What's new
What's new
By:
Advanced search…

Search results

  1. R

    SMART MACHINE TOOLS - Who has one? How has it held up?

    I just took delivery of my first NL2000BSY on Wednesday. You don't really hear much about them, good or bad, but it's telling that the naysayers have rarely actually used one. My justification for the purchase was that it's a proven, generic Korean lathe design and they had the best pricing I...
  2. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    No idea how almost 6 months went by so fast, but I've been real busy. I sold off all of my Haas crap, along with the old Romi and a few other things, and took delivery of a Smart NL2000BSY yesterday! Still doesn't quite seem real to me. I've got a couple production jobs in the works that will...
  3. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    (Continued, character limit) One more piece of equipment has yet to arrive, which is the big ol bandsaw. It's sitting under tarps in my friend's shop's parking lot because one of the electrical boxes on the side was about 2" too wide to clear the wheel arches on the trailer I rented. Currently...
  4. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    Time for another update! I spent the last two months moving everything over - wrapped it all up about two weeks later than planned, which is honestly better than I or the landlord expected. In that span of time, I had some interesting interactions with the old landlord, in which he cut power...
  5. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    I saw those videos as well, and his was definitely a similar experience to ours. I don't plan to buy a new Haas again, and if I do ever buy one used, it'll be a VF2 or similar with a proven track record that I can evaluate under power. Not even gonna consider one of their slant bed lathes after...
  6. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    This was my biggest takeaway from the whole debacle. Not only do they fundamentally require more accurate motion control and axis drives, but there's just so much more that can go wrong. I can't speak for the broad state of UMC production quality, but it seems like they're more polarizing than...
  7. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    I've heard similar stories, and while I knew it wouldn't be a magic bullet for the shop so to speak, I'd hoped that lowers would help fill downtime without a ton of effort - standard tools, fixtures, and programs that are ready to go whenever we have a moment, maybe eventually leading to...
  8. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    Alright, I guess I'll get into my UMC experience a little deeper. I'm on vacation in CA right now for a friend's wedding so I've got a little free time. I will say that the machine was far from the sole reason we're in this position right now. It did pay for itself at times, albeit...
  9. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    I like this a lot and wholeheartedly agree. Someone asked me recently if it will hurt to wind down the LLC and I don't really think it will. I'm not going to stop doing what I've been doing, I'm just going to take this opportunity to improve how I do it. Absolutely. It started to feel like...
  10. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    Some super deep laser engraving for a guy who builds Broncos. He supplied the blanks. I believe they get painted over to match the build. Took about 45 mins each to mark, cooked the red pointer laser in the machine because it was 95 degrees in the shop that day and I was running at almost full...
  11. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    Here's a few more pics from recent work that I can share, in no particular order. We ran a couple hundred of these enclosures for one of my friends from high school. These parts were a major reason why we set up an anodizing line - nobody could deliver the cosmetic quality we needed without a...
  12. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    We were always planning to implement automation as soon as we could afford it but never set a goal or budget for what exactly that meant to us. It's never been my goal to have a bunch of other guys pushing green buttons all day while I sit around and program, so we never hired anyone to do that...
  13. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    I definitely did! Well, when we first started off, the only space we could afford was a 2500 sqft corner of a 20k sqft floor, otherwise unoccupied, in a barely maintained 100 year old mill building. It was $500/mo, which we split 3 ways, and easy enough for some college kids to afford with not...
  14. R

    Kardex Remstar vertical storage units

    The building I'm in has one of those running through the first three floors for the cabinet shop that's in there. It's awesome, especially for a shop that does a ton of volume with moderately large panels and associated hardware that would need to be shuttled up and downstairs via freight...
  15. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    Wow, it's been a few years. We made the decision a couple weeks ago to close down at the end of the year. Since I last posted, we got deep into large format powder coating and media blasting, bought a UMC500ss, got rid of that damn thing, and learned a good lesson about focusing our energy on...
  16. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    Man, what a whirlwind. We delivered 7000 parts last Tuesday (minus marking, for reasons that I'll probably get into later but don't really want to type out right now), and I'm no longer employed as a contractor at the company that gave us this job for related reasons (my decision). Thankfully, I...
  17. R

    Pulling my hair out trying to helical ramp into 6061

    I usually drop the RPMs when helical ramping to up the chipload. 4K RPM seems to be the happy zone for a 1/4" standard lg EM on my machine at a ~3deg ramp, but it feels like it could definitely be pushed steeper than that. The reason it screams is because only a short segment of the EM is...
  18. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    Hoooo boy, this rollercoaster just doesn't stop. The shop I contract for was originally going to have us handle a 10k pc job that's two countersunk holes in some steel plates with wide open tolerances. Cool. Had plenty of time to prepare, was just waiting on a PO to order tooling, and then...
  19. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    Hey, YOU try getting a mirror finish with whatever worn out tools you can find in a drawer, I'm lucky we even had a 1/4" ballnose! Besides, there's only so much work I'm willing to put in as a favor before my hours become billable, and that seems to be shrinking the more people ask...
  20. R

    The Factory Amsterdam

    Oh, I'm not expecting everything to work out perfectly, and if we wind up paying rent sometimes, that's still fine with me. We're hoping for an arrangement where there's a fixed monthly value that we either pay as rent or pay for with work at our quoted rate, which is effectively the same thing...

ABOUT PRACTICAL MACHINIST

With more than 10.6 million unique visitors over the last year, Practical Machinist is the most visited site for metalworking professionals. Practical Machinist is the easiest way to learn new techniques, get answers quickly and discuss common challenges with your peers. Register for the world’s largest manufacturing technology forum for free today to stay in the know.

Learn more about us.

STAY CONNECTED

Facebook Instagram YouTube LinkedIn Pinterest Twitter Tiktok

Register Become a forum member. Register today.

Sign Up Sign up for our e-newsletter.

© 2023 Copyright Practicalmachinist.com. All Rights reserved.

Top