The Factory Amsterdam

[Roboman01]

Products are golden. Make time for them. Invest carefully in developing your ideas and let your business grow organically.

When I was running my business in my 20's I invested in more labor and pushed everything through the machines I had.

In my early 30's I re-shuffled my business. Maybe a "reset" like what you are experiencing currently. I changed my thoughts on the labor thing and instead focused on automation and efficiency. Holy shit it's amazing how much you can find out you wasted paying people to do stuff instead of investing in things like a CNC bandsaw, good 4th axis and high density fixtures. Just getting rid of shit that sucked all my attention while I made it- Like any kind of welding. Only way I would make fabrications again would be if I added a welding robot. Being under a welding hood is same as cranking handles to make your parts.

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. I took that a little too far - I think we could've gotten a robot or bar fed lathe with a magazine loader much sooner had we brought on a moderately skilled operator/setup guy that I could teach my programming practices to over time to let me focus on planning and organization. However, we weren't paying ourselves anything up until about 2 years ago, so hiring was not an option in the earlier days where it would've made the biggest difference. Bit of a catch-22.

As it stands, I have that bar fed CL-1 that has been dead nuts reliable and very reasonably accurate. It can't hold enough material to run overnight all that often (overpriced pneumatic bar pusher, not a magazine loader), but otherwise it's fairly hands off with the right type of work. I want more things like that.

The Fuse 1 does well in that regard too, and typically runs for 25-50 hours unattended with an hour or so of labor involved in unpacking and processing a build each time it runs. I will be buying more of those printers because they cost less than any of my other equipment, produce unbelievable part quality, and allow me to be very competitive in the SLS world when an equivalent HP, EOS, or Stratasys machine would be $300k+. I gave Materialise my pound of flesh for their software package that allows me to pack a full build chamber to 20-30% density in ~5 minutes with build chamber heat management and orientation optimization built in, so that's pretty much hands-off revenue.

I also have a hydraulic shuttle feed bandsaw now! A ~1986 Doall C1216a. Picked it up on ebay for $2500 and it's been cranking ever since. We managed to snag an intern from my alma mater to do his master's thesis on retrofitting that saw with a PLC and network connectivity so I'll be able to upload cut lists and have it figure out the best order to cut stock while minimizing drops - there's about 4 months left on that project. I have a small line of business for those nerf blasters that is just cutting tube stock to length, cleaning up the ends on a hardinge turret lathe, and anodizing it in house. That saw is the only way to make that type of work viable, and it can hold 10 thou on length if you set it up and maintain it well. Takes 50 cents of tube and turns it into a $20+ finished part.

As for high(er) density workholding, I'm working towards that. It's annoying to do in the mini mill because I can't really fit more than 2 6" vises on the table, so the easy route that most take (filling up a 40x20 with cheap kurt vises) isn't an option. Below is one of a pair of pallets I run in the mini mill several times a year for some parts that run ~300 at a time. Every part of that fixture was made and finished in house except for the fasteners, pull studs, and mitee bites - I've built many other fixtures along these lines but this is by far my best work so far. I'd really like to get more than 4 parts per cycle in the future but as it stands now, these pallets are easy to load and get the job done. They were in the UMC at one point but now I just surface the faces I was swarfing and it actually runs a couple minutes faster this way, with better tool life because the mini mill is somehow dramatically more rigid than the UMC.



I'm learning that fixture design like this is the kind of work I really enjoy, and I want to find more parts that are around this size because they fit very well in the mini mill. I have a 5C rotary unit now that just showed up (would've preferred a platter style, but I didn't have a say in it - can't really elaborate beyond that), and I'm planning to build some tiny tombstones for it out of solid 5C blanks.
On the topic of shit that sucks attention, I had a call this morning with one of my old professors and a guy from CSEMII, and they're interested in funding a project for "smart manufacturing" in my shop. I'm guessing it's going to be shrouded in industry 4.0 buzz words but from the sounds of it, they want to help me get my machines networked and set up with useful data collection for process monitoring so that I can become the commercial extension and demo shop for the manufacturing and product development programs at RPI.

