Helping young Engineers, only to have them send work to China

[Doug]

Generally I believe it's in your best interest to advise customers about design problems or issues with manufacturability of parts .... In the long run it paid off for me.

Over the years I've run across shops that seemed to operate on the principle of screw the customer before he screws you. Usually they don't last long and are not the kind of people you want to deal with.

 

[Freedommachine]

I'm surprised to hear some people don't get cad models with RFQ's. I thought that was sort of a industry wide requirement these days?

I wish vendors would offer consultation services. Especially when I need something that I don't know shit about.

For example: designing a part to be optimal for laser cut flats and press brake bending.

What's an acceptable laser tolerance? What's an acceptable brake tolerance? Can I design a single 'C' shaped bent component, with a laser cut hole that passes through the top and bottom? What's an acceptable concentricity tolerance for that? Does it need tabs or extra stock to be sheared off later?

If I had press brake experience, I would have an intuitive sense of how to design jobs for that type of work. I would love for a vendor to offer; "get a model made up of the finished part and send it over with a list of questions, for $90/hr we'll help you work it out."

It is far cheaper for me to pay an expert $180 than it is to spend a week trying to read; 'an engineering treatise on the cutting and bending of things'.

 

[Garwood]

I'm surprised to hear some people don't get cad models with RFQ's. I thought that was sort of a industry wide requirement these days?

I wish vendors would offer consultation services. Especially when I need something that I don't know shit about.

For example: designing a part to be optimal for laser cut flats and press brake bending.

What's an acceptable laser tolerance? What's an acceptable brake tolerance? Can I design a single 'C' shaped bent component, with a laser cut hole that passes through the top and bottom? What's an acceptable concentricity tolerance for that? Does it need tabs or extra stock to be sheared off later?

If I had press brake experience, I would have an intuitive sense of how to design jobs for that type of work. I would love for a vendor to offer; "get a model made up of the finished part and send it over with a list of questions, for $90/hr we'll help you work it out."

It is far cheaper for me to pay an expert $180 than it is to spend a week trying to read; 'an engineering treatise on the cutting and bending of things'.

Step 1- Find a capable sheetmetal shop

Step 2- Introduce yourself to owner.

Step 3- Invite owner to lunch w/beers to discuss your projects and ask stupid questions.

Step 4- with your questions answered begin longterm relationship with capable sheetmetal shop.


I'd say laser is a +/- .003 process in the right hands. They can do better when needed. Press brakes can hold a couple thou over multiple bends over 4ft x 4ft or so. CNC punches are good for +/- .005" location on each sheet position. If you design a part to be formed from a laser cut blank and the holes will be stretched out of round by the bend you can make some tryout parts then adjust the geometry of the blank so the hole comes out round.

If the shop has machines with names like Amada, Trumpf or Diacro they can do tight work with a good operator. If their machines say Pacific, Cincinnati or Niagara or they have flywheels or gears on their brakes then you have an 1/8" kind of shop.

 

[DDoug]

What kinda beerth we talking ?

 

[Garwood]

What kinda beerth we talking ?

A frosty rootbeer for you Doug!

 

[DDoug]

A frosty rootbeer for you Doug!

Only the best-est, not too sweet:

Keurig Dr Pepper Product Facts

www.kdpproductfacts.com

 

[EmGo]

Where I’m at prototype ordering is the responsibility of Engineering. Production ordering is the responsibility of Purchasing.

That sounds good and I bet it works fine but I have a prediction : one day it'll mess up and they'll stop doing that. The money part is pretty specialized and bookkeepers are picky bastards.

 

[jccaclimber]

I

That sounds good and I bet it works fine but I have a prediction : one day it'll mess up and they'll stop doing that. The money part is pretty specialized and bookkeepers are picky bastards.

IDK, it’s been that way at every place I’ve worked in the last while. I should clarify a bit, if it’s over $X it goes through Purchasing to cut a PO, but they’re just pushing the paperwork. I communicate with the shop, get a quote, then send to my purchasing buddy as “Please send a PO to this shop for this quote.” If it’s under $X it’s going on a company credit card and I’m listing the expense to a project code.

