Garage Shop

[Houdini]

I guess to some this is known as a "garage shop", just because its a one man show. HAHAHA
One Man Show.

 

[Eleven71Cutters]

Seen that and great video but, millions in machines is not much of a garage shop.

 

[jhov]

That's exactly the type of operation I hope to build some day. I wonder if he took on some debt for that first Matsuura or if he cleared enough to buy it outright with his smaller machines that he started with. Either way, what he's done looks impressive.

 

[Mike RzMachine]

Does this guy's workflow confuse anyone else?
It is certainly a feat to put together this level of modular machining, that is super impressive. The video glosses over the full time effort to handle stock, load and unload parts and manage chips, coolant and cutting tools. Yeah he can walk away from a pallet pool that runs for several hours, but there are hundreds of parts in that fixture to load and unload. I see a similar glossing over of hand work time in Jay Pierson's videos, comparing swapping a fixture plate with 40 parts vs 2 in a vise. That step is faster, but my experience is those fixture screws are finicky, cleaning swarf to load new parts, torqueing bolts, it all eats up time. For low/medium quantities, it remains in that purgatory region where you trade setup/development time for hand work time. It's similar overall time for a given job.

 

[Houdini]

Does this guy's workflow confuse anyone else?
It is certainly a feat to put together this level of modular machining, that is super impressive. The video glosses over the full time effort to handle stock, load and unload parts and manage chips, coolant and cutting tools. Yeah he can walk away from a pallet pool that runs for several hours, but there are hundreds of parts in that fixture to load and unload. I see a similar glossing over of hand work time in Jay Pierson's videos, comparing swapping a fixture plate with 40 parts vs 2 in a vise. That step is faster, but my experience is those fixture screws are finicky, cleaning swarf to load new parts, torqueing bolts, it all eats up time. For low/medium quantities, it remains in that purgatory region where you trade setup/development time for hand work time. It's similar overall time for a given job.

It would be nice to see a speed up version of a day of running the shop. I am looking to try to setup a similar system in the future, so interesting fo sho!

 

[Houdini]

Does this guy's workflow confuse anyone else?
It is certainly a feat to put together this level of modular machining, that is super impressive. The video glosses over the full time effort to handle stock, load and unload parts and manage chips, coolant and cutting tools. Yeah he can walk away from a pallet pool that runs for several hours, but there are hundreds of parts in that fixture to load and unload. I see a similar glossing over of hand work time in Jay Pierson's videos, comparing swapping a fixture plate with 40 parts vs 2 in a vise. That step is faster, but my experience is those fixture screws are finicky, cleaning swarf to load new parts, torqueing bolts, it all eats up time. For low/medium quantities, it remains in that purgatory region where you trade setup/development time for hand work time. It's similar overall time for a given job.

Also looks like he is having material delivered pre cut, looks like those fixtures aren't unloaded each part, but by the plate, yes you need to unload the parts at some point.
chip management, looks like he is all Aluminum bike parts, and tooling lasts forever in Aluminum as we know.
could have auto fill n the coolant
It would seem like your mainly swapping things out on intervals is all, I would just hire a guy to do that personally.

 

[Freedommachine]

I see this as the future of manufacturing to be honest. He is right; farm out prototypes, fixtures, stock cutting, ect.

Having each small shop focus on one particular step in the process would allow each shop to become extremely efficient at what they do, it would also build a stronger local economy. Very cool.

 

[Kingbob]

Does this guy's workflow confuse anyone else?
It is certainly a feat to put together this level of modular machining, that is super impressive. The video glosses over the full time effort to handle stock, load and unload parts and manage chips, coolant and cutting tools. Yeah he can walk away from a pallet pool that runs for several hours, but there are hundreds of parts in that fixture to load and unload. I see a similar glossing over of hand work time in Jay Pierson's videos, comparing swapping a fixture plate with 40 parts vs 2 in a vise. That step is faster, but my experience is those fixture screws are finicky, cleaning swarf to load new parts, torqueing bolts, it all eats up time. For low/medium quantities, it remains in that purgatory region where you trade setup/development time for hand work time. It's similar overall time for a given job.

I'm with you on this one. I imagine he gets pretty excited to have all of them running at the same time. Meaning that I assume that at least one machine is always waiting on him for something.

 

[Kingbob]

I see this as the future of manufacturing to be honest. He is right; farm out prototypes, fixtures, stock cutting, ect.

