Hello Everyone. First off I appreciate all advise, good bad and the ugly.
Quick background - Product development engineer, 5-6 years of CAD background
My current situation I believe is really rare/ hard to seek advice that why I am turning to this forum for some help. I've already gained plenty of wisdom from reading on here and I will continue to.
My situation - I currently own and run a business providing contracted skill labor to one customer in particular who happens to be my former employer. Most of the time I personally am the main contracted laborer doing mostly robotic and automation tooling assembly builds, and I also perform service repair work. I build this customer's product both at their facility and at mine. It's been a great year and things don't seem to be slowing down.
To get to the point... With a lot of special projects that I build there are machined parts being made by other machine shops. I am now moving into the position of basically being the general contractor and have full responsibility of getting the purchase parts ordered, machined parts made, and then assembly. I have already had close to 25k in machined parts made the past 2 months, these are simple parts. I have the time being self employed to machine these parts myself, to be blunt I'm not a machinist. But however I do know CAD and CAM and feel like I can do anything I set my mind to (being 25 and already running a successful business). Coming out of the background I already have I know materials, tooling, tool operations and finishing(s). I also have a 60x80 facility with power to perform the work.
Now for the advise -
should I purchase an order machine that will last? looking for suggestions..
Should I purchase a tormach type machine to get started making the simple parts, and sub out the tougher/ larger parts?
Should I just keep using machine shops who can barely keep to a 3 week lead time, and in my opinion rape me because I don't provide them with 100k in work every year?
Quick background - Product development engineer, 5-6 years of CAD background
My current situation I believe is really rare/ hard to seek advice that why I am turning to this forum for some help. I've already gained plenty of wisdom from reading on here and I will continue to.
My situation - I currently own and run a business providing contracted skill labor to one customer in particular who happens to be my former employer. Most of the time I personally am the main contracted laborer doing mostly robotic and automation tooling assembly builds, and I also perform service repair work. I build this customer's product both at their facility and at mine. It's been a great year and things don't seem to be slowing down.
To get to the point... With a lot of special projects that I build there are machined parts being made by other machine shops. I am now moving into the position of basically being the general contractor and have full responsibility of getting the purchase parts ordered, machined parts made, and then assembly. I have already had close to 25k in machined parts made the past 2 months, these are simple parts. I have the time being self employed to machine these parts myself, to be blunt I'm not a machinist. But however I do know CAD and CAM and feel like I can do anything I set my mind to (being 25 and already running a successful business). Coming out of the background I already have I know materials, tooling, tool operations and finishing(s). I also have a 60x80 facility with power to perform the work.
Now for the advise -
should I purchase an order machine that will last? looking for suggestions..
Should I purchase a tormach type machine to get started making the simple parts, and sub out the tougher/ larger parts?
Should I just keep using machine shops who can barely keep to a 3 week lead time, and in my opinion rape me because I don't provide them with 100k in work every year?