I want to implement the organizational structures and software systems that I never had time to think about before from a very early stage so that I don't have to deal with onboarding when I'm already swamped with work, and I think this project will help me get there faster than I'd be able to do on my own. I don't want to even consider hiring until I have robust systems in place because it's much harder to teach an existing employee how to use a new system that you're still figuring out than it is to onboard a new guy into a functioning structure.

2023 will be focused entirely on that kind of systems-level planning with the goal of hiring my first employee to validate the systems I design by the end of the year. If I can keep my monthly overhead under $10k between building expenses and remaining machine/software expenses (CL, Fuse, Magics, Gibbs total ~$4500/mo), I think I can keep my daily workload light enough to pay for everything while focusing all my other time on business development and organization that will be necessary to successfully launch products.

 

[Roboman01]

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 ton of rework and scrapped/dented parts.



These were the other parts we produced that had so many anodizing issues and finally pushed us over the edge to build our system. Had to do roughly 400 of these, and even the clear ano was getting screwed up by our vendors.






Fun tab-off project on the UMC, one of the first I ran successfully.



Enclosure for some prototype work that I was designing and running for a customer. It was later anodized and laser marked as well, but I don't have pictures of that.



Prototypes for a college friend who was entering a startup competition with some kind of RF product and needed some nice enclosures to dress up the pitch. The plastic insert in the far right unit was SLS printed on the Fuse.




We have/had an 07FFL and did some gunsmithing work for a while because one of my partners is a talented revolver shooter and worked under a master gunsmith for a long time to learn how to build his guns better for ICOR matches. This was a SLS printed fixture to cut a slot in a customer's gun for a Dawson-style modular front sight base, which I also made because the part was backordered for months at the time. Not planning to continue with FFL work in the foreseeable future, but it is fun stuff.




One of the dart blasters we produce in-house as side income - entirely SLS printed and finished in Cerakote, with a handful of machined parts inside for the stuff that you just can't print. Shoots about 200 fps and is spring powered.

Hit the picture limit, more to come.

 

[Roboman01]

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 power for several hours straight.







Local hot rod builder was getting ready for SEMA last fall and wanted a custom air cleaner housing that would connect all 3 of his EFI carb replacement doohickeys. The UMC did a pretty good job since it was all cosmetic work and a one-off.



More Fuse stuff, two iterations of a forming die for some prototype sheet metal work. Each die set cost about $150 in powder and ran in ~30 hrs. Worked just fine for the application.



Door on the left is original, door on the right was entirely fabricated by me. Backstory: the bakery my girlfriend works at was shut down for a bit at the beginning of covid, and the right side door hinge at the top was always an issue for them. This was their sandwich fridge, so it was used all the time during the lunch rush and the hinge kept getting worse, so I said I'd take a look at it and make a new hinge. Easy, right?

Well, it was actually really easy and I came up with a nice replacement hinge that was smooth and way more durable than the original. Installed it in the door at my shop, put it in the bed of my truck, drove home, went inside for a bit, and when I came back out it was just...gone

Guess someone thought that a couple pounds of stainless full of foam was worth taking to the scrap yard? Can't imagine they got more than a couple bucks out of it. Anyway, the bakery was still closed, and this door had suddenly become a much bigger problem than it was at the start. So I went back, took a bunch of measurements off the door, ordered a gasket from the manufacturer, and laser cut, bent, and assembled a new one with machined hinge hardware on both the top and bottom hinge points this time. Printed the handle insert on a Form 2 and added the texture with the old CO2 laser (this was before we had the fuse or the fiber), then painted it black. Filled the whole thing with spray foam and mounted it up. Can't believe I had to do all that for a friggin' fridge door, but here we are.

 

[bryan_machine]

I once took a "business startup course" which was a whole lot of either obvious stuff (you need to keep books and keep track of resource) or outright drivel, but did have one really key insight -> "a startup is a search process".

Actually, I think almost all businesses are search processes - always searching for the next customer, order, product, process, supply, etc.

As for the sort of looser who steals a door out of a truck bed, sigh. It takes a very small fraction of the population behaving that way to poison a society...

 

[standardparts]

'Roboman1'.......Monday morning quarterbacking and all that....Appears the coatings/finishing side should have been a stand-alone business separate from design/production.
Anyway....your posts are causing me to take a break and figure out some of the technology your talking about along with costs.
Very rare to see such a candid 'post-mortem' regarding a business closing.

