Machine recommendations

Calfroper_06 · Mar 2, 2019

I need help on machine recommendations. We have an established welding shop that fabricates food process equipment. We have always outsourced our machined products until recently when I purchased a bridgport clone and 14x40 manual lathe to do small production runs. We've established a large customer that wants to use us directly on products that we currently outsource and we are looking to start production in house.

Alot of the parts are 1.5 and 2.5" sqaure shafts that we turn for bearings and drive units on each end. All the material is 304L stainless grade. Longest lenght would be typically 54" long.

I'm eager to learn and driven to source our parts in house. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

DMF_TomB · Mar 3, 2019

Calfroper_06 said:
I need help on machine recommendations. We have an established welding shop that fabricates food process equipment. We have always outsourced our machined products until recently when I purchased a bridgport clone and 14x40 manual lathe to do small production runs. We've established a large customer that wants to use us directly on products that we currently outsource and we are looking to start production in house.

Alot of the parts are 1.5 and 2.5" sqaure shafts that we turn for bearings and drive units on each end. All the material is 304L stainless grade. Longest lenght would be typically 54" long.

I'm eager to learn and driven to source our parts in house. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

.
i wouldnt be buying a lot of new equipment. there are places that sell used machines and places that lease machines. for example
.
50 ton ironworker at
$300 per month thats $3600 per year and 5 years thats $18,000. but at $300. a month if it saves you over $300. a month than its paying for itself. and many leases after 5 years you buy machine for $1.
.
but if things do not work as expected or business changes you can send machine back and even if you have to pay 1 years worth at least you could stop the payments.
.
i would avoid going into debt buying a lot of machines

adama · Mar 3, 2019

What kinda qty on the square shafts? Low qty but high enough to make manual a pain in the ass and one of the hass TL lathes might be a good fit, if you can get enough spindle bore to pass 2.5" square. All kinda depends on how much growth you can see, unless your working with OEM's then it limits you to a local area of producers and hence to some degree a maximum market size. If your working with a machine manufacturer then your growth potential is a lot lot greater and a proper cnc may be the way to go, but i would still want a spindle that can pass the parts if the parts are truly just end worked squares, not trying to do it between centers - center and chuck on a longer lathe.

Calfroper_06 · Mar 3, 2019

I posted earlier and looks to have been removed.

On the qty it would be 150-300 on this single customer soon yearly. In house we average 100-150 yearly and growing.

The Haas st35 with a 4" spindle would accept the 2.5" sqaure. Whats your thoughts?

Comatose · Mar 3, 2019

The first question would be "what are you paying now to outsource these?"

The second question would be "what business is it of your customer whether you do them in or out of house?"

The third question would be "do I have someone on staff that can run this or would I have to hire someone new" for what should be maybe 400 hours a year in setup and operation time.

Looks hard to justify in that quantity on its face, but there may be other factors at play

SND · Mar 4, 2019

My thought is you first need the figure out how much $ you wanna throw at it and the Return on Investment for this thing.

There's a reason machines shops are in business, its very often not justifiable to make stuff "in house" even for companies who need millions of $ in parts every year, and best to leave it to those who do this all day every day.

Calfroper_06 · Mar 4, 2019

On a typical shaft thats 36" long I pay around $370/each for. That's turned 4" long on one side and 12" on the other with 1/4" keyway thats 9" long

In house actual rough breakdown cost would be: this is based on manual, I'm not sure about programming yet and how much more labor that would cost.

Material-$67.50
Electric/consumables/machine-$45
Labor-$80

That leaves around $180 per shaft profit. Right now it takes about 3 hours on my manual lathe from start to finish doing 1 at a time. If I get a large order on the manual I can have my lathe and mill going and make 2 shafts in about 4 hours.

Calfroper_06 · Mar 5, 2019

The more I invest time in to researching the more I'm moving away from a cnc operation. The used manual market is flooded with decent machines that can handle the 2.5" square bar easily. I can invest less than 12% of what a cnc would cost and be up and running within a day or so, as with cnc I would need to setup and learn programming and sure to make aome costly mistakes. For a return in investment this might be the best option for a start up system. Thoughts?

