[alliance_metal]

Sharpen thy meathooks fellas.. I devised a plan, executed, and now I've got my CNC meathooks DEEP in a local company.

(back story on me..) I own a PlasmaCAM system and I was trying hard to figure out "what am I going to make?" "how am I gonna make money?" "who do I market this too??" tooled around town for a while and "stumbled" on a few different places..

so now I'm up to my arse in alligators with work. I'm cutting pieces for several different companies now. One makes road maintenance equipment, another makes the carts for Snowmakers Inc., another guy builds bumpers for 4x4's...

I'll use the road maintenance company as my example, and I'll explain another company's business model as my example (first)

Shannon Supply company is a local construction/contractor supply.. and what they did was so simple it blew my mind. The people that build the snowmaker carts turned me on to them.. ..and here's what they (shannon supply) did...

Three guys showed up over at the steel fab shop and inventoried EVERYTHING they do.. all the sanders, welders, safety stuff.. everything. stuff they didn't stock before, they now stock just for that company.. awesome way to do business...

so what I did was just as simple. I went back over to the road maintenace place and did the same thing.. ..an inventory of EVERYTHING possible for me to make for them... ..and so now my parts list that I make for them went from 4 to 40! It's all about saving them time and money..

I'm making tank ends with very specific holes for grommets and other stuff, gussets for the trailers, end caps for some pipes, even the smokestack lids! the list goes on and on.. I'm even making BLANKS for them to mill and tap!

Now I'm sure everyone here understands there's a HUGE difference between my CNC plasma system and a CNC mill... ..but the idea is the same. Go visit your customers, be very observant and assertive about what you're capable of doing.. ..don't be afraid to cut sample pieces.. If you pull it off, you'll wind up having a company completely rely on you for parts they need!! ..but then you gotta get the work done!! ..so I'm outta here

I'd like to keep this discussion going, so if anyone has a similar experience, SHARE IT!! let's get the guys that aren't working yet WORKING!!

[Zumba]

Good strategy, Alliance. I don't do much work for other people, as I'm mostly developing my own products, but maybe I should do what you described for supplemental income.

Thanks for the post.

[in2steam]

Sounds like a good sales person, and confident. good luck.

chris.

I do my own stuff, its hard to compete with myself let alone anyone else.

[alliance_metal]

Zumba, you hit the nail @ x0/y0

my company name is Alliance Metal Art.. I don't see how 600 mechanical parts qualify as art.. ..but the money is damn good. It's keeping the shop alive, and gas in the vehicle..

my goal in here is to have 4 or more of these machines cranking out parts 8 or 10 or 18 hours a day... ..then I'll have all kinds of time and money to work on the massive project ideas I've had for years now. with the name Alliance, I kind of have an obligation to uphold the name. So.. my idea is to bring in other people with talents in other mediums.. ..woodworkers, stonecutters.. etc etc.. I'm working with Midland's Creative Spirit Center on the "Da Benchi" contest. I'm going to cut out their logo somehow to incorporate it into a circular bench.. ..cool design, but I hate the corny name for the contest.. ..potentially insulting to the original DIY guy.. ..fun project, yet another way to get the name out..

I guess I just finally grew the cojones one day and started doing this stuff for real.. I love being able to make whatever I want, and the bread and butter stuff barely takes any time, so I've got plenty of time to explore possibilities..

I think this forum is going to be a valuable asset!! hope I can be one here too...

[austin.mn]

how it started for me.....

One day a friend called me up and asked if i could make him some speaker grills with the radio shack logo (circle R) pretty simple job, so i said sure. cut them, polished them and brought them over to him. at the time he had a C5 corvette. once there we started looking over the car to see what else i could make for him. i did a few more speaker grills for him then i did some sill plates. the sill plates i made were pretty unique and someone said you should sell those on ebay. i thought about it a bit, and then checked out the corvette forum. i posted some pics there and within a couple of days i had a handfull of orders.

then customers that ordered the sill plates had ideas for other parts they wanted me to make for them. now i have a handfull of parts that i make for the corvettes, and every time i am low on cash, all i have to do is post a few pictures. i have a day job also, so i can really only post once or twice a month otherwise i get overloaded with orders and requests.

so i am not making money hand over fist like a lot of guys around here, but it is enough to keep me from feeling poor.

www.vetteorama.com

[alliance_metal]

:wee: not feeling poor is a great way to feel keep it up! try to meter it out so you're busy part of the time, but busy enough to feel the extra cash!