 

[pat pounden]

View attachment 376963

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 power for several hours straight.

View attachment 376964

View attachment 376965

View attachment 376966

Local hot rod builder was getting ready for SEMA last fall and wanted a custom air cleaner housing that would connect all 3 of his EFI carb replacement doohickeys. The UMC did a pretty good job since it was all cosmetic work and a one-off.

View attachment 376967

More Fuse stuff, two iterations of a forming die for some prototype sheet metal work. Each die set cost about $150 in powder and ran in ~30 hrs. Worked just fine for the application.

View attachment 376968

Door on the left is original, door on the right was entirely fabricated by me. Backstory: the bakery my girlfriend works at was shut down for a bit at the beginning of covid, and the right side door hinge at the top was always an issue for them. This was their sandwich fridge, so it was used all the time during the lunch rush and the hinge kept getting worse, so I said I'd take a look at it and make a new hinge. Easy, right?

Well, it was actually really easy and I came up with a nice replacement hinge that was smooth and way more durable than the original. Installed it in the door at my shop, put it in the bed of my truck, drove home, went inside for a bit, and when I came back out it was just...gone

Guess someone thought that a couple pounds of stainless full of foam was worth taking to the scrap yard? Can't imagine they got more than a couple bucks out of it. Anyway, the bakery was still closed, and this door had suddenly become a much bigger problem than it was at the start. So I went back, took a bunch of measurements off the door, ordered a gasket from the manufacturer, and laser cut, bent, and assembled a new one with machined hinge hardware on both the top and bottom hinge points this time. Printed the handle insert on a Form 2 and added the texture with the old CO2 laser (this was before we had the fuse or the fiber), then painted it black. Filled the whole thing with spray foam and mounted it up. Can't believe I had to do all that for a friggin' fridge door, but here we are.

spellbinding story!

 

[Roboman01]

I once took a "business startup course" which was a whole lot of either obvious stuff (you need to keep books and keep track of resource) or outright drivel, but did have one really key insight -> "a startup is a search process".

Actually, I think almost all businesses are search processes - always searching for the next customer, order, product, process, supply, etc.

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.

Appears the coatings/finishing side should have been a stand-alone business separate from design/production.

Absolutely. It started to feel like that a while back but we were in a position where each needed the other to continue operating because we were a little beyond our means on both sides with the UMC down so often but still costing money and the scale of operations we were trying to achieve on the finishing side. If we'd had a solid financial buffer of even 3-6 months at some point, we could've wound down either one to focus on the other without putting ourselves in hot water (it was already warm).

Anyway....your posts are causing me to take a break and figure out some of the technology your talking about along with costs.

Let me know if you have any other questions - I'm not formally affiliated with Formlabs but a guy I know had me doing some prototype work for him during his time there, and I'm very confident in and familiar with their design team. Just don't want people to think I'm a paid shill or anything. I was going to be on a user summit panel this year but turns out they don't want to feature a business who bought their printers and closed! Maybe next October when I'm back on my feet. We were the first shop in the US to buy Materialise Magics with their new package pricing intended for Fuse users, which is what they wanted me to talk about.

Funny you mention costing that stuff though, we ordered a Fuse 1+ at IMTS, which was the plan because the first one was going so well and had been booked solid for 3 months at that point with no end in sight. Well, obviously if we're shutting the company down, we don't need to buy that anymore, but turns out it costs $4400 to cancel the order through our reseller (who we chose to buy through because we generally like working with them) and another $500 to cancel the financing!

Guess who's getting a fuse 1+ in like a week? The cost to cancel it works out to around 6 months of payments so if I've got the money to cancel it, I've got the money to use it. Good thing I still have work for it and those customers are sticking around. Production work is a dream, you put powder in, click a few buttons and parts come out good every time.

The only failures I get are when I forget to top off the powder hopper - it can't pause a build because it holds the chamber at 180C and the nylon can start to clump if it sits at that temp for too long, so it aborts your print if it runs out of material. Holds 5 thou or better. It tells you when and how to do maintenance down to vacuuming loose powder out of the chamber. Impressive machine for the money.

Very rare to see such a candid 'post-mortem' regarding a business closing.

Thank you - I figure if nothing else, it's a good way for me to document things for future reference, and this way I get useful feedback too.