DDoug · Mar 5, 2019

What are you paying your machinist per hour ?

SND · Mar 5, 2019

It does sound like pretty easy to make on manual machines type of part, mostly with that length and a through the headstock set up, easy to arrange a spider on manual machines for end support.
A heavier duty manual lathe and the right tooling/attack since its an interrupted cut would save you a lot of time turning it down. But if you found a used cnc lathe in the 20-25k range that ain't too bad either. Doesn't like brand new machine territory for those qty's and $ involved.
My manual machines paid for my CNC's, and well, everything...

Calfroper_06 · Mar 5, 2019

I dont have a full time machinest on staff. But I do have a loyal employee that ran machines for years and can run about any machine I have. He gets paid around 25/hr. Other than that its been myself machining the current shafts on the 14x40. I've built a spider and its setup for anything with a lenght of 38" or shorter for 1.5" square bar.

The only used machines cnc that I would want to buy are around 60-70 with a 4" spindle. Unless I'm looking at the wrong places. Ive located a used 2003 manual Lion Ms-25 with 4" through spindle and 120" bed for $17,500 asking price. Looks to be taken cared for.

pgmrmike · Mar 5, 2019

Calfroper_06 said:
On a typical shaft thats 36" long I pay around $370/each for. That's turned 4" long on one side and 12" on the other with 1/4" keyway thats 9" long

In house actual rough breakdown cost would be: this is based on manual, I'm not sure about programming yet and how much more labor that would cost.

Material-$67.50
Electric/consumables/machine-$45
Labor-$80

That leaves around $180 per shaft profit. Right now it takes about 3 hours on my manual lathe from start to finish doing 1 at a time. If I get a large order on the manual I can have my lathe and mill going and make 2 shafts in about 4 hours.

Sounds like maybe you need to shop around a bit for a better price, though its hard to tell without a print. I know a small responsive cnc shop thats looking for new customers in the Navasota area.

And he is on this forum, and TBH.......

Comatose · Mar 5, 2019

If it's costing $300 per shaft in everything-other-than-materials, then I think you can make a good argument for doing it in house.

Assuming a 1" bearing shaft (or bigger) you're moving about 90 cubic inches of material. Interrupted in stainless figure 1 hp per cubic inch per minute. So with a 30hp CNC you're looking maybe 5 minutes in the cut. Add finishing passes, tool changes and general faffing about and you're looking at ten minutes for the long side and five minutes for the short side (short side doesn't need a tailstock) Five minutes of operator time total to change out and pick up offsets.

So three per hour on a CNC.

Seems like you should be able to get these done for under $200 each at a CNC shop if you order them in a batch. If you have to do onesies-twosies, then setup and overhead is adding a lot of the cost to outsourcing, and leaving a machine set up to run them in house might make sense.

Calfroper_06 · Mar 5, 2019

I did see mikes post on TBH. I sent him a PM(unless this is you?? Haha) about getting price on outsourcing for a cheaper alternative if it works out.

SND · Mar 6, 2019

Having turned some Square 304SS before to do similar parts for food processing stuff, CNC might still take a little longer than expected, add in a few chewed up inserts to change here and there as it bangs and bangs around. You can't just throw a center drill in that stuff and turn 12" long of it round and expect it to be straight, at all... hell most square stuff isn't that straight and square to start with. I spent more time dialing things straight and dealing with material stresses than making chips the times I've done these things...

Though there is also the issue that you also need to meet demand, and 1 guy doing stuff manual has its limitations there.

swatkins · Mar 8, 2019

pgmrmike said:
Sounds like maybe you need to shop around a bit for a better price, though its hard to tell without a print. I know a small responsive cnc shop thats looking for new customers in the Navasota area.

And he is on this forum, and TBH.......

Mike I tried to contact you about a new customer for your shop.... Maybe you missed the PM ? Get back to me

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