Having each small shop focus on one particular step in the process would allow each shop to become extremely efficient at what they do, it would also build a stronger local economy. Very cool.

A return to cottage industry ... I like it.

 

[The Dark Bike Co]

And all I want is a Mini Mill in my garage! ONE! MINI! MILL! (For starters)

 

[Vancbiker]

I see this as the future of manufacturing to be honest. He is right; farm out prototypes, fixtures, stock cutting, ect.

Having each small shop focus on one particular step in the process would allow each shop to become extremely efficient at what they do, it would also build a stronger local economy. Very cool.

Seems like a scheduling nightmare to me. How can one quote a delivery date when you are reliant on the schedules of multiple independent businesses, let alone a good price.

 

[F35Machinist]

This guy is talking about scheduling parts 3 months in advance. Most job shops can't see 3 weeks ahead of them. I have personally never even bothered to quote more than a 4 week lead time because I know asking for something like 6 weeks is a non-starter.

Having a customer that can feed you enough of the right sort of work where you can run like this is like having the deed to a platinum mine. Sure the execution looks great, but getting the platinum out of the ground is just a formality at that point.

 

[DavidScott]

That step is faster, but my experience is those fixture screws are finicky, cleaning swarf to load new parts, torqueing bolts, it all eats up time.

Good fixture and clamp design goes a long way to solving this, and pneumatic screwdrivers with torque control. Before getting a rotating table I would use a bucket of water to wash the chips out of the fixtures, it is way faster, cleaner, and quieter than compressed air.

 

[Freedommachine]

Seems like a scheduling nightmare to me. How can one quote a delivery date when you are reliant on the schedules of multiple independent businesses, let alone a good price.

If you had 10 shops all doing the exact same thing, then yes, it would be difficult. If all of the other vendors work together as he described, issues like that wouldn't be impossible to overcome. Customers would have to be retrained to understand so that they know what to expect when sending rfq's as well.

The system wouldn't be a great fit for 100 piece order that never return though. You'd have to have a different shop to receive that work.

This guy is running repeat that are worth investing in tooling for. Notice that the low quantity parts on one side of the tombstone are fairly complex. He can still afford to run them because 1.) It's a repeat job and 2.) The parts are mixed in with other p/n's on the other 3 sides of the tombstone. I really like that concept.

Other than that, like he said; surplus quantity on the shelves allows him to quickly meet the needs of the customer and keep his schedule steady. He likely charges an expediency fee for the rush order, which would cover the cost of "warehousing" their product as well.

 

[Houdini]

I think if your a job shop also this looks different than a production/return parts deal.
We only have a few customers with all Aluminum parts, its all repeat order parts, most is on schedules with amounts due on monthly or weekly intervals.
PO's sent in advance of 6 months usually.....Some parts we stock and shelve if material is cheap...
So this type of setup would be easy for us to use and implement , but I understand how it may seem wild for others.

 

[Orange Vise]

Mountain biking is huge in the UK. Lots of small brands there to drive demand for domestic manufacturing.

He's probably not running every pallet every day. More likely on-demand.

The cycling industry went absolutely gangbusters during covid. Nobody could keep products in stock. It's settled down a bit since then but the market is still strong.

Does this guy's workflow confuse anyone else?
It is certainly a feat to put together this level of modular machining, that is super impressive. The video glosses over the full time effort to handle stock, load and unload parts and manage chips, coolant and cutting tools.

It's actually not that bad. A dense fixture typically takes less than 10 minutes to unload and reload. Tool life is inconsequential in aluminum, his parts aren't big enough to inundate him with chips, and coolant refill can be pretty straightfoward.

IME, blank staging can be a bigger pain, especially if the supplier doesn't clean the blanks before palletizing them.

The system wouldn't be a great fit for 100 piece order that never return though. You'd have to have a different shop to receive that work.

It could actually.

If multiple customers want him to make flat pedals, as an example, he could reuse that same fixture (tombstone with six self centering vies) and possibly use the same blanks. Even his programming would be simplified as he could reuse many of the same toolpaths and simply drop in new geometry.

Overall, a pretty cool operation. If I were to nitpick one thing, it's that all his blanks are on pallets at ground level. Getting them up on pallet stands at waist level will save his back and significantly improve economy of motion.

 

[Mtndew]

Step 1: Win the lottery
Step 2: Build a house that has a "garage" large enough for a ton of cnc's.
Step 3: Invite the blonde from MTD over so you can stare at her giant rack.