 

[david n]

You learned a lot along the way................school of hard knocks.

I wonder how many small businesses/start ups Haas has caused to crash and burn, down size, or economically burdened with the machines they pass off as capable machine tools?

 

[Ox]

You learned a lot along the way................school of hard knocks.

I wonder how many small businesses/start ups Haas has caused to crash and burn, down size, or economically burdened with the machines they pass off as capable machine tools?

OK, I understand that this guy had issues with his 5x Haas, but I KNOW that I have seen at least one full thread about someone that had all kinds of issues with a DMG, or Yamazaki, or some other "mid" ship brand, only to kick it to the curb and fetch a Haas to replace, and all was right with the world after that day.

Not that I could ever see myself ever buying anything but the most basic if I was to ever buy a Haas, but I hate to see them not get their kudo's when they are on the other side either.


---------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

 

[david n]

OK, I understand that this guy had issues with his 5x Haas, but I KNOW that I have seen at least one full thread about someone that had all kinds of issues with a DMG, or Yamazaki, or some other "mid" ship brand, only to kick it to the curb and fetch a Haas to replace, and all was right with the world after that day.

Not that I could ever see myself ever buying anything but the most basic if I was to ever buy a Haas, but I hate to see them not get their kudo's when they are on the other side either.


---------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

True.............but man, there's plenty of guys getting into tight spots b/c of certain Haas machines........and I know, I know, bad news travels fast.............I think the only 2 style machines that should ever be purchased from Haas is a 3 axis mill or a 2 axis lathe...............................

 

[Garwood]

OK, I understand that this guy had issues with his 5x Haas, but I KNOW that I have seen at least one full thread about someone that had all kinds of issues with a DMG, or Yamazaki, or some other "mid" ship brand, only to kick it to the curb and fetch a Haas to replace, and all was right with the world after that day.

Not that I could ever see myself ever buying anything but the most basic if I was to ever buy a Haas, but I hate to see them not get their kudo's when they are on the other side either.


---------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Yeah, those Swissmak buyers sure wish they'd bought a Haas!

 

[Roboman01]

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 wonder how many small businesses/start ups Haas has caused to crash and burn, down size, or economically burdened with the machines they pass off as capable machine tools?

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 inconsistently. Returning high-5 figures of work that it should've been able to do at the beginning of this year was a problem for sure. I don't want to make it sound like I'm blaming Haas for our current financial troubles or the fact that we're closing down, because that would be far from the truth. The reality is that our business decisions caused our current problems. We probably shouldn't have purchased that machine when we did, even though on paper it made sense. Who expects a brand new machine tool purchase to end in complete and total failure that is delivered 3 months late and never really works right with no solution provided by the manufacturer? You can't, or at least shouldn't have to plan for that because it's such an absurd scenario. Prior to this experience, the sole reason I exclusively bought new equipment for our primary machining capabilities was to avoid this exact situation with a used machine that I might not be able to fully or correctly evaluate.

That said, had the machine worked the way we were told it would, we were planning on keeping it fed with AR lowers and such in between job shop work for steady income that we could control. As you all know, the market was ripe for that in the span of time that we had the machine (Apr 2021~Jul 2022) and selling the parts wouldn't be a problem as long as we could reliably produce them. Never got a chance to make a single one between service calls, chip & coolant issues, accuracy issues, etc., and because the accuracy issues were so hard to pin down, I was never confident that the machine could output parts that I could trust without 100% inspection.

I don't have a CMM or really much in the way of inspection equipment beyond an assortment of indicators, gage blocks & pins, mics, calipers, and surface plates, so it's difficult and labor-intensive to qualify complex surfaces or off-axis features. Probably 90% of the inspection I regularly do for customer work is either thickness/OD measurement or flatness/parallelism. I sent a part out for FAI at the customer's shop on their CMM because they were allowing us to work under their AS9100d cert if we could get the parts done, and the results showed that most features were more than 5-10 thou out of range on +/-.01" tolerances in 7050 aluminum. Since they were all at weird oblique angles, I couldn't easily measure them myself to adjust the program and massage it into spec. Customer supplied material with certs too, so I didn't have a lot of room for error. We're talking noncritical access panel hinges, nothing that should be terribly challenging.