[austin.mn]

not feeling poor is excellent. working all the time is the part that gets old. i am working on streamlining my processes and i am setting up a cnc gantry to do the polishing of the parts semi autonimously, so that should help. the plan is to get it so the extra work doesn't where me down so bad. in the last two weeks i worked more hours than i care to count. but i paid more bills than i normally would also.

once the polishing machine is up and running, all the kinks worked out and whatnot, then i should be able to fire up the machine, get some parts cutting. run in the house answer some emails, eat some dinner and then go back out and switch the freshly cut parts to the polishing machine. i should be able to double or triple the time i get to spend helping my wife with the kids. and maybe, just maybe, take a weekend off once and a while.

[BobWarfield]

not feeling poor is excellent. working all the time is the part that gets old. i am working on streamlining my processes and i am setting up a cnc gantry to do the polishing of the parts semi autonimously, so that should help. the plan is to get it so the extra work doesn't where me down so bad. in the last two weeks i worked more hours than i care to count. but i paid more bills than i normally would also.

once the polishing machine is up and running, all the kinks worked out and whatnot, then i should be able to fire up the machine, get some parts cutting. run in the house answer some emails, eat some dinner and then go back out and switch the freshly cut parts to the polishing machine. i should be able to double or triple the time i get to spend helping my wife with the kids. and maybe, just maybe, take a weekend off once and a while.

Show us some pix of that polishing setup--sounds intriguing!

[austin.mn]

my parts are all flat pieces of aluminum that are engraved. i really wanted to try a vibratory machine, but the size and shape of these parts made it seem that a machine like that would be big and extra noisy. i work from my garage in a residential neighborhood so extra noisy isn't an option. so what i decided to do is to mount a bufing head to an air powered z on the gantry. i will set up a simple vacuum table and put different templates on it. the parts i make will drop into the template and the buffing head will run over it. as far as i can tell it should work well, i still need to decide on what i will do about applying buffing compound, but i will figure that out when i get there.

[BobWarfield]

Stick the buffing compound stick in a bracket at a known location and write a step into your g-code that visits the stick to pick up some compound on your buffing wheel.

Failing that, a quick dab of liquid compound on each piece before you kick of the program seems like an idea.

Best,

BW

[millman52]

Mine started with buying an old "heath" style pantograph. It was dirt cheap & operational. I bought it as just another handy tool to have around once in a while. It wasn't a month till the very company I purchased it from was running behind on their own orders. Asked me if I wanted to make 200 gussets for them & told me what they would pay for them. With time calculated on them I was making apx $46.00 per hour. Ox/A coming out of that netting $39.00 per hr.

I asked a few other industrial manufacturers for small parts. Got an occational piece here & there. After inital orders were delivered & the quality was as good or better than they were used to. Turn around time usually lots better.

Most of my stuff is from 3/8 1/2 5/8 3/4 & 1" material. I got the bright idea to build a big hexagon drum to use as a tumbler. Works like a charm. It will tumble about 750# of parts per cycle. Only takes about 5 min. with only the parts using themselves as media. Noise level is beyond belief. So I only run it after hours behind closed doors. But it did get rid of all the grinding on heavier parts.

Pretty much the same approach as alliance metal.

I am at the point of keeping someone at that old pantagraph 30 hrs a week. I'm currently building a CNC table I am rapidly coming to the point I will have to turn down work if I don't get a CNC table going.

Moral of the story: If your turn around time is good & you stick to quality in your parts. Once word gets out. Work will most likely find you.