My Biggest Pet Peeve AS A Hobby Machinist

Ulma Doctor said:
I make part of my living doing onsies and twosies of obsolete parts. The fun for me is reverse engineering the broken parts or assemblies . Since I charge by the hour, most jobs are time and materials.
I don’t advertise making quantities to avoid the pitfall of undercutting my profit.
Click to expand...
I'm barely covering the costs of tools but this is a hobby. I like fixing old farm equipment that is obsolete. I just received the material to make 5 wheeled hay rake spindles for a rake that hasn't been in production for a decade. If you price parts at a dealer, you can save your customer money and put money in your pocket without selling yourself short.

I understand bigger companies not quoting but not responding is uncool. Whenever I have someone not return my call, my response is, "I'm not going to beg you to take my money."

Another side gig I have is working on airboats with a buddy of mine. We have learned you absolutely factor in time for running down parts, design and/or diagnostic. We quit charging by the hour when quoting and just figure out the cost to do the job. Sometimes we make more per hour sometimes less but it's easier than saying we charge X amount per hour. When you do, guys who can't or won't turn a wrench think an 8 hour job should only be done in 3 hours or is just a quick and easy job without knowing all that goes into what they want done. Or they think we pad hours.
 
Agree...

Build to price point.

We support public safety communications and have been doing this since 79.

Started at Motorola as company operations.

Every single part could be ordered, the washer you dropped to the scratched labels.

Fast forward to current day, one manufacturer of the Code 3 equipment changed the design of the control unit, still looks same on top, but the old unit had a stamped and formed metal bottom with metal supports for switches and boards, very well made and strong.

Current version has a plastic back with stand off for switch, the switch is a long lever with strong detents.

Plastic supports just bigger than the self threading screws so the screws add stress that a not perfect activation of switch causes plastic to break.

Manufacturer does not have and "parts", the whole control unit must be replaced as they source from someplace the unit but no parts.

Stupid!

And due to high use none available, wonder why?

We drill and tap what is left and add screws to make it work as we cannot have a fire engine out of service during fire season...

Sometimes it seems okay, why stock parts for a 5 dollar Wal-Mart item when you can replace unit for less than labor cost to repair, but creating things that need to be reliable and serviceable but not including a process to service them or at minimum stocking the part that breaks is stupid.

Sent from my SM-G781V using Tapatalk
 
Shotgun said:
@TorontoBuilder, That seems like a B2B transaction. You're talking to people that understand custom work and why it is so expensive. Most people don't understand that, and most small business don't want to deal with explaining it to them. That is called "sales" and requires a particular personality. If you don't have that personality, you find sales to be extremely difficult, tiring, or even repulsive. Many small business people just want to do what they do, so they're looking for a long term contract, and don't want to deal with one-off or even small batch work.
Click to expand...

That is again the logical fallacy that small businesses fail to even understand because they don't reply to initial inquiries. Most long term contracts begin with an initial inquiry... You can't determine if my business is B2B in nature if you refuse to communicate with me.

I'm not disputing your premise, I actually agree when it comes to many small shops, they're mostly run by skilled technical people who fail at business, so they struggle just to keep doing what they're doing because they tend to not like to work for others but to be their own boss despite lacking many of the skilled needed to make their lives somewhat easier.

I tend to avoid contacting such places altogether and tend to miss them because they don't have the minimum web presence I require in order to reach out to a company seeking their services.

Okay, I've aired my pet peeve and I dont think there is a way of solving this issue other than helping promote those businesses who help those like ourselves with special smaller volume technical needs at having them met.

So shout out to H & W Machine repair, aka https://machinerypartsdepot.com/ for selling to anyone no matter how small we are
 
I agree with you Toronto, it's the same down here. I asked a local fabrication company to bid a 2k project and got no answer, even tho they ask for such jobs on their website. This has happened several times now with various companies. My other gripe is material costs, I just got a quote back for materials that exceeds the cost of the actual tool. Just the materials! Unless we are competitive we are doomed.
 
Chips O'Toole said:
Seems like there is no such thing as a fix-it shop any more. ....
Click to expand...

I don' think so, or really rare if they still exist. This is what we get for sending all our manufacturing abroad. Any shops that are left have found some good customers to keep them alive, probably bigger customers. I run a small shop, but really only make custom parts for a couple long time customers. I made my neighbor (cabinet shop) a replacement part for his table saw. It was a favor.. did not come close to making shop rate on it. Another shop cross town quoted him 500 for a custom 5/8-12 nut (go eff yourself price, but honestly probably how they quote stuff to Lockheed). Any shops left in this country do not survive on little guys who need an occasional bracket.
 
Regarding junk piles, I'll tell you about some local government hypocrisy.