I am absolutely convinced that there is something fucky with Haas's DWO/TCPC algorithms, but I wouldn't even know where to start and I have nothing more than a gut feeling to back it up. I dialed in that machine so that it would nicely blend surfaces cut with the same tool at B0 and B90 using the procedure they list on their website. I then altered that procedure because I wasn't getting the results I wanted and ran a bunch more test parts that used both standard and extremely suboptimal toolpaths to machine a bunch of faceted surfaces in different orientations with 3d surfaced external corner radii to show blending issues that occurred. I wanted to cover as many situations that I'd run into as possible in a single part. Never could dial in the MRZP to blend every single one of them at the same time. If I fixed one, it would throw another off, and so on. There was always at least a little bit of mismatch, and this was on a part made from 2" square 6061. Anything harder? Better have a million spring passes and run materials that don't work harden.

I got a weird vibration that would occur if I was circular interpolating in XY as the tool crossed the 7-8 o'clock position on the table. Primarily showed up in steels and stainless because aluminum didn't load it up enough to show the real rigidity issues. It did this with every tool I ran if I was cutting a circular boss. Didn't seem to do it as much on internal features, not sure why. My tools would always fail catastrophically at exactly the same location on a circle. I snapped a solid carbide Iscar multi master shank in half due to this - cut sounded fine except in that one segment of the circle. Didn't change with feed/speed overrides either.

I was unable to exceed 15 mins of insert life in 304 stainless with a 2.5" Sandvik 245 face mill. Not only would the inserts show extreme notch wear, I'd usually completely blow out at least one corner in a way that would take out two sides of the insert. The kicker is that the cut sounded great the whole time. Our HFO's apps engineer was standing next to me in disbelief when the tool retracted and there were no cutting edges left but couldn't offer an explanation.

There was a bizarre, persistent issue where if I commanded a C rapid at 100% that was >90 degrees one line after turning the spindle on, I'd get an alarm stating "C AXIS SERVO ERROR TOO LARGE." It went away at 50% rapid or by inserting a 1 second (no less) delay between spindle on and C rapid. No idea what caused it, the engineers at Haas were baffled, and we never found a solution that fixed the actual problem - just bandaids. I don't know for sure if this had anything to do with the other accuracy issues I saw, but I suspect it might. They had the trunnion apart half a dozen times to check the brake, encoders, etc and found nothing.

And of course there were the usual coolant overflows, chip conveyor problems (the upgraded hennig is "only" $8000 more than the standard one, but they won't exchange the one you bought with the machine so it's actually another $16000 if you want to fix the problem the right way). Not so great.

 

[standardparts]

"were planning on keeping it fed with AR lowers
Over close to 20 years of hearing about the dream of cashing in on AR receivers seems to a story of ending in a bit of tragedy rather than striking it rich.
Personally know at least two individuals who took a great hit when demand and ability to produce were far out of sync. One of them was lucky enough to only take a $100K hit that he could cover with a very busy job shop operation.
Would think by now CNC companies would actually be able to supply a turn key CNC machining center designed specifically to run AR receivers.
No doubt there are PM members who have experience in riding the AR roller-coaster.

 

[john.k]

Guy I knew (rip) was stiffed on production for White Trucks......around $100k in 1970s money......he got way ahead of orders,White went bust .....he wouldnt scrap the stuff....built a huge shed in his back yard,and has stored it all these years. last few years ,truck restorers have bought a bit from him.

 

[Roboman01]

Over close to 20 years of hearing about the dream of cashing in on AR receivers seems to a story of ending in a bit of tragedy rather than striking it rich.

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 something like a Trinity automation robot cell. Never wanted to exclusively run gun parts because I'm not that deep into that world - I do like things that go boom but they are more of just a curiosity than a hobby or serious interest to me. I'm more interested in the manufacturing challenges associated with firearms than the guns themselves.

It seemed like a good way to move towards in-house products that are already pretty much figured out design-wise so that I could work on developing a robust process and workflow without having to think too much about the design. I'm really the only person at our shop who's competent at CAD/CAM at the level required for products in that market, and I'd been burnt in the past by designing complex products and trying to manufacture all of them myself. Props to those of you who can seemingly effortlessly design, manufacture, and launch products as one-man operations while also taking on job shop work - it certainly ain't easy to manage.

