Hey guys, help me try to convince my lovely lady that a mill will pay for itself within a year.:argue:
Doing the math here, let's assume a few things:
1. Production VMC's cost something like $50 an hour to run. Agreed?
2. Production VMC's work 3-4 times faster than Hobby CNC mill with flood coolant and a stock spindle. Is this about right?
3. All arguments should be based on a turnkey Precision Matthews PM45-CNC (less than $6K)
Ok, everybody wants to make widgets, or start a successful Kickstarter campaign making widgets. Say you have a widget that you can make the parts for on the PM45 in 10 hours and clear $200 after material cost etc... Companies are selling these for $250 so your price is considerably cheaper, quality the same, blah, blah, blah.
So you sell 5 a week, it takes you and the machine 50 hours start to posted in the mail, BUT you only had to put 20 hours of your time into the widget. In my mind, that's easy money, right!!?? Those are union wages from the comfort of your home!!! BUT, is it UNREALISTIC??? Maybe you have to put 40 hours into the job yourself, still, not bad extra income. I know from construction that things take twice as long as you expect, and I have wrenched on enough machines to be very familiar with Murphy's Law. I have never ran a CNC, only small projects on manual Bridgeports and Benchmasters, but I am taking the CNC course at the Community College and want to sell off some things to get the PM-45 and make something. I'm just trying to figure out the cost of production, realistic timelines, and realistic profit margins.
Gentlemen, if you have done production on your hobby mill, please post your problems and experiences in terms of the limitations of the machine. Is it your thought that a Hobby mill can compete with job shops on niche market parts? How many hours of production can a hobby mill put out before needing replacement? I guess that's the big question here, how much to calculate for the actual cost of running the mill per hour?
Blow holes in my logic, please! I need something bulletproof to bring to the missus.(nuts)
Thanks for your time...