Finished our new shop..

We have our new shop pretty much done. My wife and I bought a 2001 Haas VF3 to run as a home based business. We are lucky that we are in a area where this is permitted and legal to do. (way out in the sticks..lol..) Bought it in Dallas Texas and trucked it up here to the Seattle Wa area ourselves. I used to work at a cnc shop ten years ago and want to try and give it a go on my own. We have a lot of friends in the drag racing world who own businesses that build cars and want stuff done so we are going to specialize in doing one offs and such for race cars. YES, I totally understand that friends expect things to be cheap or free but I've been down that road before and know just to be straight upfront with them on what stuff will cost and if they say that's to much we will just move on. All ready got a few parts to make, 10 of one and 20 of the other. All we are lacking is programming software that we are currently saving up for. I hope to get Gibbs just because that's what I ran before and I really like how it worked. The good thing is everything is paid for and for a while it will be "side work" as we both still have regular jobs. Not sure if I can ever make this a full time deal that will cover our bills but I want to try. I'm NOT doing this as a "hobby", this is a total business to me.

After we get going and I can learn how to program better and be efficient at making parts we will go after other work and try to up our customer base besides just doing race car stuff. I have been learning a ton from reading on here every night for the last year. The knowledge base on here is great and I truly thank those that take the time to help others out. I have all ready received some help on here and it saved me a ton of money and time. Thank you!

Cool little shop! Good luck!

comp 670 said:

......We have a lot of friends in the drag racing world who own businesses that build cars and want stuff done so we are going to specialize in doing one offs and such for race cars. YES, I totally understand that friends expect things to be cheap or free but I've been down that road before and know just to be straight upfront with them on what stuff will cost and if they say that's to much we will just move on.

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Nice looking setup!

The "friend" thing can be a PITA. Here's the phone call..."Hey how bout I pick up a sixpack and come over and we can make those parts we talked about". Some "friends" don't have a clue what you've got invested.

You might try to make some contacts in the boat racing world. In general, I've found those folks to be more understanding than car guys what custom stuff costs.

Looks awesome! Best of luck to you. I bet you are kicking ass in no time!

Congrats on the new shop, best of luck to you!

Remember, "under-promise and over-deliver".

While saving for GibbsCam, you can be learning and using Fusion360, which is free for startups, and only $300 per year anyway. It is the best low-cost cad/cam solution available today.

ToolCat

Holly crap..unpluged the machine, transport across country and didn't lose parameters because the batt crapped out..And has chips in the auger NICE!!
Seriously though change the battery..yours is a pain to get to as its 2nd or 3rd board in the stack..but its not soldered on like the new ones.

Gary

Yea, I was REALLY worried about the battery going bad during the trip. I did it right at Christmas and during parts of the trip it got down to -32*!!! Then it sat for two months in storage before we could bring it home to the shop. I do need to change it out though anyways. So mine is not soldered in? How do I keep power to the system when changing it out?

The chips in the auger are from me, a guy on here wrote me a simple facing program so I could power up the machine and see if it all worked and survived the trip. About once a week I power it up and do the warm up program just to see it run...lol...

I did download Fusion 360 but to be honest I'm having trouble figuring it out. I'm totally new to programming so unfortunately its going to take me a while to figure things out but I will, its just going to take time. That's why we wanted everything paid for with no payments hanging over our heads. I do wish I could start on the parts I have to make, I'm looking into paying someone to program them for me and possibly teach me at the same time..

Did you fit the Haas through those doors?

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Yea, they are 8' tall, 11' wide. We had to take the header out and part of the siding to gain 6" to slide it in. I move big yachts for a living so moving this was easy for us. My boss let us use one of the semis and trailer from work and we rented a hyster forklift to off load it and bring it down the driveway and into the shop.

