Take for example you have one 416 stainless shaft
A lot of times with those really low qty's, your bidding against somebody that has
that sitting on the shelf. They had a contract for 100 of 'em 15 years ago and
there has been 10 sitting on the shelf since then.
Place I used to work, they had an entire warehouse full of parts.. Stuff
we had made, stuff they had over bought, they had bought out several companies
inventories that were going out of business. They sold a metric buttload of
stuff from stock..
Also, watch the material specs.. Some of that crap is outdated.. Some of the
engineers are idiots and put material on there that is damn near impossible to get.
I had one a few weeks ago.. 7075-T76511... I thought I had it in stock, nope,
I should have looked, I had T73511, I wasted about 8 hours trying to find that stuff,
then I had my customer go dig through the contract and past contracts, "you can use
7075-t651".. Gee thanks, and I had that in stock, and its easy to get.
Another one. "commercial quality mild steel per ASTM A319" I think it was, hey
that sounds familiar, no big deal... It was a BIG deal, it was # off of the one
I thought I remembered.. $400 for a 12x24 sheet 3/16 thick.. OUCH!!!
And watch the SPEC.. It may say 6061-t651, thats not a big deal to get, they sell
it down at the Dairy Mart its so common... BUT!! per BLAH BLAH BLAH, some totally
F'd up obscure spec, and you end up wasting a TON of time trying to chase down
material that has that spec on the cert. Or sometimes it'll be a proprietary
spec, and you have to chase that down to figure out what you have to use, or do,
I've run into a bunch of 'em that need an ultrasonic, but its buried in the oddball
spec.
And then the DFARS thing.. What a pain in the ass... Some stuff has to be
DFARs compliant, some stuff doesn't.. I have one customer that insists
everything is DFARS compliant to cover their ass.. They had a job come back
a while ago, 3 years after it shipped... The material isn't DFARS compliant..
It certainly was 3 years ago, not my fault you changed the list AGAIN..
I keep "the list" on the wall.
As far as specs go.. Some of it gets stupid.. Customers contract a bit ago..
Material was in, I was already machining on it, standard anodize, then the yellow
stuff and then gray paint per PROPRIETARY SPEC.. So my customer calls the company,
they tell him its the standard gray shit that goes on everything, can you send me
that spec? NOPE... Contacts the buyer to get a deviation to use the same paint
that the print calls out, and the buyer just cancelled the whole thing.. We both
got paid for what we had done, but what a pain in the ass.
And you can get in trouble. a dozen years ago maybe, the new QC guy/kid got a scare..
The brass comes knocking on the door and wanted to dig into a file.. Apparently an
A10 I think it was, the nose wheel seized up, it seized because the bearing seal was
too short, and all the grease came out or something... Turns out there was 2 part
#'s on the print, one part # wasn't available anymore, so they bought the alternate..
Turns out in however many years nobody had ever caught that the 2 part numbers weren't
the same part, one was shorter than the other and didn't seal.. Scared the CRAP out
of the QC kid, he made sure all his I's were dotted and T's crossed after that one.
So in general, its a pain in the ass... Making the parts is really the easiest part
of the whole damn thing.