One person welding shop getting into machining/ job shopping

acozygun · Jun 20, 2017

Hi all,

long time lurker first time poster

So here is the deal I have a small weld shop (me and some part time help) set up for rig welding and on sight work. I had been building handrails, staircases and such for one company, I basically set my whole business up around them .(I know it was dumb but the $$$ was crazy) they went under a couple weeks ago. I am tired of working outside in the sun, heat and rain.

I have always done a little bit of tig work for some local shops so I am pretty descent pop cans and razor blades are not a problem. I recently picked up a Wells Index mill and am buying tooling as stuff comes up. I am looking for advice on going from strictly welding to making and fixing parts. I know I am limited until I get a lathe but I know a few people I can have turn stuff for me for a reasonable price.

There are not to many shops in my area and the ones I have dealt with in the past are using all manual mills/ lathes, shears to make parts. I am some what new to the turning/ milling but the other stuff they make I know I could crush them if I got a water jet or cnc plasma. They have some one cutting out 100s of the same part on a shear and plasma cutting holes trying to make them all the same. Most are close to retirement and do not want to learn new things.

I tend to buy machines and learn how to run them as I go. My plan was to buy a used Haas VF3 after the next big job but that is out now. I am looking for Ideas on getting work I can run on a manual mill. Or would I be better sticking to hitting up machine shops for welding work.

Thanks

HuFlungDung · Jun 20, 2017

With no lathe, I think your prospects are pretty low. How do people even live without lathes?

Usually do a bunch of lathe work and then do a couple more ops on the mill and voila, done and $$. But the reverse doesn't work out very often.

DanielG · Jun 20, 2017

I'm not in your position and don't know your local market, but I do send stuff out to outside shops, so take this with the requisite amount of salt.

If you're a good welder but only an okay/not-great machinist, you're more valuable as a welder than as a machinist. I would consider focusing on adding value to the welding side of the business. Being able to offer more/faster service to your customers.

Having a knee mill is great, as it supports your welding/fab work, such as putting holes in things. They're very handy in a general purpose weld shop. As a next step up, I would look at a CNC knee mill, something 2 axis like a Acu-Rite or a Prototrak. They're conversational, and if you're putting a bolt pattern in a long piece of structural steel, you don't have an enclosure to deal with.

A CNC plasma table is much less expensive than a CNC mill, and works very well with your welding work. Having the ability to CNC profile parts will allow you to make much more complicated weldments for your customers.

As far as plasma vs. waterjet, plasma is going to be much less expensive, and from what I read on here, the maintenance/running costs on waterjet can be quite high.

DanielG · Jun 20, 2017

HuFlungDung said:
With no lathe, I think your prospects are pretty low. How do people even live without lathes?

Usually do a bunch of lathe work and then do a couple more ops on the mill and voila, done and $$. But the reverse doesn't work out very often.

I'm the opposite, I rarely touch the lathe, but use the mill all the time. It all depends on what types of parts you do.

Mike1974 · Jun 20, 2017

HuFlungDung said:
With no lathe, I think your prospects are pretty low. How do people even live without lathes?

Usually do a bunch of lathe work and then do a couple more ops on the mill and voila, done and $$. But the reverse doesn't work out very often.

And another thing to think of (quite odd, but when fabbing...) there are different ways to remove material from a square/rectangular piece, all crude, but doable. Bench grinder, angle grinder, chop saw, band saw, torch, plasma, Dremel toolkit, drill press, etc. All of those things will let you "shave a 1/4" (or "make a hole", etc) off the end of your square piece to weld into place. None of those will turn down 3/8 rod to .365" for a clearance fit or whatever.

Ok Ok, you could use a bench grinder to grind down a length of rod to fit into something, but it's ugly, slow, and brutal work if you want it to remotely look half decent...

DDoug · Jun 20, 2017

What DanielG said....

And for years there are members here complaining how little money
they make (machining) and are looking at getting a hot dog cart instead.

And they also say that the weld shops make "all the money".... :crazy:

acozygun · Jun 20, 2017

Thanks all for the input, defiantly food for though. I am going to keep my eyes open for a lathe. Welding has been a good business. I am just really burned out on the wrestling big iron, frying outside in the summer and having magnetic boogers. Mainly just looking for a new direction to take things.

gbent · Jun 20, 2017

You do realize if you are an experienced welder but switch to machining your income is probably going to take a drastic hit for a while, don't you?

It really sounds like you need a CNC plasma table, possibly before you get the lathe.

Philabuster · Jun 20, 2017

acozygun said:
Thanks all for the input, defiantly food for though. I am going to keep my eyes open for a lathe. Welding has been a good business. I am just really burned out on the wrestling big iron, frying outside in the summer and having magnetic boogers. Mainly just looking for a new direction to take things.

If you really want to take a break from welding, you would be better off working for someone else and learn how to be a machinist. Machinists that can weld are very rare and would be an asset to a job shop.

HuFlungDung · Jun 20, 2017

gbent said:
You do realize if you are an experienced welder but switch to machining your income is probably going to take a drastic hit for a while, don't you?

It really sounds like you need a CNC plasma table, possibly before you get the lathe.

The thing is that you really need a good crane system if you are going to handle sheets to make stuff. I think it better to learn CAD and farm out all the contouring. I literally cannot buy the material cheaper than the laser guys can supply it to me, cut to my design.

acozygun · Jun 20, 2017

That is where I am at, I do enough business with a place here I can't really mess with my own burn table for what they charge me to burn parts.