It would have fit no problem but it had the wrong shipping bracket holding the head up higher then it was supposed to be and I had no way at the time to power it up and remove the bracket. The only thing that did not clear was the black thing with all the wires in it going to the head. If we could have lowered the head it would have cleared the 8' door. If you look real close in the first pic you can see in the wood above the center of the door where we cut it out for the part to clear....

Times have changed.
I and a lot of friends started with a $500 Bridgeport, a crappy engine lathe and a chance to quote work from other shops.
Now you start with a VF3
Best of luck with your new business

I started with a Bridgeport and crappy Jet lathe..lol.. They are in the back of the shop in the pics. Had them for 16 years slowly learning how to make things. Now decided to make the jump and try this.

sean9c said:

Times have changed.
I and a lot of friends started with a $500 Bridgeport, a crappy engine lathe and a chance to quote work from other shops.
Now you start with a VF3
Best of luck with your new business

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It's out of control. Lots of people on here start with a brand new machine like a Brother or Sharp.

comp 670 said:

I did download Fusion 360 but to be honest I'm having trouble figuring it out. I'm totally new to programming so unfortunately its going to take me a while to figure things out but I will, its just going to take time. That's why we wanted everything paid for with no payments hanging over our heads. I do wish I could start on the parts I have to make, I'm looking into paying someone to program them for me and possibly teach me at the same time..

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Love the idea of no payments, that is awesome!
Thought you might like this video series on getting started with CAM within Fusion 360:
How to learn Fusion 36 CAM - Basic - Chapter 1 - YouTube

Best,
Lars

Thanks Lars, I will look into that.

And I might be misremembering, but I thought 360 had some pretty good collaboration tools. You could set things so others could share and see deeply into your drawing, and various versions could be saved 'non-destructively'. I think those features would ease collaboration on both learning 360 and executing parts programs. You machine is definitely mainstream enough to have a clear POST path, too. The only curveball would be if there's a "wall" interrupting collaboration between learning/enthusiast licenseholders and the $300/year licenseholders. A quick email would clear that up, though... and it would be awhile before that came into effect, too.

If you could get your customers to use 360 for their back-of-napkin sketches, you'd be ahead on the communication issue, too.

Good luck, and nice digs!
Chip

Good start for sure Comp, I started in may garage with manuals and built it up the a VF2 and HL2 before leaving my day job and moving out into a full time shop. I was able to acquire everything on cash by dumping it all back into the shop to build it up before trying to live off it. We now have 9 cnc's,5 mills and 4 turning centers as well as manual machines for support equipment. you may find in the long run that developing a working relationship with local shops for over flow and what not will get and keep you in the black. Doing the custom stuff that may be more interesting and fun but in the long run getting parts in with prints and mild volume may be what it takes to grow.

comp 670 said:

Yea, I was REALLY worried about the battery going bad during the trip. I did it right at Christmas and during parts of the trip it got down to -32*!!! Then it sat for two months in storage before we could bring it home to the shop. I do need to change it out though anyways. So mine is not soldered in? How do I keep power to the system when changing it out?

The chips in the auger are from me, a guy on here wrote me a simple facing program so I could power up the machine and see if it all worked and survived the trip. About once a week I power it up and do the warm up program just to see it run...lol...

I did download Fusion 360 but to be honest I'm having trouble figuring it out. I'm totally new to programming so unfortunately its going to take me a while to figure things out but I will, its just going to take time. That's why we wanted everything paid for with no payments hanging over our heads. I do wish I could start on the parts I have to make, I'm looking into paying someone to program them for me and possibly teach me at the same time..

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I would say you got lucky with the battery. I just found a new vid by haas that shows the procedure better than I can type it out.
Only thing is I am not sure that your year has the "P1" terminal that is shown in the video. But get yours apart and hook up a temp battery asap by how every you can.Even with alligator clips..what ever, You lose that battery and it will rain shit for a day or so. Also do a backup..actually do a backup first thing.

That battery pack in the vid is new and I will order those this morning for mine...soooo much easier than the solder bs.
Gary