I was definitely spread too thin, too. We all were really, but it's an odd position to be in when you've got ~8 people working with you at any given time and none of them can really help you out beyond cutting stock in between their other tasks.

Thankfully we didn't take a huge hit from the lowers themselves because they never got off the ground. We spent a few grand on enough material to run 1-200 units, which never happened, but some of that material was eventually used on other jobs and was more than paid for over time.

Would think by now CNC companies would actually be able to supply a turn key CNC machining center designed specifically to run AR receivers.

I've seen more and more consulting companies providing that kind of turnkey service for AR parts lately - not purpose-built machines of course but providing all the ancillary parts to get stuff running with automation on your existing equipment. Maybe a good way to go if you have the cash up front and you want to get running asap. I'd imagine the consultants are getting a better deal there, because they don't need to worry about selling the parts...

 

[bryan_machine]

All 5-axis machines can trap the unwary
UMCs seem to have more of these stories.

Any mtb can have a cursed lemon - unclear to me if haas has more of these in 5x than others or not

And it is clearly a whole different kettle of fish than a dmg or mazak or a hermle...

 

[Roboman01]

All 5-axis machines can trap the unwary

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 other machines in their class. I've seen some shops producing works of art on theirs, while others like me can barely get the damn things to cut metal. It's so hard to tell when you only have one machine to evaluate - it would be a completely different story if I was big enough to order half a dozen of them at once and one of them clearly behaved differently.

And it is clearly a whole different kettle of fish than a dmg or mazak or a hermle...

Absolutely. It's really a shame - had Haas tacked on 40-50k to the price, they'd still be competitive with other entry level offerings and could have enough wiggle room to add the important hardware needed to make UMCs an outstanding value. Instead, we get +/- 20 arcsec encoders (+/-40 on the new UMC350 ) that all but guarantee you'll have mismatch between rotary positions, plus undersized servos and insufficient Y axis ram support. Like c'mon, gimme an extra set of bearing trucks and a little more rail length in Y for extra support and you'll take care of one of the biggest complaints I've heard - measurable head nod at full Y extension and pathetic rigidity.

 

[macgyver]

Your story with the machine sounds just like what I saw from Tom Bailey on his vids. His was a UMC 1600H guys his team never were able to get it to do what they needed it to and he gave/sold/lent? it to a shop near him that thought they could use it and he gave up. It sounded like very similar issues and results that you got. Granted he is not a machinist and doesn't claim to know anything about it but had hired guys that did.
His experience and many others I see on here have certainly turned me off from ever even considering one, new or used.

 

[Roboman01]

Your story with the machine sounds just like what I saw from Tom Bailey on his vids. His was a UMC 1600H guys his team never were able to get it to do what they needed it to and he gave/sold/lent? it to a shop near him that thought they could use it and he gave up. It sounded like very similar issues and results that you got. Granted he is not a machinist and doesn't claim to know anything about it but had hired guys that did.
His experience and many others I see on here have certainly turned me off from ever even considering one, new or used.

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 the nightmares I've heard about from others.

The mini mill, however, has been so good to me. I anchored it to our 18" thick concrete floors with a modified DT/DM anchor kit because they don't actually make one for the mini mill, and what a difference it made! IMO everyone with a mini mill should do that. I was able to take out the last few tenths of twist in the frame, which made it noticeably more accurate. I can pretty comfortably swing 3/4" endmills in it now and it's definitely more horsepower/torque limited than rigidity limited at this point, which is the way it should be. Cuts sound smoother, parts look better, and I actually look forward to running it. I'd buy another if I wasn't already severely limited by the travels and umbrella changer.

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In other news, I checked out another building today, and I think it might be the one. It's right next to Albany airport, 2400sqft, and they want to do a gross lease with utilities and everything included at just about $0.90 psf/mo. Has 3 phase too, which is not a given around here. There are a bunch of other businesses in the same building and along the same road, including one of my larger SLS customers. Looking at one more building not too far from there tomorrow morning and then I'll be pulling the trigger on one of the two options.