I don't have garbage pickup. Here, we take our garbage to "recycling centers," which are places where there are several dumpsters. There is one for paper. There is one for metal. One for yard waste. Tires, appliances, and general garbage are represented, and there is a big open area for furniture.

Okay, now, remember this is the "Recycling Center." Note the first word.

At the recycling center, it is a crime to remove anything and take it with you. Nice furniture that could be refinished goes into a claw truck. I saw a nice Workmate the other day in the metal area. Gone. Two days ago, I saw a neat Craftsman steel toolbox with little drawers, in great shape. Gone. Nearby, there was a steel cabinet about 6 feet tall. Very well made. I guess it would cost $600 or more new. Gone.

The steel in the metal area would be wonderful to have for welding projects. Sorry. You can't have it.

As for the paper, people don't like to admit this, but the market for recycled paper is not good, so we often pay for special receptacles, dumpsters, and personnel to drive old paper to landfills.

Used tires? Obviously valuable. A lot of people don't have the money to pay $50 for a used tire, but they could grab one from the faux recycling center if they were allowed.

I bought a 5-gallon pail of blacktop, and it turned out I didn't need it. Expensive. I knew I would never get rid of it on Craigslist because people here are so cheap, so I took it to the recycling center. I'm getting ready to dump a $300 leaf rake there. No one will be allowed to touch it.

Think recycling is real? Question what you have been told. Some of it is real, but a lot isn't. Steel and aluminum, yes. Glass? No. Sand is too abundant.

As for engineers making bad products, I'm sorry, but accountants aren't to blame for everything. If they were, Germans wouldn't make such terrible, unreliable cars. I don't think accountants designed my friend's Mercedes so you can't get the battery out without removing the passenger seat or cutting up the carpet. Accountants didn't design my old Ford Thunderbird so rainwater collected on top of the ignition coils. Accountants didn't design the new green fuel spouts that literally require three hands.

I have a Bosch dishwasher. I also have a couple of Bosch angle grinders. The dishwasher costs somewhere around 10 times as much as an angle grinder. The angle grinders have thick cases made of fiberglass. They will be around for centuries unless someone melts them or something.

The dishwasher came with a control panel made from non-reinforced plastic about 2 mm thick. I am not kidding. The handle to open the door is part of it. This is a high-stress part. The areas where the stress is greatest are full of right angles which become stress risers. Even a moron knows you radius things that endure a lot of tearing stress. And a radius in a mold is no more expensive than a right angle.

Several years ago, the handle started to rip. I removed the panel to look at it, and I saw how badly it was made. I got strong structural epoxy and filled up the area behind the rip, and I got several more years out of the panel. A short time ago, it ripped in three areas I had not reinforced, and it could not be fixed, so I bought a new one. Same design. Realistically, it had to cost less than $10 to make. Most places charge nearly $120 for it, and I was lucky to get it for $80.

Obviously, if Bosch can make a thick case with glass in it for a $70 angle grinder, they can make strong parts for an $800 dishwasher. And you can't tell me Bosch was so concerned about saving 50 cents on an $800 product, they forced the engineers to design a bad part. Engineers also designed their angle grinders.

I took the new part and reinforced it with epoxy BEFORE installing it. Now maybe the dishwasher will have to be retired because the mechanism dies from old age, not because one minor part was designed badly.

Engineers love blaming marketers and accountants, but they do a lot of really bad work. I could list examples all day, and I'm just one person. I would hate to get into the subject of collapsed bridges.

Maybe next we should talk about things that are unquestionably made hard to repair on purpose. The other day, I tried to fix a DeWalt battery charger, and I found it was held together not just with Torx fasteners, which is offensive enough, but with special tamper-resistant Torxes with little nipples in the sockets to push tools out. These are not cheaper to make than regular Torxes or Phillips screws, and they don't make assembly easier, so the intent is obvious.
 
Last edited:
feral_cat said:
Another shop cross town quoted him 500 for a custom 5/8-12 nut (go eff yourself price, but honestly probably how they quote stuff to Lockheed). Any shops left in this country do not survive on little guys who need an occasional bracket.
Click to expand...
I need to make a nut for my taper attachement. Really weird size. 7/16x14 (I think)
I've been wondering how I could cut internal threads on such a beast, 'cause the hole is smaller than my internal threading bar.
I'd say $500 is probably what it would cost them to make such a one-off.
 
Shotgun said:
I need to make a nut for my taper attachement. Really weird size. 7/16x14 (I think)
I've been wondering how I could cut internal threads on such a beast, 'cause the hole is smaller than my internal threading bar.
I'd say $500 is probably what it would cost them to make such a one-off.
Click to expand...
7/16-14 is standard UNC. You can probably get a tap at a decent hardware store, or Amazon is offering to deliver one to me tomorrow for less than 10 bucks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top