Job Shop. ! ! !

[Datum1Engineering]

Brief detail about my company:

I'd open this CNC machine shop in FEB. 2004. then bought a few used Mori Seiki's (1 CNC lathe and 2 CNC mills). As young as I am now..only 22!! Work comes and goes. mostly complicated ones that i never had experience with, but i manage to do an A+++ job at it. what i do to keep things running is design and manuf. my own racing parts, but still. I need some advise on getting jobs in. Seems like every RFQ I quote is too high. This california competivative market is killing me here. Any suggestions?

Thanks, Sunny Duong
I.M. Engineer @ D1 Eng.



OH yeah MFGQUOTEs.com is ALL BULLS@##@T.

 

[Barry1961]

Go out and find problems that you can solve. Lots of the time it is easier to find a problem than an opportunity. If you figure out a way to solve it lots of times you can make that problem your little niche.

Get to know the salesmen that come in to sell you supplies. Let them know you are in the problem solving business. Offer them a finder’s fee if they can find problems.

Most of the small successful machine shop I deal with have a little niche where they make their money. They found something that was breaking down too much and figured a way to double its life.

Barry1961

 

[griffengm]

Sunny,
What is your connection to the racing scene? This is an area that is extremely word-of-mouth and all too often when someone thinks your work gave him an edge, he won't say anything to anyone. Why give away an edge!
I spent some time building custom wheels for tractor and truck pullers. Getting seen at the pulls was some of the best advertising I did. My regular customers liked the idea that I came to see how my work performed.
This is one of the niches where being seen with your product installed on a competition machine can do more than a ton of print.
Plus you can write off the admission as a research expense!

Enjoy!!
Griffy

 

[tomwalz]

I’ll go along with the other guys and offer a slightly different view.

Something you might try is developing a specialty on a particular material. Some shops do this with titanium for example. We have a material we sell as Impervium© that you could rename. We think it is a better version of Nitronic 60. We also have our Talonite© knife alloy.

You might do a Google check for Nitronic 60 and racing. (See below)

We do well with these alloys in the industrial market but just never go involved in sporting markets much beyond knives. You would look for applications where extremely good wear and corrosion resistance was desirable. You would build the parts with a metal that had your own name on it so they couldn’t go somewhere else.

Besides a lot of these sporting folks are always looking for something new and hot. Also something new, hot and unique isn’t that price sensitive.

Rob Simonich did this with knives. Rob got a lot of publicity out of Talonite®. Rob was very talented, did excellent work and was a genuinely nice guy. He would have been a success anyway. Talonite just helped him get publicity.

tom

http://www.protech-fabrication.com/about.html

Tial Wastegates with Nitronic 60

Nitronic 60 Stainless Steel is used for the valve seat, valve bushing, and lower housing fastening hardware.

Nitronic 60 Boat Shafting & Similar Stainless Steels
Principal supplies Boat / Propeller Shafting & Similar Stainless Steels

Examples of Nitrogen strengthened austenitic stainless steels include 18Cr-2Ni-12Mn alloy, 22Cr-13NI-5MN alloy, 734 alloy, Nitonic 60 (Armco), Gall tough and


Thomas J. Walz
Carbide Processors, Inc.

http://www.carbideprocessor.com

 

[adrianviorel]

Try to contact large scale suppliers, for large series products. You cannot make very much profit, but this will be multiplied with a large quantity. such a behaviour will give you a stable income, that will allow chasing special (and well paid ) jobs, like previously posted-exotic materials, etc. Bottom line, check where the money are-petroleum, power industry.

 

[ncassist]

Contact me at davengininnj@msn.com

I've had some experience in dirt track components. There is a big market in the northeast and few suppliers.

Dave