Before my trip to CA last week, I looked at a building that was owned by someone I can only describe as an industrial slumlord. $1500/mo + NNN for 2400sqft, nothing included, and the unit I was looking at had what the owner told me was a 200A single phase panel. The panel had a 150A main breaker fed by a subpanel with a 100A breaker about 75' away in another part of the building, connected to a meter with maybe 6 AWG wire. I was then told I'd have to pay for any upgrades to that service. Oh and I better not forget that I have to pay for the remaining heating oil in the tank right when I move in. Probably $800 of oil left in the tank per his estimate and wouldn't ya know it, he owned a heating oil company too. The entire interior was clad with bare OSB and it smelled like I'd die before 40 from cancer if I moved in there. The landlord gleefully explained to me all the things he'd do if I didn't pay rent as if that was the expectation - I think that was the only time he smiled or appeared happy in any way during our interaction. He wanted my house as collateral for a 3 year lease totaling $18000/yr. I'll pass, thanks. That's a place where businesses go to die. No way I could ever bring customers in there and have them take me seriously. Besides, the place I saw today will absolutely cost less than that disaster if he's going to nickel and dime me for every last little thing, including bringing the electrical service up to code .

 

[Roboman01]

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 to our floor with no notice and demanded $30k in back utility payments to turn it back on (which he then immediately lowered to 10k), which he never billed us for in 3 years nor submetered per our agreement. He asked for $3000 one time, 25 months into the 36mo lease, which we paid in good faith without ever seeing an actual bill. Our lawyers maintain that we don't owe him anything because you can't retroactively bill like that, and he's in breach of contract thanks to his own actions. We discussed this with him earlier in the year, and came to the agreement that we'd leave the electrical install we paid for out of pocket (roughly $10k back in mid 2020, before everything really went bonkers) in exchange for the utilities we didn't pay because he never asked. This seemed like a reasonably fair trade to us, even though we definitely didn't use even $10k of power in that span of time. For reference, our highest ever monthly utility bill at our first shop was about $150, and we added one machine tool (the UMC, which ran for <100 hours total), a larger compressor, and a large natural gas oven. Our last building had an even lower $/kWh than our first because the LL's company occupies 3 floors of it, has 150 employees, and their typical monthly power bill is rapidly approaching $20,000. Their central dust collector is 3 stories tall and has more power going into it than our entire floor had, since the blower motor in it is 150hp. But yeah, we totally used 30 grand in power over 3 years. Right. We had to bring a 70kva towbehind generator up to the 5th floor just to get the machines into position for transport. We had to return about $20,000 of work that was supposed to be completed before the move, since the lease on the new space wouldn't start until Dec 1, and he cut power in early Nov.

He's now threatening to sue us after he refused to hire counsel initially and spent a week or two ranting at our lawyers over email. EMAIL. In those emails, he insulted both us and them, told them we weren't paying them enough money (???), swore at them, and generally acted like a child. Three months later, he's still sending me about one email a month, asking if I intend to pay the utility bill and threatening to sue if I don't, which I haven't responded to per our lawyers' advice. The best outcome here is if he actually goes through with his threats because the man is impossible to deal with and involving counsel would dramatically expedite the process. We suspect he's out of money, which is why he hasn't hired a lawyer.

A little inside scoop on the guy and his operations - he has been running his cabinet company for 16 years and grew from roughly 40 to 150 employees in the last 3 years. That alone should raise some eyebrows. In a couple recent newspaper articles from earlier in the year, he bragged about being on track to gross ~$22M this year. Great numbers for a 40 person company. Not so great for an organization 4x that size which spends a quarter million a year on power alone at one out of four buildings totaling 1M sqft. He builds very high end furniture, cabinetry, and does full installs, has a lights-out automated 2nd floor with two 5x gantry routers that are robot loaded, a trim cutting machine, a CNC profile grinder for the trim cutter, veneer presses, and a bunch of other extremely high end equipment that he purchased in the past three years. He's easily spent $5-10M on facilities and equipment in that span of time. The automated 2nd floor is juuuuust about online after his employees and management spent two years figuring out how to use it. His products all use very high end wood products - lots of hardwoods, especially maple and oak, and he has about 20ksqft worth of material inventory just at one location. He bought a furniture company with a showroom in Manhattan in the same span of time, as well as a 27 hole golf course near his shop, and built a 12,000 sqft house for his wife and 3 kids.

