-in and day-out should be able to do it in half that time. I get that, in business, you have to get a return on your capital investments, but give me a break for God's sake. Lets say it takes an hour to make all three parts. At $275, that means the machine shop is charging $253 an hour and at $600, it becomes $578 an hour. Neither is a cost that reflects the company's investments. They just reflect gouging. No wonder work like this is going to places like China.
At first, I did Internet searches for machine shops within my geographical area, which turned out to be few and far between. Only 4 of the 20 quote requests went out to shops within the greater Toronto area. I then expanded my search to include machine shops in North America. The remaining 16 quotes went out to shops located throughout Canada and the United States. Surprisingly, out of the 8 that did respond with a quote, the most expensive were located in Texas and California. The cheapest was in Michigan while the two Canadian firms that replied came in with quotes of $325, still way to much for the work required, Canadian or not. In the end, I did send out one request for a quote to a company in China, but I haven't heard back from them as yet. I am curious what they will come in at.
Given that this is the third project that has been scuttled by machinist quotes, I just might turn my attention to finding a little metal lathe for sale on eBay, one selling for the price of the lower quote for this particular job. If one turns up, I'll buy it and turn my own parts from now on and the hell with the new age of machinists.
I have always thought that the worst enemy of capitalism was capitalists. Now I'm convinced.
Peace,
Mitchell
I've been told that shapeways.com is good for this sort of thing. I'm not sure what electronic format they want the drawing in though.
ReplyDeleteI'm just wondering, I know that there is a woodworking club/cooperative workshop in Oshawa that allows you to rent time on the tools. I'm not aware of any metalworking setups like that, but there may be something like that locally. Either that or find some local hobbist machinist that may be willing to produce the parts? Maybe placing an ad on a bullitin board at some local stores like Busy Bee might produce a lead to a machinist?
ReplyDeleteIn my area of NYS there are a couple of Auto Garages with the means (Metal Lathe)to make such a simple object.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad to hear it's not just me. I was looking to repair a sloppy wheel on my Beaver bandsaw. I found a machinist wi a home shop in the Kijiji listings but she was too far north of Toronto. It's looking like it'll be cheaper to buy another machine for parts. Seems wasteful though.
ReplyDeleteWith respect, if you believe these prices are too high, isn't there a market, and profit to be made, by opening a machine shop of your own?
ReplyDeleteThat job is more than an hour. The radii require a tool to be ground. The domed top would need to be shaped freehand on a manual mill, or CNC programming. The top itself is a poor design, extend the spigot so the operator has something to hold and maintain concentricity between the groove and the OD. The drawing is incomplete, missing dimensions and tolerances. The pipe should be skim cut as well. Add setup, deburring, cleanup, customer service, draftsman, shippers time, and overhead and $275 isn't bad, especially for a one off part.
ReplyDeleteAlso, your conception of machinists as being dirty bottom dwellers is erroneous. We are intelligent technicians capable of developing and using our skills to make beautiful objects to levels of high precision. We deserve a wage that refects that, just like everyone else.
ReplyDeleteDarnell, I believe you might have missed the whole point of this posting. Many of your points would be entirely accurate if we were talking about making a part for the Mars' rover, Curiosity, but we aren't. We are talking about a little base for a display piece.
ReplyDeleteWhile the old machinists didn't know it, they were following a specific business model that was taught in MBA programs, one called "Contribution". They would take on these small jobs knowing full well they would bang them off when the shop was slow, use their ingenuity to get it done and do it all for a price that the market would bare. They knew that they only made money when the lathes were turning, which is why their shops were so dirty. They knew you couldn't make a buck pushing a broom. In their minds, they could bang something like this off in less than an hour, make a couple of bucks in the process and possibly win over a customer who will come back with something bigger the next time.
Today, no-one takes on a job if it doesn't come with a full profit margin. They don't give a damn if the customer comes back and they aren't going to deviate from their set pattern to produce what is necessary. Today, everyone wants to call their own shots, which is why customer loyalty is a non-existent entity and small businesses have such high failure rates.
You can't force a customer to gold plate the screening on a chicken coup. All you end up doing is force him to kill his chickens.
Hi Mitchell,
ReplyDeleteI have a machine shop in Tillsonburg where we still do one offs. drop me line next time you need a quote. You can get our web site form the name.
George Barnes,
Foldens Machine Works Ltd.