I didn't notice if you mentioned if your equipment is automated or mostly manual. I don't claim any great machinery skills, but my brother was trained as a machinist and has a manual bridgeport at home, along with some other related items and lots of tooling. (he does not work as a machinist for many years)
The thing I noticed watching him work is that while his results are very good, it seems to take about 4 hours of goofing around to do anything useful.
In his case, this includes digging his way back to the mill in his shed, doing all the testing he likes to do, etc, but the point is the same.
The first 4 hours are largely lost to "getting ready" and perhaps making "the first one". At that point, making 10 is only another 1 hour of work.
The items I am interested in are pretty simple, but it seems to take a lot more tooling for him to do the same job on his manual system as an automatic / cnc system.
I guess the point is, if your metal working tools are not cnc driven, then converting them should be high on your list if you are at all serious about this as a business.  |