Parkerbender · Jun 20, 2017

This sounds a lot like where Todd Jost {member here} was like five or eight years ago, he is now busier than a one legged man in an A kicking contest and has an older vmc, older cnc lathe, new HD plasma and some manual stuff laying around. I do think that he had the manual stuff for awhile before actually getting into 'machining machining'. I also think that he is currently making a decent amount more money with the welders and plasma at the moment, but I think the machine work opens up the jobs he can get compared to what jobs he got that were strictly welding work. Just sharing his experience from what I know because I think you guys seem in {or he was in} similar positions. My story, I was just dicking around in my garage to start, and don't have a family to pay for, so my personal opinions and experiences probably don't apply.

But.
If it were me, I would find a cheap cnc lathe for that ~5K mark that seems to work, and figure that out kindof while doing your welding stuff and asking your customers if they would be interested in a new machine work supplier as you are thinking about getting more into that. Lastly, cnc plasmas are pretty darn cheap so that makes sense also. In any case, in my very uneducated opinion, manual machine work is really becoming unprofitable unless it is strictly for support of another {welding} process.

-Parker

JLarsson · Jun 21, 2017

Parkerbender said:
But.
If it were me, I would find a cheap cnc lathe for that ~5K mark that seems to work

-Parker

What sort of CNC lathe can be had for $5K?

Parkerbender · Jun 21, 2017

Nice EZPath ripoff option for 7200, though a guy would have to get it...
24 Millport CNC Lathe - business/commercial - by owner - sale

Little guy but I bet it could be had for less than the asking
cnc lathe - business/commercial - by owner - sale

2500 bucks for this Cincinnati
Cincinnati 28 CNC Lathe - tools - by owner - sale

There is probably a limited number of good deals in the parking lot of his, or your quickie mart up the street, and I guess I am assuming the guy who has a welding shop and wants to start machining has a pickup and decent sized trailer, but there are deals to be had with a little hunting and a little bit of effort

-these are in the area of the OP, there admittedly are fewer options {but still some, my cousin in Kalispell always has a new bargain he just found} in Mt... but around Chicago/Indiannapolis/Detroit? Machines galore.

JLarsson · Jun 21, 2017

Cool. I have a manual lathe and I looked for a LONG time without finding anything of the quality I wanted at a reasonable (let alone great) price.

Dupa3872 · Jun 21, 2017

I don't have a ton of time and need to be brief. I know a guy who had a small Fab shop his work was almost entirely on site railings and stair cases all welded construction. He would Fab stuff up in his shop and install on site. Just like you he was a one man operation and had part timers helping out.

He bought a water jet, a manual Knee mill and a Leblonde 15x40 inch lathe.

That water jet changed everything for him. He had a good head for design, got good with the software and was making all types of structural parts that he could have never made before. I was so impressed with his work and the way he thought things out. He would design the parts with features that allowed them to almost snap together with tabs to locate the parts and he would just weld them up.

He was cutting out parts for weld-ments that were used on machines and putting together the parts. Other machine shops would do any post machining required.

The water jet opened up his business to so many new opportunities.

His business went from scraping by each month to a point he was turning work away and being choosy about what he took.

If you are a good welder and have a head for design I don't think you can miss with a water jet, small knee mill and lathe.

Of course you need to have the right contacts and be able to market yourself, but you have one foot in the door now.

Good luck I hope you can make it work no matter what path you choose.

Make Chips Boys !

Ron

Pete Deal · Jun 21, 2017

I think with your welding skills I would try to ez into a shop by way of fab more than machining. This would build on your welding skills. Maybe get a 6' or so press brake, hossfeld bender, plasma table? The brake and bender are two machines that appear to me to be doable with not much money or power. The thing about a water jet is they take a lot of power (50hp motor I think?). Maybe a seat of solidworks so you could do some design with it? The sheet metal and structural design stuff in solidworks is great. Also, I know you said plasma cutting is cheap locally but getting someone else to do it is probably not reliably quick turn around.

hanermo · Jun 21, 2017

There is no *right* answer to the OPs dilemma.

Any of fab work, sheetmetal, plasma, fix-it for say ag-stuff, or heavy transport/mining stuff, may be good/profitable for a newbie looking for cash.

Anyone at all, anyone, may make money with any cnc equipment, depending mostly on the sales skills.
CNC machine type, capacity, size, accuracy is vastly less important than business/sales skills.

A good sales/business guy makes profits, often big profits, with a manual Bridgeport, or a manual SB lathe, or a Moore Nanotech lathe, or say a Weiler/Schaublin/Lenke mill.

Good-business sells what they can make a profit with, not what they can do.

The deciding factor is mostly cashflow, inventory, dso or days sales outstanding, vs cash income.
Financing is mostly much more important than technical skills or machine accuracy.

Oldwrench · Jun 21, 2017

Parkerbender said:
...In any case, in my very uneducated opinion, manual machine work is really becoming unprofitable unless it is strictly for support of another {welding} process.

I'd have to agree with this. Also, the sheer amount of expensive stuff you need to effectively use a CNC machine tool is not compatible with a one-man weld/fab operation. And there's this little problem of isolating the angle-grinding etc. from the machines. If you don't have the space to do that you can expect the machines and tooling to be junk in a few years.

A one-man shop can make more money, with a lot less investment, from welding compared to machine work.

DDoug · Jun 21, 2017

Oldwrench said:
.

A one-man shop can make more money, with a lot less investment, from welding compared to machine work.

Better yet "How would you like your hot dog sir ?"

One person welding shop getting into machining/ job shopping

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