[CNC-Dude]

Hi Group,

First of all allow me to apologize for this question. I am not trying to steal your business, but hopefully to get some inspiration. Since my background is in electrical engineering, I somehow lack the ability to find something to manufacture with my machine for which I can make a few bucks here and there. Of course, for me this is a hobby, but I would truly love to make the occasional buck with the intention of... Well buying more tools of course! Apparently, my wife is having a hard time believing the "with this tool I will be able to make this $$$ and this $$$!" tale. But who can blame her? I am actually lucky she hasn't kicked my butt (along with the machine) out of our garage!

What recommendations can you offer? Or should I assume this is my blunder for buying the machine without an actual need for it (as in I already have something to build and the only way to make it happen is by buying the machine?) Truly appreciate your input!

[WOTDesigns]

Didn't you just buy a SECOND Tormach?

Brian
WOT Designs

[CNC-Dude]

Didn't you just buy a SECOND Tormach?

Brian
WOT Designs

Isn't that depressing? Anybody might think that I bought a second PCNC1100 because I couldn't handle load with just one, when it is more like I may need some serious psychiatric help ;-)

My goal with the second Tormach was to fix it and then sell it for a profit. But now I want to keep it! Which is considerably ridiculous if I don't make a cent with it.

Like I said, it is very possible I need some serious psychiatric help, heh heh heh...

[popspipes]

Hi Group,

First of all allow me to apologize for this question. I am not trying to steal your business, but hopefully to get some inspiration. Since my background is in electrical engineering, I somehow lack the ability to find something to manufacture with my machine for which I can make a few bucks here and there. Of course, for me this is a hobby, but I would truly love to make the occasional buck with the intention of... Well buying more tools of course! Apparently, my wife is having a hard time believing the "with this tool I will be able to make this $$$ and this $$$!" tale. But who can blame her? I am actually lucky she hasn't kicked my butt (along with the machine) out of our garage!

What recommendations can you offer? Or should I assume this is my blunder for buying the machine without an actual need for it (as in I already have something to build and the only way to make it happen is by buying the machine?) Truly appreciate your input!

Kinda sounds like me ha! I bought a Miller Trailblazer (portable welder) just because I wanted one, I had it three years and only had 33 hours on it,then I got an ongoing job and paid for it several times over.

My Tormach was about the same, I still havent found a job that I can make real money at with it, but I have fun playing with it, and learned cad cam and the machine. I make some hobby parts for money that goes back into more tools for the machine.

At my age I really dont need the work, but the machine keeps me occupied and keeps the brain from getting too foggy too quickly, I have always loved tools and making things, so its well justified at least in my own mind ha!

My philosophy was if you have the tools you can find work for them eventually, this may not be true for everyone but it was in my case, several times over.

Be patient and keep your eyes open something will eventually turn up.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

Several people here seem to make a living making what seem like relatively small, simple things - bottle openers, multi-tools, key-chains, etc. Take a look at Kickstarter and see what other people are doing. It ranges from almost trivial, to surprisingly complex, and people seem to have little trouble finding funding for all of them provided they are unique, and have broad enough appeal.

I manufacture power drawbars and automatic toolchangers on my machines. In the past I've done accessories for classic Jaguar cars.

Regards,
Ray L.

[Beezle]

I don't make any money with my Tormach either.

I've made hundreds of parts with it, but they were all things I gave to people I know, etc.

I want to somehow make money and I have designed and made some woodworking tools that I think I can sell, but I haven't committed to that yet.

The way I see it, it keeps me sane having this to do when I get time, which in turn keeps me happy enough to keep at my day job, which pays far better than I could ever earn with my precious machine(s).

[Ken Gastineau]

I use my Tormach 1100 Series 2 to prototype jewelry components from machinable wax. I use these machined masters to make molds which I use for casting pewter. I do not sell much directly from the mill, but I make my living selling the jewelry we cast.

Gastineau Studio Berea Kentucky 40403

[Spinnetti]

I use my Tormach 1100 Series 2 to prototype jewelry components from machinable wax. I use these machined masters to make molds which I use for casting pewter. I do not sell much directly from the mill, but I make my living selling the jewelry we cast.

Gastineau Studio Berea Kentucky 40403

Nice stuff... Get a Form1 SLA 3D printer for lost "plastic" and never look back

[CNC-Dude]

DARN IT! Had replied to this thread and then lost it all... Oh well, here I go again...

The idea of a slim rotary table for small machines seems like a very lucrative endeavor! It is a little bit more complex than knives and bottle openers, though. In fact, it is my impression anybody trying this would need a team of mechanical engineers (or at least being one with a bunch of experience). It is definitely way out of my field of expertise, but perhaps somebody reads this in a future and notices there is a market for such an item.

The shop tool ideas are a little bit closer to reality for me. Not the crash protector as that requires some serious artificial intelligence, but the shop related accessories. I will definitely study this list closer.

I do agree with eBay being an excellent asset! Have been selling on Ebay for over 15 years. As stated, you can post what you have when you have it. That way we can avoid a mess like the one we are seeing on a different thread where somebody has not been able to deliver the goods for well over two months, but somehow the product is available on eBay!

Thanks to all for sharing your ideas and stories! I feel like I am getting closer ;-)

[Ken Gastineau]

Nice stuff... Get a Form1 SLA 3D printer for lost "plastic" and never look back

I have thought about it, but I have been spending current resources getting setup for blacksmithing. Do you have experience with 3d printing?

Though printing may be superior for jewelry model making, machine tools can work a greater number of materials and sometimes that comes in really handy.

