Production Machining Vs. Prototype Machining

No matter how much money is spent on high-end equipment for production machining (5th axis, horizontals with pallet pools, probes, high end CADCAM (Vericut, NX, etc.) is this really a market that will ever been stable / sustainable in the U.S and does it give the employee the kind of job security that being a very good and very quick prototype machinist does?

My answer is no.

Jon Banquer San Diego, CA

Reply to
jon_banquer
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Oh, you are getting fired?

Reply to
Calif Bill

medical.

Reply to
vinny

Actually I am amazed you are still employed. With your attitude, do you possess some pictures of your boss? As to unemployable, I still get head hunters coming to me. I have to much to do in retirement to have time to work at a 40 hour job. Went to Slidell, LA after Katrina and worked for a week with HAB. Tow my boat, that I can afford, to Canada for a few weeks. Stuff like that. As well as visiting the grandbaby. Life is good, except for the knee that is going to get scoped next week. I, unlike you, have a happy life.

Reply to
Calif Bill

Once again, you prove that your knowledge of the machine shop business is as non existent as your knowledge about machining and CADCAM. Is there ANYTHING out there that you actually *do* know how to do? (Other than constantly humiliate yourself on the internet and in real life).

Reply to
Joe788

Once again, you prove that your knowledge of the machine shop business is as non existent as your knowledge about machining and CADCAM. Is there ANYTHING out there that you actually *do* know how to do? (Other than constantly humiliate yourself on the internet and in real life).

*** Don't look now, but there's some h*mo humping your leg.
Reply to
vinny

[ The beautiful thing about working with this 1/2 million dollar horizontal machine with 12 pallets is that I spend very little time running parts and spend the majority of my time on programming, setting up and optimizing the program. ] - Jon Banquer - 12 May 2007 [ Jon, You have a machine designed for high production. You are glad that your machine spends little time running parts while you are programming, setting up and fixing programming errors (AKA: optimizing the program) at the control...........LOL........... only in Banquerland could someone be happy about that. ]- brewertr- [[ Some of our <MasterCAM> posts do need some work. Fixing them is not our shops / the owners / my highest priority right now. ]- Jon Banquer - July 1, 2007

That quick and easy post processor fix would seem to be the highest priority vs. manually editing at the control, running your edits through NC-Plot where you are now unnecessarily duplicating your efforts since your MasterCAM tool library will not import into NC-Plot all this WHILE your $500,000.00 machine SITS IDLE.

Oh! and don't forget your edits at the control, what happens to associativity with the model? (Hint: Out the window)

By the way Jon, how long did you last at that Job?

Tom ]-brewertr-

Reply to
brewertr

Most companies, real companies require suppliers to be qualified to do the work. Qualifying usually has to do with proving they are a business and posses the equipment, tools and expertise to perform the tasks up to company standards. Which quite often precludes contracting with a home hobby shop filled with a clapped-out equipment.

It's one thing if you are making your own product or prototype but quite another to qualifying to do work for others. With few exceptions a home hobby shop will be competing with other home shops cutting each others throats to split a penny. Home shops are not Low Cost, Low Overhead locations, they are LOW PAY Shops, get it as cheap as they can Locations.

Reply to
brewertr

On Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:44:05 -0700, snipped-for-privacy@aol.com wrote: <snip>

<snip>

Everyone that invested heavily in their equipment, tooling, gauges, training, etc. would like to believe this, but the huge increase in off-shore sourcing proves otherwise for the majority of customers. Price is and remains king.

The problem is that you are then attempting to compete with companies paying 25¢ to 50¢ per hour wages for qualified help, and the only offsetting cost reductions are freight and customs. As a garage shop, more than likely, because of volume discounts, your material costs will be higher, and you are likely to run into tax, OSHA and zoning problems that simply do not exist in the low wage countries, or are easily handled with a little "tea money."

Unka' George [George McDuffee]

------------------------------------------- He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?

Francis Bacon (1561-1626), English philosopher, essayist, statesman. Essays, "Of Innovations" (1597-1625).

Reply to
F. George McDuffee

Think you are stretching it a bit there George, it's like comparing apples to crackers.

Anyway those who qualified their off-shore suppliers first did OK, those that just went for lowest cost off-shore supplier without a source inspection to qualify them usually got screwed.

But Jon is proposing to do work at the bottom rung competing against other garage shops for outfits sending work to them and are lets just say a little less than reputable for the most part. For if they were reputable companies they would need to inspect and qualify their suppliers operation and a garage shop filled with clapped-out machines and equipment, no liability or workers comp. insurance etc. would not normally meet the minimum requirements.

Reply to
brewertr

Gave both of them away free to some stupid f'n moron in this group. One Kurt 6" knock off and one nice 6" double lock vise......prepaid shipping using his account is all.

Reply to
brewertr

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