Bespoke CNC

[Zephyr]

Hi Prop man,

I've been down the same route - should I design and build a machine or buy one ready made and get producing quicker? I chose the 2nd route after 3 people said they would help make the parts for me then backed out. I can live without the hassle.

I chose Rhonmac in Wales after looking at many others. He seems to have been making and selling machines for a while and his large machines look solid although your requirements are pretty big. He's making me a small 460 x 600 x 100mm bench-top machine at the moment. While I'm waiting for it I can work on designs and all the thousand other things that will need doing.

Contact him (Google Rhonmac). Let me know how you get on.

Regards,

Keith.

[AdieR]

One of the biggest mistakes I see when companies start looking for machinery is to look at the purchase price and not much further - only to find that costs spiral out of control. Indeed, it's not unknown for the final bill to be 3x (yes, THREE times) the original estimate in cases, due to poor cost anticipation.

It *should* go something like this:

Purchase price of machine.

Does the machine come with tooling / fixtures included? If not, what items do you need? How much does that cost? Do you need "sister" tooling (ie several cutters of same size / type to replace worn ones)?

Transport: is this being arranged by the machine supplier, and included in the price? Or do you need to arrange it yourself and pay it separately?

Workshop: do you have sufficient workshop space, or do you need to arrange one, or expand an existing building? What difference will it make to your rent and rates? If your altering an existing space, how much will alteration cost?

Installation: how do you plan to get it in the workshop? If its small, you may get it in with a forklift; if its a big machine, it may well need to be craned in through the roof - so you have the cost of removing and re-instating the roof section (how much?) plus crane hire. Crane hire itself could be £1500+ per DAY. If you have an existing factory / workshop, do you need to send non-essential staff home for safety or other reasons? How much is your likely downtime while your factory doesn't run (ie, how much production time is lost x number of staff) whilst you get the new machine in? Also with installation, your transport and crane hire (if it applies) and the roofing work (if it applies) need to be tightly co-ordinated: you don't want to pay an extra day's crane hire for example because something else isn't on site on time, or because your not quite organised with space.

Service supplies: electric / air / gas / water and any other supplies it may need: can you run it from an existing electrical system? Does the supply point need moved closer to the machines intended site? Do you need to run new cables? Indeed, is your existing power supply man enough for the addition of the machine anyway? If that machine has pneumatics (eg tool change carousels), have you got a compressor that can handle it? If not, that could become a second plant purchase in its own right, and needs to be costed in the same fashion. The same goes for gas / water / hydraulics if they apply.

Commisioning: Testing of the plant / system and making sure it functions as intended, and system hand over: is that included from the machine supplier, or is it charged separately?

Training: going back to my earlier point that the machine is worthless without a skilled operator, how much is training going to cost? Bearing in mind that some people learn skills more easily than others, how long is your anticipated training period? Or is it easier to employ someone who already knows what they're doing?

Finally, having gone through all that, how does the cost compare to sub-contracting the work? How much of a difference is there? How many items would you have to make (and sell) before you break even and start to show a profit? And how long (realistically) is it likely to take? Do you have / can you access (eg from your bank) sufficient funding to cover the bills for this period?

Hope that helps.

[blackburn mark]

bloody hell !!! you guys make it sound like armagedon

when i started reading this thread i was thinking "yea man, pick yourself up a cheap cnc, throw it in the corner... press go and start printing money" :)

i somtimes think if we knew just how much blood n sweat was involved we would stay in bed and dream about how well it would have worked out if we had had the gumption.......

having said that it does sting when you bite off more than you can chew