Real world cost of owning a CNC

I have been looking to add a smaller CNC mill to my home "shop". I am curious to know what the real cost of ownership is. Mainly referring to maintenance costs.

Any home shop guys here care to share there experience?


Ps: I call it a shop, but really it's just my regular sized, over stuffed, 2 car garage.

There's actually no way to answer your question as written....

You talking a CNC knee mill, VMC, bed mill, or toolroom mill?

Do you have a product line your going to be machining or just job shop stuff?

Do you have three phase power?

What kind of air compressor are you gonna need?

Do you need to machine harder materials or just Aluminum and mid steel?

rust

sen2two said:

I have been looking to add a smaller CNC mill to my home "shop". I am curious to know what the real cost of ownership is. Mainly referring to maintenance costs.

Any home shop guys here care to share there experience?


Ps: I call it a shop, but really it's just my regular sized, over stuffed, 2 car garage.

Click to expand...

.
garage tends to be unheated most of the time and items in it rust. you can easily have over $1000 to $10,000 in tool holders also all rusting away.
.
i would count on figuring no more than a 10 year life so if you bought a $20,000 machine and $5000 in tooling plus $5000 for electrical upgrade count on it going down in value $5000 first year and $2500 each year after plus any taxes you might be paying for the garage and of course some communities have home owner association rules on what is allowed in garage.
......... you could buy a used machine if all you want is a hobby

I put a small VMC in my over stuffed 2 car garage... it's turning out to be one expensive hobby. wish someone would walk thru the door with some repeat business so i can finance this baby.

thats why the Techshop like in California where you pay $100/month to use a shop that is shared by others is a good ideal. if 100 people sign up that $10,000 a month coming in for rent, machines, maintenance, and they offer training classes.
....... some people donate machines in return for not having to pay monthly dues for so long. so if 1/2 of people brings a cnc to the shop thats 50 machines and 50 paying dues for employees to watch the shop and act as trainers when needed.

Costs...
Yea.
3 phase. I have 3 Phase Perfects at my house. That was more than you're gonna pay for your machine. I have 1200 amps of 480 v in my building
Compressors. I have three of them. 80 gal 25CFM 7.5 HP is my smallest. 120 gal, 32 CFM 7.5 HP is my other. Also have a 25HP rotary. I run them all.
If one goes down I'm not dead.
Holders...I have something over 500 holders.
Collets...I have lots.
Vices. $600 apiece. Or something like that.
Want modular tooling? Get out the wallet.
Cutters? I spend about $6k a month.
Coolant? $1200 a drum.
Cad Cam? I'm over $70k deep. But I can do LOTS.
I just bought a Makino A51. Pallets are about $5k apiece. I have 15. Remember that modular tooling thing? X 15 X 4 sides of each pallet.
Repairs START at about $2k every time you have a little oopsie.
Inspection equipment? Lots of money there. Lots of money.
This ain't a game for those that get tripped up by all the Zero's

If you do it right, it doesnt cost you anything, it actually pays you..

PBMW said:

Costs...
Yea.
3 phase. I have 3 Phase Perfects at my house. That was more than you're gonna pay for your machine. I have 1200 amps of 480 v in my building
Compressors. I have three of them. 80 gal 25CFM 7.5 HP is my smallest. 120 gal, 32 CFM 7.5 HP is my other. Also have a 25HP rotary. I run them all.
If one goes down I'm not dead.
Holders...I have something over 500 holders.
Collets...I have lots.
Vices. $600 apiece. Or something like that.
Want modular tooling? Get out the wallet.
Cutters? I spend about $6k a month.
Coolant? $1200 a drum.
Cad Cam? I'm over $70k deep. But I can do LOTS.
I just bought a Makino A51. Pallets are about $5k apiece. I have 15. Remember that modular tooling thing? X 15 X 4 sides of each pallet.
Repairs START at about $2k every time you have a little oopsie.
Inspection equipment? Lots of money there. Lots of money.
This ain't a game for those that get tripped up by all the Zero's

Click to expand...

Hummmm That's a lot of investment for a hobby shop.

Tom

Maintenance doesn't seem too bad to me. Oil, new tank of coolant every yr or year and half. Batteries every couple years or so.
Eventually some coolant hoses will have to be replaced, the ones that came with my 2412(first mcv-300) don't seem to be the greatest but its cheap to change.

Now trying to fix up an older/used machine that has seen better days would be a whole other game. Some guys on here are good at it... I'll stick to buying new whenever possible.

Well, that depends on the machine, and how well you take care of it. The right machine may be near zero over 10 years. Personally I like Japanese drill/tap machines, used, so far. To reduce maintenance costs go for the more simple ones, with grease packed spindles. Keep it clean, lubricated, powered with a PhasePerfect at the right voltage, clean dry air, don't let it sit for long periods unused, and in a temperature and humidity controlled space. This will go a long way to reducing your maintenance costs.

Cheaper than a damn bass boat and camper.
have fun
i_r_

cost

in New York my garage empty is taxed as worth $10,000 and so is taxed at $400 a year.
.
i every so often throw out $20 of good extra stuff because i did not spend $10,000 for garage and $400 a year on taxes to have it full of stuff taking up space and not being used.
.
i am just saying even if you only spend $2000 a year to buy and maintain cnc tools. you got to ask your self if it is worth it as a hobby.
.
i thought about making a boat in the garage. by the time i priced materials, tools, labor, taking up space for a long period of time in the garage. i figured not worth it.
.
just saying maybe part of going middle age crazy people spend huge sums for a hobby. like buying a $20,000 boat that used less than 10 times a year.