Over $50k Purchasing starts feeling the need to negotiate (because that always goes over so well with small local shops), but by then it’s usually at a production supplier anyways.

 

[EmGo]

I should clarify a bit, if it’s over $X it goes through Purchasing to cut a PO, but they’re just pushing the paperwork.

That makes more sense ... anything over petty cash really needs to go through purchasing, even if it's only rubber-stamping, otherwise the money-paperwork gets all messed up at some point. And then people get grumpy

Which is why I sort of don't understand WA's plight ... the PA really has the power to make these decisions and absent a real reason for Eng #1 to "go to china" he/she/they/them/it is who I'd be (quietly) talking to about the sitchiation. If'n I was to talk to anyone instead of just walking away. Sometimes walking away is an okay choice, too.

 

[WA-CNC]

Which is why I sort of don't understand WA's plight ... the PA really has the power to make these decisions and absent a real reason for Eng #1 to "go to china" he/she/they/them/it is who I'd be (quietly) talking to about the sitchiation. If'n I was to talk to anyone instead of just walking away. Sometimes walking away is an okay choice, too.

I did talk to the PA about 5 minutes after dealing with #1 Engineer and #2 Engineer

I think my exact words were
"I think I'm going to strangle somebody"
"Who"
"Both of them"
"I figured that might be the case, I just heard as well he yanked the parts from you"

So he knows, he's sympathetic to my situation, he's been trying to get these people to go thru the proper channels., he's sat them down and reamed them three ways to Sunday. What evidently happens is the Engineers go to the boss to get approval, and bypass the PA. Apparently there's been a few occasions he didn't even know a job had been placed until a shipper and an invoice arrive.

I had a long convo with the boss about this. He says it won't happen again.

If there's anything good that comes of this the PA will be buying the Pizza and Beer next time.

 

[DanielG]

Only the best-est, not too sweet:

Keurig Dr Pepper Product Facts

www.kdpproductfacts.com

I saw this link and thought two things:

1) how do you make Dr. Pepper in a Keurig
2) Dr. Pepper flavored coffee would be terrible

Then I clicked on it.

 

[DanielG]

That sounds good and I bet it works fine but I have a prediction : one day it'll mess up and they'll stop doing that. The money part is pretty specialized and bookkeepers are picky bastards.

You'd be surprised how well it works. My first job out of school, there was a purchasing department of two guys (ex-machinists). If we sent a generic part to our in-house machine shop, the purchasing guys would send it out if the shop was too busy, needed a specialized operation, etc. For the most part though, we all sent out our own parts. You could be sending out $150,000 PO's in your first year; obviously you talked with your PM before sending out a big job when you were new. We had about 450 engineers at the time and the system worked well for decades.

The biggest complaint I heard from the planners was that engineers would send easy work to one of the really highly-skilled shops and then they'd be too busy to take our really precise milling/grinding jobs that they were the best/only option for.

 

[standardparts]

I
IDK, it’s been that way at every place I’ve worked in the last while. I should clarify a bit, if it’s over $X it goes through Purchasing to cut a PO, but they’re just pushing the paperwork. I communicate with the shop, get a quote, then send to my purchasing buddy as “Please send a PO to this shop for this quote.” If it’s under $X it’s going on a company credit card and I’m listing the expense to a project code.

Over $50k Purchasing starts feeling the need to negotiate (because that always goes over so well with small local shops), but by then it’s usually at a production supplier anyways.

"If it’s under $X it’s going on a company credit card and I’m listing the expense to a project code."
"P" cards made it a lot simpler for the purchasing guy and allowed him the excuse...so talk to the guy who bought the deal with his p-card.
Sometimes...'ya did what you had to do and then waited to see how much rope they gave you.....

