[handlewanker]

Inviting investment is like paying the Cannibals to eat you last.

If'n you aren't making money now, you will ,by diminishing returns, not make more but less when someone else has their hand in your pocket.....one person making the money, two spending it.

Don't give up your day time job, re-invest your profits in your own business and when you grow eventually, the profits will be all yours.

You will get an investor to give you money 'cos they know a sucker when they see one....they will suck you dry, and you'll end up working just to pay the investor.

Your problem as I see it is you want to be on top yesterday....tomorrow eventually is too far away.....ask yourself what would you use the money someone is going to "lend" you for, and consider it as just another credit card debt you'll have to pay each month.

What terms would an investor give you to invest in your enterprise?.......a 10% return on net profit (after YOU pay all expenses etc) would mean anything you made would be worth 40% less than you're getting right now.

It is better to have 100% 0f $1 than 1% of a million dollars.

BTW, if'n your enterprise is so good, whyn't you just go and take out a loan on your house for $10,000, that's real confidence..... and see how long it would take you to get out of debt, if ever.
Ian.

[LeeWay]

I agree about investors and silent partners. I have had several offers from guys wanting to invest in my co. I turned them all down. I grow my co. using the profits. Always stay in the black. Don't take out loans. It has steadily grown over the years. I have one full time employee now besides myself and may have another in the next year if demand keeps increasing the way it has. It has stayed on pace with the growth so far.

Another problem with loans and investors is you may actually grow a co. too quickly. You may be able to run several months in the red while profits start building up, but if they don't meet within a reasonable time, bad things will start to happen. Like a snowball that turns into an avalanche. At some point, there is no way out. This scenario repeats itself over and over with a lot of small businesses. Just too much too quick. Without an excellent product and good customer base, chances for success are low.

[handlewanker]

D'ya hear that Barak O'Bama, instead of giving billions to the banks, give it to a million small business owners or would be owners......they're the ones that WANT to be successfull and do it by the sweat of their own body, and a busy worker is a revenue earner.

Margaret Thatcher rose to power by supporting the small businesses, those with 10 to 20 personell, 'cos she recognised the fact that the working class has more voting power than a few big business owners.

It's time to recognise that getting dirty and sweaty while earning a living is not to be looked down on, but until the need for freedom of the workplace is a reality, the lustre of the boardroom is a goal many people will strive for and ascribe to being successfull.
Ian.

[Joe S.]

Hi, if'n the truth be known when you deal with "a Chinese Company" you're dealing with China Incorporated....they are after all state owned and a Socialist system, as soon as one goes out of business another pops up, same factory, same workers, same machines, just a different face at the top, different name on the gates....like musical chairs....you'll never beat their system on a level playing field, and once you deal with them with your product, they have the knowledge, the market and the manpower to make it cheaper, and all by just rebadging and changing the colour.
Ian.

I have heard of but not personally seen Chinese Knockoff cabinet style table saws, that when disassembled had the Delta logo cast into the underside of the table because they used a real Delta tabletop as a mold pattern.

[handlewanker]

They must be real dumb not to have filled the logo in before using it as a pattern.

[joycet-]

hello i ma new

[TrickyCNC]

I voted "IS my business"

not entirely true.

My business is woodwork. I am starting to get my CNC to do the things I used to do by hand.

Some carving, but mainly cutting out patterns and panels. Just started using it for mortices too, in furniture making

I'm hoping to eventually have a room of CNC's working away for me, just making 'widgets' and 'thingamies'

[JonnyDeath]

I have to revive and beat this dead horse.
Again, most of the people that get into home end CNC milling have no idea what they're going to do with it. They see a high tech piece of equipment they can afford and think the rest will somehow work itself out. I still view this as a mindset taught by religion and later television but I won't get into a rant. I am not a supporter of faith sourced confidence.

If you don't have prior knowledge in products and services related to the work these machines can do, you're jumping into the deep end of the pool only to find out the water was murky and 6 inches deep.
There's no chance you're going to tough it out and find better waters. You jumped into something without taking the necessary precautions.

My plan is primarily original, unique musical instrument audio equipment I have engineered as well as designed aesthetically, musical instrument parts, car audio circuits, custom car parts and possibly firearms under an FFL7.
In that, everything listed in the above except the musical instrument circuits is half baked. Regardless, I have still done the preparation work for those uncharted waters I have taken into consideration. I will also pound the pavement and collect data on other businesses and social groups I can offer services to or look into taking on contracting work for small local manufacturers in this simple, small, overpopulated town. We have a handful of small electronics factories and various other businesses based around machining of some kind.

I could likely produce AR lower receivers quickly enough to sell 100 a month. With a good 3-D printer it's even easier with the right resin. Either carving them out of Delrin with a mill or printing them then, assigning serial numbers and registering them with the ATF before shipping out to a bulk buyer or individual buyers would be tedious. It would also be highly profitable.
They can be sold direct to customers for easily a hundred bucks and with the current state of things, people are more than willing to deal with using a local FFL who will charge 15 to 35 dollars for the transfer plus sales tax.