Depends, on -

How old and what shape the machine(s) is (are) in.
How old and in what shape you are in - what can you maintain yourself?
Lots of other things.


Lots of naysaysers out today on this thread. counting taxes on the garage? C'mon man the garage is there if there are machines in it or not.

My hobby shop costs me almost nothing to maintain. Just some coolant, oils, occasional tooling. etc. I also maintain/repair/upgrade everything myself. Adding DRO's rebuilding ball screws, debugging and replacing failed drives, running all electric, running all air. Going and getting cheap tools on my own, etc. I run an older matsuura cnc mill, two old CNC lathes, T30 compressor, blast cabinet, welders, phase converter, a manual lathe, and a manual mill. Its a hobby shop but only because I don't try to make money off of it and there's probably more than a few money making shops that are less equipped. Its out in the barn and I don't have rust issues and I right near the water.

The cost - once you've amassed the metal, can be almost nothing if you make an effort to keep it low.

Brent

I sold my former business to a friend, but didn't want to calcify in "retirement", so I started working out a plan that would leave me with a nicely equipped hobby shop. "Hobbies" to me had to support themselves, and not be an unaffordable luxury. I wanted to play, but be compensated at the same time.

I wanted to learn CNC, so I bought a used BP Interact cnc mill with Heidenhein controls, which had a good conversational programming language. This was a really good machine that provided me with a lot of learning. It quickly taught me that it is not easy to make money without a tool changer, because you are "one" with the machine in that you cannot walk away from it while you are wanting to do something else. At the time, it was perfect in learning programming and I didn't lose money when I later sold it.

Now that I knew beginning cnc, I started to develop the knew concepts saw line, bought a Doosan 32x16 Mill with Fanuc programming (another story), and we were off to the races. Remember, this was a hobby!

Work load increased, and led to the purchase of a Ganesh lathe with live tooling....my workload shifted more to running the front end, and I brought on a full time programmer, as the lathe was a bit further than I could comfortably venture. Remember, I'm 79 this month, and trying to make all of the tool moves and tooling not crash into each other would not have been fun.

The work load kept increasing, and the 2nd op lathe load got to be too much, so I opted for a Ganesh 32 CS with second spindle, and this has made all the difference. I choose not to run lites out (remember, this is still a hobby :-). We are now in a 2100 sq ft space with wimpy 208 3phase, looking at getting another twin spindle lathe, have three employees, and am taking a vacation to NZ and AU in November to visit distributors over there.

I financed the purchase of the machines through my local bank at a very good rate and I am enjoying my retirement hobby.
For those that might be interested, my website is Knew Concepts - Fine Metalsmithing Equipment Designed for Artisans - The Red Saw - Santa Cruz, CA

Lee (the saw guy)

The more maintenance and repairs you can do yourself the cheaper the cost of ownership. If you have to call in a tech for every little problem or glitch, you'll be broke in no time.

Most boats are used less than 10 days a year.
Worldwide average.
The bigger the boats, the less they are used.
Many 10M plus boats are used a few days only. at 1M$+ per year maintenance.

The owners can afford it (and might have several such boats, in different locations).

TDegenhart said:

Hummmm That's a lot of investment for a hobby shop.

Tom

Click to expand...

I'm not a hobby shop
He wanted to know costs...

PBMW said:

I'm not a hobby shop
He wanted to know costs...

Click to expand...

sen2two said:

Any home shop guys here care to share there experience?

Click to expand...

I'm definitely interested in this thread, because I'd like to be in this same boat in less than two years. Only I'd be jumping into developing my own product (or that's the long-term plan anyway).

Where did the OP go??

lets say you have $100,000 in a small garage shop
.
thats roughly if in an retirement annuity would give you $400 each month in interest
.
if you left it alone and 20 years later it was worth $300,000 (401K account) then you would be getting $1200 a month then.
.
point is a lot of factories will not make anything if they make more profit leaving it invested in diversified mutual funds. many factories refuse to start production unless they make minimum 10% profit a year over expenses.
.
so $100,000 invested will it make $10,000 + expenses and depreciation say another $10,000. So basically you would need to make $20,000 from $100,000 invested to have $10,000 profit to come even with investing in a 401K retirement account
.
just saying a lot of people save nothing for retirement trying to start a business that a high percentage do not make a profit.
.
and yes i worry about taxes paid each year for a garage. if you are not using it as a garage it is costing money to have. many many businesses deliberately knock buildings down to save paying taxes. a hugh loss of money over time having assets being taxed and generating no profit.
.
not for nothing a garage taxed at $400 / year for 50 years at 6% interest loss if it was invested would be about $115,000 ......... a basic compound interest formula
.
https://www.investor.gov/tools/calculators/compound-interest-calculator#.U8_1N0DYmSp
.
if $300 a month invested 50 years at 6% compound interest would be over $1,000,000 ......... i am just saying many a hobby end up making a person spend retirement just on SS which is what $1100/month and have no savings having wasted while young on hobbies