Here's some boring pics of the office area build out. This occured between March and June.
Scott
MXtras Shop Pics
OK, Guys. I have been talking about doing this for a while now, but have never really had enough down time or made enough progress to post anything of great interest.
In January of this year I began working on a commercial site for my company - MXtras. I make a product that transports MX bikes without straps - see my profile for my desperately-in-need-of-an-update website.
Anyway - long story but the shop is finally taking shape. The following few posts are a few pics of the shop and some of the goodies I have been working on to organize my mess. What does this have to do with CNC? Nothing - but thanks for asking.
This was the shop in March - all the other photos I have are 35MM - I got my digital in March:
The photos show my 1500 SqFt area being walled off from the rest of the building. The building owner did the wall construction, by the way. I would have done things a bit differently, but he did use 5/8 firecode drywall at least. The entire building is about 9000 SqFt and is an automotive cylinder head shop. I am renting this space.
More to pics to come....
Scott
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Last edited by mxtras; 10-31-2005 at 02:01 AM.
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
Here's some boring pics of the office area build out. This occured between March and June.
Scott
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
And then finally - the shop is taking shape.
When I began, the entire area was AFU (all 'messed' up). I spent several days pulling drop ceiling hangers and hardware (there were a total of 3!!) off the rafters, then I yanked every piece of wiring out to start from scratch. I pressure washed, primed and then painted the ceiling. This part alone took almost a month.
I scraped about 3/8" of hardened and packed grease off the floor in many areas and pressure washed the floor until it no longer would bead water. Cleaning the floor took several days.
I ran all new conduit and wiring, including hanging $4K (new cost) in lights that were obtained from a local shopping mall demolition site. The shop has 208 "Red Leg" 3 phase power. I ran new conduit and pulled wire for all of the shop outlets and wired the office as well. The entire shop is also wired for a network using what my landlord calls "Either-net"...he's comical.
Jeesh - what else...painted, of course, ran through 25 gallons of drywall compound and who knows how many rolls of tape. I also put up a new bay door.
I added another pic of the office and bath build-out - this one was taken in August after I had installed and painted all the trim. In the bath, you can see a shower stall......you never know!
Scott
Last edited by mxtras; 10-31-2005 at 01:21 AM.
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
So I took official posession of the space on August 9th. I realized that I had nothing to put all of my stuff on or in, so I had to build tables and storage units.
This is the first thing I built - a welding table. The welding table tips in around 1200 pounds. The top is not as flat as I wanted it but it will have to do for now - I will "laminate" it with a sheet of ground 1/2" plate when $$ permits or I may just buy a reconditioned acorn welding table.
You'll notice the ends of the tubing on the welding table are open. I always miter my tubing-constructed pieces but in this case I left the ends open as part of the design - the open ends are useful not only for storage but for straightening or tweeking weldments.
You can see a few 2'X8' tables in the background of the second pic as well as a cart for the bench and tool grinders.
More to come.....
Scott
Last edited by mxtras; 10-31-2005 at 01:28 AM.
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
After the welding table was up and running, I decided that I wanted to maintain separate organization for different areas so I decided to build what I call WorkStations.
Scott
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
And just recently, I finished the WorkStations and finally got the Welding area somewhat put together.
The welders are a Miller Synchrowave 250DX TIG and a Miller Pulser, dual gun MIG in case you were wondering...
Scott
Last edited by mxtras; 10-31-2005 at 01:31 AM.
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
I have built 4 WS so far - here are the others in their semi-permanent homes -
More pics shortly....
Scott
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
At some point during the construction of everything else, I managed to squeek in a stand for my HF mini lathe. This will be CNC'd to make pins. I bough a cheapy lathe so I wouldn't feel bad for hacking it up - I plan to make an auto-loader and fully automate the modification of Stainless pins, so this lathe is going to spend it's inexpensive life making snap ring grooves and profiling the ends of pins. It will be used in a 1" envelope. So - this is the stand for it. The stand is 3"X4"X.125" wall tubing and is very rigid. I scraped the pads the lathe sits on so it would not get twisted when I cranked it down.
