mach ramsey mn
Active member
The realization is that 99.9% of the shops out there are some form of ISO certified or AS certified and I have been an engineer or manager at shops like this and that 20 minute job takes $2000 dollars of paperwork to remain compliant.Not many of the parts I work on are heavier than 1500 lbs. Lifting 50 taper toolholders keeps me out of the gym.
I don't think the service I provide is just manual machining. The service is really coming up with a reasonable solution to remedy a customer's problem. Often times the problem is time=money. When the hydraulic cylinder is $15k from Cat and 3 months out and I can fix it in 3 days for $6500 guess what they do?
And I think getting the work is mostly about clear, quick communication with my customers and turning jobs around quickly.
I do a lot of manual repair work jobs for people I have a lot of history with and when they call me with a problem I have often explained that if I take my attention from what I'm working on and focus it on your problem I need to make $XXXX to make up for getting behind on my primary work. Often times that equates to making several hundred an hour to fix their stuff, but it still pencils out for them.
The more I really think about this, I believe the lack of shops doing repair machine work is not about a lack of machinists. It's about a lack of people that can stare down a customers broken part or a shitty sketch on a paper plate and come up with a real, workable solution in a short timeframe.
Yesterday I made a threaded insert with a .030" orifice for a farmer. He came from quite a ways away as he couldn't find anyone who could cut threads or drill a .030" hole. That's crazy. Anyone with any lathe could have made it.
When jobs like this would come in my door and i would explain to people the deal and often the response was they they had heard this before. If the job was in my garage shop capability I would slip them my number and have them call after 6 and would work something out. every one wants to or needs to or gets forced into some kind of certification to keep the "good" work flowing in the door and this keeps the farmer, maintenance department, the plumber, etc. from getting their work done because the capable shops have been forced out of that market by having to become certified.