South Florida High Precision Job Shops for Small Run Work?

I have a *tiny* home workshop (Schaublin 102 Lathe, Wabeco F1200E mill). I sometimes need to hire out jobs that are either larger workpieces than I can efficiently handle, or jobs that are best done CNC (a capability I do not have).

I work on motion picture (cine) lenses. The work is always small (usually under 3 in diameter), usually aluminum, sometimes stainless and always needs very tight tolerances (0.0005 in) due to the requirement to maintain critical focus on the lenses. The plane of best focus on a cine lens can be as thin as 6 microns.

My jobs are always small runs, usually less than 10 pieces, and sometimes one-off. I can provide CAD drawings and files, and prefer to work with shops that are at least comfortable with metric measurement (the lenses are 100% metric).

Most of the work I would require would be CNC lathe work, and would best be accommodated on a machine that was designed to do high precision work, and especially if it had live spindles that would allow some features to be milled without having to re-chuck the cylindrical part.

I always pay for the jobs when they are done.

I'd like to hear from shops that are located at least within reasonable driving distance from Miami, FL so I can get to know the people I'm working with, and I can bring in examples of finished pieces for us to look at and discuss. I'd like to work with someone who takes pride in their work and have a friendly attitude to deal with small, interesting, unusual and sometimes challenging jobs.

If your shop is operating under capacity, I might be the customer that can fill in some of the gaps.

Please respond by posting here, or by PM.

Jorge Diaz-Amador
CinemaTechnic, Inc.
Miami, FL USA

I guess the lack of response proves my "Sandbar on the Swamp" theory. Just about no manufacturing here...

When you specify a specific location, that cuts out a LOT of us. You may want to relax that a bit.

This is just a guess, but I'd say I've met 5% of my customers face to face. The vast majority I haven't even spoken to on the phone...there's just no need a lot of times.

cinematechnic said:

I guess the lack of response proves my "Sandbar on the Swamp" theory. Just about no manufacturing here...

Click to expand...

BOY - that's 100% off base!

Fla is the heartbeat of Swiss/Medical these dayz. (by reports)

There should be lots of small shops close by. However - they are likely busy as broken limbs don't stop doo to a depression, so they prolly aint lookin on this board for work too often.

I would like to think that someone would pipe up, or maybe you may hafta deal with someone a little further away. (You may not have the volume for the swiss/med guys to be interested.)


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

job shops

You may want to edit and put (wanted )in front of south florida.
jim

Check your pm



And you're right ox about that part of Florida, but his description was accurate from a native's point of view. lol
That's one reason why I'm no longer there.

Ox said:

BOY - that's 100% off base!

Fla is the heartbeat of Swiss/Medical these dayz. (by reports)

There should be lots of small shops close by. However - they are likely busy as broken limbs don't stop doo to a depression, so they prolly aint lookin on this board for work too often.

I would like to think that someone would pipe up, or maybe you may hafta deal with someone a little further away. (You may not have the volume for the swiss/med guys to be interested.)


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Click to expand...

I'll have to verify that in the latest issue of "Automatic Machining" Oh dear, thats gone too... Any RA-6's/8's running wide open in your area???

I'm up in Melbourne, about 3 hrs away, with a cnc lathe with live tooling and a few cnc mills. I'll pipe up at least so he can see that there is someone out there. Not really slow at the moment but never turn away an oppourtunity. You never know where things will go. PM sent

From the articles I've seen and from my experience, there's a lot of medical stuff over on the other coast, in the Tampa/Sarasota and south from there area. My area in the center is pretty much consumed with the space and defense industries. And up north in florida, well that's pretty much just southern Georgia and we don't really know what they do.

I agree with the not listing location. I still have seen all of my 500 customers face to face and we have been in business since 1985.

I didn't mean to take so long to reply on this thread. I apologize to anyone who sent me a PM when I was too busy to respond.

Things were just not working out for me in Miami. I was working 7 days a week and still not breaking even. The one job shop I went to see about having my part made (not anyone on this forum), took a look at my drawings, said they'd get back to me... and then nothing.

One time I showed up at that shop and neither the owner nor his assistant were there. There were a couple of guys parked outside waiting to either drop off or pick up work. One of them was on the phone. The owner kept telling me "just wait for him, he'll be there". While I was waiting I called a company in another state and arranged to buy the part from them instead of making my own. Problem solved. I drove away. The other guys left too.

I guess you would call that the "Miami attitude". No wonder we are not taken seriously when jokers like that are making the reputation. To top it all off, the shop had 3 HAAS machining centers, one of them quite new (2007 or so). All were sitting idle.

I was fortunate enough to get a job in Burbank, CA (starting January) doing cine camera lens service. My tools are in storage for now. I am closing out this thread and I will be posting a new one in search of Burbank area small job shops.

Best of luck to all of you out there... and never ignore the small guy who shows up with his 8x11" CAD drawing. He will just be getting his part made somewhere else.

Well good luck to you there, I am sure you will find plenty of help, as long as you can pay for it you will never run short of people willing to help out. I actually built some custom lens mounts for a local guy, started out modifying the lenses he had so they would work with his camera. Then he bought some lens from someplace and needed more mounts made but I just didnt have the time to get them done for him. So I had to send him to my neighbor.

Wouldnt mind doing some more work of that type but I have to say I would charge more for it than I did the first time. Lessons learned...

Charles