I added several drawers for tools and such. The last pic is the current state - I am making covers and chip guards for it this week, but I am working on a few more storage cabinets so, since it is not a priority it may not get a whole lot of attention anytime soon.
More pics in a week or so - this is all I have right now. I am making more of the large cabinets for production supplies and hardware. I will post them up when they are complete.
Scott
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
wow nice shop, very impressive. Workstations look great - are the panels all stainless? how did you work the material or did you buy it sheared to sized? man, I wish i had that welding set up
everything looks great, but a quad chip tray?
Congratulations Scott,
I know how much work that entails, perhaps even more time spent in thought then work, whatever, it really looks professional, you have done a super nice job.
Ken
That's a lot of hard work, Congrats you did a superb job.
I especially like the workstation idea. They look so good you may have a market in workstation sales, I really think people would buy them.
Jason
I appreciate all of the comments, guys.
I have recieved many PMs asking for details, so I will share the plans and construction details in a future post in this thread. Time is a bit short right at the moment.
I would entertain manufacturing these for anyone, but I think they would be a bit pricey....I have probably about $250 in each just in purchased components and materials, many of which were obtained as seconds or scratch and dent (the aluminum panels).
Thanks again! I appreciate the interest! If you have any specific questions I will be happy to share info here.
Scott
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
Looks great Scott!
I was wondering... looking at the make/buy issue myself, why did you decide to CNC retrofit a lathe (just?) to make the pins?
I would wonder if it would be cheaper to have someone else crank them out for you, probably on a bar feed lathe. Are you modifying precision ground pins?
Thanks!
-Jeff
I looked into both, and weighed out the options at the time (maybe 3 years ago). The pins are designed around a high strength stainless (can't remember the designation). I tested with many materials and the higher grade stainless pins and the 'grade 8' bolt stock passed destructive testing with flying colors so I chose stainless since the product will likely get soaked from time to time. Anyway, the SS material is quite expensive but is available in a clevis pin from MSC. SO - I am buying the pins for the material for about $2 each and modifying them. At first, a local shop was charging $1.50 each to modify, but after the first 100 they raised their price to $3 each. So if I went that route, each would cost me $5+ each and there are three in each unit. Their price from scratch was substantially higher so I did not consider it.Originally Posted by InspirationTool
So - I figured I would grab a cheap lathe and retro CNC to crank these things out. I plan to load a rack with pins and have automation take care of the rest. Do you think I am going about it wrong? I don't know yet how efficient I can be or how long each will take, floor to floor, but for $5 each, I figure I have a lot of room as long as I can do at least 15 an hour (4 minutes each at $68/hour = $4.50), which should not be a problem. My automation model says I can do them in under 1.5 minutes, so a 3 minute cycle seems reasonable. Cost to automate? Probably a lot more than I want. But it would be a hands-off operation for the most part so I can do other things while the pins are being made.
The pins are only one issue with production, but I focused on other areas that were bigger problems so I have not really looked at optimizing the pin production at this point.
Scott
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
Hi Scott,
It apppears you have a lot invested.... may I ask if your business is financing all the fine improvements you are doing? I'm sure if your business is flourishing, then loans and such would be granted without problems..
...just trying to keep the horse before the cart...
John (Bloy)
I figure with a loading mechanism and no off the shelf kit for that lathe, it will take you 20-80 hours to set that up. Did you factor that into your price?
If you have a CAD drawing, I would at the very least get quotes in the RFQ section here as well as mfgquote.com. It will only take you 15-30 minutes to do that. I'd consider this "doing your homework". I think you will be pleasantly surpised, especially if you have only ever gotten one quote. I regularly see a 5x spread between the highest and lowest quotes on RFQ's I post.
Given the specialized machinery involved (either making your own part feeder, which may not work on other parts or buying a barfeed system) I would be very surprised to see it be cheaper for you to do yourself.
I find the more I outsource, the happer I am, but I prefer designing to machining myself. With my limited time, it is also more profitable for me to outsource.
-Jeff
That is seriously impressive!!!!!!!!