Granted not everyone wants to do this or has the necessary information to go right into production. The point is, you have to find either a niche product or service if you're to make a living off this or even extra money.
I'll wager even after the overhead, 100 AR lowers sold at $40 per unit +shipping to a large retailer would still put you ahead by well over 3 grand. Individual sales over the net would easily give you a 6 figure income but of course, the ATF will watch you like an eagle.

Ultimately I believe the success is there to be taken, not stirred up. Advertise, knock on doors and no matter what, ALWAYS be producing something to stock up on or throw on craigslist, ebay and amazon.
If nothing else, you can build more CNC's which oddly few people bother to do. I lost my massive resource file I built a few years ago but I found a guy that was using his to build 4 x 8's while also etching his own controllers, building them, the enclosures and buying very little hardware putting his total cost at under a thousand dollars. Based on his videos, he must have been selling them left and right just to regular people. He also included a tutorial for milling aluminum to convert your machine over from MDF.

If the Chinese can do it, so can we.
Billion dollar corporations in China outsource most of their work to private shops. I've communicated with Chinese manufactures for years. These companies will hire 100 different shops that range from a building full of 200 people and 70 machines or a family of 12 running just 3.

[handlewanker]

"If the Chinese can do it, so can we".......not while you have a hole in yor rectum.....the Chinese work for a bowl of rice and a dollar a day, metaphorically speaking, whereas the "we" want $20 to $40 just to switch the machine on.

The whole "thing" about the China syndrome is the cheap labour rates they source.......that is why the Western World flock to their door in droves, not only to buy their products but to get their own products made, known as "going offshore".

When was the last time you saw cheap junk Western World manufactured items on the shop shelves?

At no time lately....the Western World CAN and have always made cheap junk items, commonly known as "shoddy" goods, but now the Chinese make the cheap sh!t and for next to nothing, whereas in the West we have always expected to get paid more for doing less, and when all fails drop your standards.

The Western World will never compete against the Chinese manufacturing machine, until the West creates an import control tariff, and that can work both ways.

The solution to the problem is to make what the Chinese want in exchange for what the Chinese need.......if they don't need it, why bother making it if you can't sell it?
Ian.

[neilw20]

Start at end price, for what ever it is, and there must be a market for it.
Divide by 3 or 4.
Can you make it for that? Usually the price of the parts.
Yes. Make lots of them and sell them. -- ie value add.
No. Find something else.

[RCWorks.com]

I stepped out of CNC for a while to build a couple of commercial grade machines, I quit my day job.

Micro Aviation. R&D, Build and sell.

[cncadmin]

Anyone looking to cut some g-10?

[neilw20]

G-10?? What is?



Oh! I see itching powder. I made 1 handful per day for over a year.
It will never be all gone. grrr!! but the income was worth it.

[skray775]

Anyone looking to cut some g-10?

I'm cutting some tomorrow for helicopter frames. I do it on my mill not a router.

[skray775]

G-10?? What is?

Fiberglass.

[jm82792]

I just do a little work on a small desktop machine.
It's just wood, but I select the best I can (character is a must),
sand it well with 4 different grits, lacquer it with several coats, and it's art people want to buy. (I don't let any machining marks get into the finish )
Enough that I can make some decent money, I've payed the $1400 machine off (or so), and I'm really hoping to get something big enough for signs and bigger pieces of art.. I just hope I can get enough earned so I can diversify (since it's liked I haven't tried anything else but have done some market research) and get into much more then just this. Being 20 years old and being not blessed with starting funds means this gig could randomly extinguish. But maybe not...
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1205819...arge-wall-set?

[red triangle]

Wow! this poll has been going for quite a while......... A few months ago I was making about $80 to $120 an hour (in Seattle) just doing parts manually on a southbend lathe , tilting head mill with auto feeds, and a bunch of welding/fab equip. Pretty boring work, usually done as onsie twosie for local inventors and people who just needed replacement parts....I have been doing that for the last couple of years as side work; totaling from 5 to 20 hours a month. I just purchased a pcnc 1100 and some CAD and CAM....Right now I am just spending money. No time to take work while I am setting up. I am mostly just spending time learning the new software so I can prototype my own product and learn to burn out customers prototypes quickly. Working on developing a boutique ribbon microphone for studio use..... Will it sell? who the F%*& knows. My friends like the prototypes and have even purchased a few early prototypes........... Am I making $ now ? No. Am I having fun? Yes! (and no). Do I plan to quit the day job? Absolutely yes! I would like to be able to spend 20 hours a week prototyping for friends design firms, and the other 20+ making my own product. That's the goal anyway..... Wish me luck!

[TrickyCNC]

I have now quit my day job (even if I was already self employed ! ) and now my CNC works for me 8-12 hrs a day
Good times !

[sunny_daise]

Many years ago, I'm back to do the CNC again, I have a lot of luck with this product. So now I just take it as a job with interests, hope I can have a lot of fun from it.

[RCWorks.com]

There are so many people churning out AR15 lowers I doubt there is much profit left in them.