Every last one of those big purchases was financed, and it's apparent that he and his business partner were both good enough at talking to banks that his ever-increasing debt load is becoming the banks' problem. He "temporarily" laid off most of his staff with no notice a week and a half before Christmas because they hadn't had work for them in two weeks and didn't have more incoming (this is the second time he's done this in 3 years). Every time he explodes at us about utilities is right around the time money gets tight for him and people start asking for repayment. I expect this to get worse as we get deeper into the ongoing recession and luxury construction projects (offices, hotels, mansions) are put on hold or cancelled. He's leveraged every last dime to his and his company's name, has been taking our rent checks made out to him directly since we signed the lease (documented thoroughly on our end of course, with check images and a paper trail), and is spiraling harder and harder as purse strings tighten and his market dries up. Honestly, not far off from the same mistakes we made, but with orders of magnitude more money in play and frankly bizarre timing with his length of business history and overall track record of steady, moderate growth prior to the past few years. He's currently trying to build a facility in Colombia because he seems to think that the difference in labor costs will outweigh the enormous headache and cost of moving extremely large, heavy, and moisture sensitive wood assemblies across the ocean. I have no idea where the funding for that is coming from, but it's certainly not out of his pocket.

Thought you guys would appreciate some insight into another business that looks like it's doing great but is about to implode.

Anyway, onto more relevant things.

I have a shop space! It's still just me for now, though I have friends coming in to help when they can. I'm currently paying one of my former business partners to the printers for me while I'm out of town this week for my girlfriend's brother's wedding. He has been unsuccessful at finding a new job because the company he was talking to for months suddenly announced a hiring freeze a couple weeks ago and he's SOL there. He can't get calls back anywhere else either. Real tough job market in our area right now unless you feel like getting exploited at bottom dollar, since everyone is tightening budgets and being real careful about hiring. I'd imagine things are similar elsewhere too.

Here's some pictures of the space a day or two after I got keys:



2400 sqft, 20' ceilings, 10x14' roll up door, and decent LED lighting. It's the spot next to the airport I mentioned in my last post. It turned out to be an even better area than I expected, with 3 different equipment rental companies within a mile, multiple electrical supply companies just up the road, 4 minutes from home depot, etc. Lots of engineering companies in the area too, who I intend to introduce myself to once I'm settled in. It does not have 3ph in the unit, but the building has 1200A 3ph service so it shouldn't be that bad to run a subpanel over to my unit. I even have the panel already, since we pulled our install at the old building and sold everything I didn't need back to the electrical company that did the work (spinoff company from the cabinet shop, but is actually run competently by a different guy) that occupies about half of that building.

Got a quote from an electrician who owns a company in the new building I'm at for $20,000 to install that 200A panel and run a ~100' line from the main switchboard with conduit, wire, and panel supplied by me, and I laughed in his face. Currently talking to a couple other guys who also think that's ridiculous and are working on more realistic quotes. Hoping to have real power in my unit by the end of this month. The unit came with a 100A 1ph panel, which is powering the Fuses and the CL-1 for now. All of the existing electrical work is uh, questionable at best and poorly labeled. Everything is flex conduit and you can't figure out where anything goes because any labeling that is still legible refers to work stations from previous tenants that have since been removed. Nobody bothered to unhook the grounds and neutrals from the wiring that is still present in the box but disconnected from breakers, so I can't tell which wires I can disconnect and which are still in use, but the bus bars are full while the breakers aren't so I have to remove something. Need to find some time to sort all of that out, but it's tough with 20' ceilings as many of the wires terminate in junction boxes on the ceiling.

Here are a couple panoramas from earlier this month, 12 days apart:





Believe it or not, there's actually more equipment in the shop in the second photo. Took many days of pulling everything out and reshuffling it around to clear up that floor space. I have way too much junk of course, and I'm working on storage solutions next - need to pick up a few sections of used 12' tall pallet racking from a guy downstate who has it listed for about $350/section to get more of the pallets off the ground. I'm guessing it'll take me most of this year to get all the small stuff unpacked and organized. I really need cantilever racks for my material too, because it's all bundled on a couple 4x12' pallets and it's taking up an unbelievable amount of floor space right now. I'm very tempted to store some material outside, but I'm not sure how wise that is.