As of this moment, I have no business debt. I have a one year lease obligation with option to renew. I am taking the safe road which by all business accounts I have read is terms for failure but I can not and will not allow this business to destroy my life. I have kids and a loving soon-to-be wife and I have to be able to provide for my home.Hi Scott,
It apppears you have a lot invested.... may I ask if your business is financing all the fine improvements you are doing? I'm sure if your business is flourishing, then loans and such would be granted without problems..
...just trying to keep the horse before the cart...
John (Bloy)
I have been selling for four years now and I do not advertise at all. I can't build as fast as I need to when I get more than one or two orders - it takes me too long because of space and resource problems, so I got this space to help with that. I paid the year's lease up front. I do have a lot invested so far, but it's all paid for. The patent is rearing it's ugly head again and I have to shell out for that now. It never ends. Starting a business is all about making others wealthy at your expense, I guess.
I have entertained the thought of getting a loan and have even traveled to California to meet with a group of investors involved with the sport that thought they could just buy me out for a couple of bucks (ok, a little more than a couple) and make me go away. BTW - these guys are not a well known group - they are just guys in the MX industry with money and a very selfish, money driven attitude. I have had many offers and opportunities to sell the idea, but none are attractive for me. I have also been contacted by many investors but my company does not look good enough on paper for them to be seriously interested and it is for a relatively obscure market which they are not familiar with. Did you know there are roughly 980,000 NEW motorcycles sold in the US each year? It's bigger than most think.
I am taking the cautious route. I developed a 'plan for sucess but prepare for failure' attitude. I think it will go based on the past sales/advertising ratio and am planning to hit it full tilt when I am in a good position to deliver. Do you (or anyone) think that this is a bad decision?
Oh - I drafted a business plan a few years ago and I have done an extensive amount of research on my market including geographics. All of this will be updated and revised to reflect current economic conditions. In addition, I have been racing MX for 26 years now, so I know how the market acts.
I am the last one you will hear say "yeah - I knew that" when it comes to business, so if any of you have suggestions or thoughts, I am all ears. I may not be in a financial position to persue many of the options, but I still enjoy hearing directional advice from those with experience.
And thanks for the responses, everyone!
Scott
Last edited by mxtras; 11-16-2005 at 03:06 PM. Reason: spelling - did not change content
Consistency is a good thing....unless you're consistently an idiot.
Here are my opinions... please take them with a grain of salt considering my own business has been around only a bit more than a year.
I guess the the first thing I would want to know is what is the limiting factor? Is this your only job? If not, that would explain why you are having problems filling orders.
I would also want to know that if you can make enough in a short enough time to make a profit, meaning if you can make 1000/year, and you sell them, do you make a profit?
I would be worried, not about someone violating your patent, but coming up with something either better, or good enough, and bringing it to market faster or cheaper than you can. If I hear about a competitor that has a better product than me, but can't fill thier orders, that sounds like an opportunity if I can come up with something that I can compete with, even if it isn't as good.
Also, I guess I hear "Can't make them now" or "Can't make them fast enough" and I instantly think outsource. It doesn't mean you can't bring the operations back in house after you are set up, but it means you would have stock to sell in the mean time.
Just some thoughts. I wish you the best of luck on your adventure!
-Jeff
Novel product, good demand, taking the cautious approach, no debt, doesn't want to outsource, doesn't like vulture capitalists. Sounds a bit like me twenty or so years ago except the workshop is a couple of orders of magnitude nicer; for me it was the basement of a house I rented with a little Taiwanese mill and lathe. Now it is a good bit bigger with 5 CNC lathes and 7 machining centers.
Do I think you are taking the correct approach? Definitely YES and if you can multiply what you are starting with by the same factor I did I will feel jealous.
Do I have any advice? Yes on one topic which will probably generate a lot of disagreement and is maybe too late. Initially, forget about patents, take the money that would go into getting the patent and use it to get your product empatically on the market; get a presence and reputation for quality. Trademark any names and go for being the first and best. Patents only give you the right to chase an infringer through the courts. If you have little money an infringer can simply bleed you broke. If you put your ideas into the public domain you do run the risk that competitors will arise but if you stay innovative you will always stay ahead. In the future when you are the one with the resources to buy the services of fancy lawyers then consider the patent approach.
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