 

[EmGo]

You'd be surprised how well it works. My first job out of school,

Don't you think people were more sensible in .... errr ... our first days out of school ? Seems like a lot of stuff we did would no longer fly

 

[guythatbrews]

You'd be surprised how well it works. My first job out of school, there was a purchasing department of two guys (ex-machinists). If we sent a generic part to our in-house machine shop, the purchasing guys would send it out if the shop was too busy, needed a specialized operation, etc. For the most part though, we all sent out our own parts. You could be sending out $150,000 PO's in your first year; obviously you talked with your PM before sending out a big job when you were new. We had about 450 engineers at the time and the system worked well for decades.

The biggest complaint I heard from the planners was that engineers would send easy work to one of the really highly-skilled shops and then they'd be too busy to take our really precise milling/grinding jobs that they were the best/only option for.

Lots of dollars, little control. You can bet at least a few of the 450 were getting kickbacks. A purchasing dept. is more important the bigger a place is.

Not to say purchasing never gets kickbacks, but at least it's centralized and hopefully easier to oversee.

 

[Portable Welder]

As a welding fabricator, I get this all the time..., the customer wants me to bring their vision to life, they have no idea how to draw, design or size members, I do a drawing to bring their vision to life and find out they are sending my drawings out to have other fabricators quote based off my designs, while they usually go with me 80% of the time, it still sucks.

 

[DDoug]

As a welding fabricator, I get this all the time..., the customer wants me to bring their vision to life, they have no idea how to draw, design or size members, I do a drawing to bring their vision to life and find out they are sending my drawings out to have other fabricators quote based off my designs, while they usually go with me 80% of the time, it still sucks.

You need to start a separate "Design LLC".

 

[guythatbrews]

As a welding fabricator, I get this all the time..., the customer wants me to bring their vision to life, they have no idea how to draw, design or size members, I do a drawing to bring their vision to life and find out they are sending my drawings out to have other fabricators quote based off my designs, while they usually go with me 80% of the time, it still sucks.

I do quotes for free. Drawing, design, and reverse engineering, I charge for.

Sometimes a customer will bring a part by and say "You can have this to quote but then I need it back. Oh, and by the way, make a drawing because when I place the order the part will be in service and you can't have it back to copy."

Then I politely tell the customer I will have to charge them for the drawing, and it will remain in my possession. Sometimes I will credit the drawing cost back if I get the job, sometimes not. If they want to buy the drawing that is an additional fee so I can pretty it up for public display.

 

[BoxcarPete]

After reading this thread, I did my customer a "favor" and put in a little extra legwork to give them an "as assembled" model of a seal we are working on. They did exceed my expectations by bringing us in early in the design process rather than "here's my design, it needs a seal but all the component tooling has already been kicked off" which I see all too often. They exceeded my expectations again by listening to my recommendations and doing quite a bit of component reconfiguration to get a better seal interface, so I want to extend trust. I feel a little bad about doing this as I did since I am normally a very open and honest person and I believe that's the proper way to do business, but it would be so easy to shop it if I sent them the full design package.

They bought out a customer (or some of their designs) we had only worked with once or twice. The original component was doomed to leak no matter what because of some interesting design choices, but when I told them what would need to be done to get a proper interface for a seal they actually made it happen. Normally I do send .stp files to our customers and almost never get burned, but in this case I went and made a deformed version so they would have something so look at which couldn't be shopped. They're technically new to us as a customer because they got our name from blowing the dust off this failed product and they're trying to bring it to market.

Dunno, just rambling at this point, but you guys are making me second guess my trusting and open nature

 

[Portable Welder]

I do quotes for free. Drawing, design, and reverse engineering, I charge for.

Sometimes a customer will bring a part by and say "You can have this to quote but then I need it back. Oh, and by the way, make a drawing because when I place the order the part will be in service and you can't have it back to copy."

Then I politely tell the customer I will have to charge them for the drawing, and it will remain in my possession. Sometimes I will credit the drawing cost back if I get the job, sometimes not. If they want to buy the drawing that is an additional fee so I can pretty it up for public display.

I'm not copying an existing part unfortunately, many times its a design, build and erect..., I do my best to be vague when possible and sometimes I'm critiquing what a engineer or architect draws.