[WOTDesigns]

I definitely agree with the "make what you know" thought process. It's a lot easier to draw inspiration from hobbies and interests or even those of friends. I started out doing some job shop work for friends and eventually started designing a better throttle lock for my own bikes. I wanted something that solved problems I had with every other one ever made and after 8 solid months of prototypying and redesigning eventually I had a product I was willing to sell. This was all done on my X3 mill I converted. The first 1500 units were made on that before I could afford a Tormach. Check out the product (OMNI-CRUISE: Universal Motorcycle Throttle Lock) and you will see the 4 main parts. Top and bottom are aluminum with 14 different processes to get those two made including 0.15" wide slots through the 1" tall 0.25" wide bottom. The center pivot nuts are machined to length on the mill, cross drilled and tapped there as well. The bottom Delrin slide is machined from plate and the countersunk holes are also all done on the mill.

Today I have sold over 10,000 Omni's... and have since had to upgrade to a Haas TM2P as my main machine so I can walk away longer while running 3x as many parts per set up vs the Tormach, but the Tormach ran 7,500 Omnis by itself at $50 retail each for 4 parts per (I only sell a small percentage at retail and the rest to dealers and distributors). Ha, never did this math before:

Since Dec 2012
Total parts machined for Omni-Cruise --- 48,000
Total parts hand assembled (inc hardware) --- 168,000

Ouch.

I only work on Omni-Cruise about half the time and the rest is split between jobshop and new product development. I have only been able to get one other product to market and have another about to launch this month, but the job shop work is VERY erratic and painfully "when it rains it pours". I tend to get several jobs at once and have to turn one or more away to not get behind on my next Omni batch but have some great customers that actually plan ahead and bring me "when ever you have time" work as well. Today I am re-machining racing brake calipers. Tonight I am machining customer rollers for test units used for calibrating electronic bike sensors. Tomorrow I am machining 30lb steel door counterweights. Most nights I assemble Omni's and watch a movie with the wife who usually helps assemble. She is amazing and knows her limitations but does what she can.

Inventing and making your own stuff is WAY more fun and usually lucrative. Getting knocked off is something that just happens. I improved upon any previous design out there with my throttle lock... only took 6 months for one of my competitors to use most of my ideas to upgrade theirs to do the same thing I invented mine to (that none had ever done before). Naturally theirs came out at 40% less money, but I still sell a crap load because many people can tell the quality just from the design and pictures, not to mention reviews and magazine articles. Plus there are actually a few of us left that buy American; I went with a Haas mill and Epilog laser specifically for that purpose.

Make a good product and people will buy it. Make a cheap product and people will buy it. Make a product with a small market and it better not be cheap. Make a product for iPhone market and it better be cheap. I have a very limited clientele for my Omni and my new line of products has an even smaller market unfortunately but retails at almost $200-$700 per sale.

There isn't much I would change if I could about what I have done. I own my own business. Have a shop. Lots of toys. Most importantly I'm the boss so I get to work whichever 12-16 hours a day I feel like it.

Last toy was a $3000 high speed spindle Cat40 for the Haas to make up for the Tormach Spindle Speeder I just sold with the mill. Previous toy was an industrial parts tumbler. Next big toy will be a 6,000 lb+ slant bed lathe. (already have one in mind). They say you should ask yourself what you would do if you had a million dollars. Whatever you would do with it is what you should do for a living. If I had a million dollars I would buy a free standing shop with a large outside fenced in lot, fill it with a few more Haas machines, hire someone to do the damn paperwork, and do the exact same thing I do right now. I haven't "worked" a day since I quit my day job, but by god I have never had so little free time in my life either.

[CadRhino]

Nice. I was waiting for the book to come out but you just gave us the cliff notes version.
Congratulations.
Nathan

I definitely agree with the "make what you know" thought process. It's a lot easier to draw inspiration from hobbies and interests or even those of friends. I started out doing some job shop work for friends and eventually started designing a better throttle lock for my own bikes. I wanted something that solved problems I had with every other one ever made and after 8 solid months of prototypying and redesigning eventually I had a product I was willing to sell. This was all done on my X3 mill I converted. The first 1500 units were made on that before I could afford a Tormach. Check out the product (OMNI-CRUISE: Universal Motorcycle Throttle Lock) and you will see the 4 main parts. Top and bottom are aluminum with 14 different processes to get those two made including 0.15" wide slots through the 1" tall 0.25" wide bottom. The center pivot nuts are machined to length on the mill, cross drilled and tapped there as well. The bottom Delrin slide is machined from plate and the countersunk holes are also all done on the mill.

Today I have sold over 10,000 Omni's... and have since had to upgrade to a Haas TM2P as my main machine so I can walk away longer while running 3x as many parts per set up vs the Tormach, but the Tormach ran 7,500 Omnis by itself at $50 retail each for 4 parts per (I only sell a small percentage at retail and the rest to dealers and distributors). Ha, never did this math before:

Since Dec 2012
Total parts machined for Omni-Cruise --- 48,000
Total parts hand assembled (inc hardware) --- 168,000

Ouch.

I only work on Omni-Cruise about half the time and the rest is split between jobshop and new product development. I have only been able to get one other product to market and have another about to launch this month, but the job shop work is VERY erratic and painfully "when it rains it pours". I tend to get several jobs at once and have to turn one or more away to not get behind on my next Omni batch but have some great customers that actually plan ahead and bring me "when ever you have time" work as well. Today I am re-machining racing brake calipers. Tonight I am machining customer rollers for test units used for calibrating electronic bike sensors. Tomorrow I am machining 30lb steel door counterweights. Most nights I assemble Omni's and watch a movie with the wife who usually helps assemble. She is amazing and knows her limitations but does what she can.

Inventing and making your own stuff is WAY more fun and usually lucrative. Getting knocked off is something that just happens. I improved upon any previous design out there with my throttle lock... only took 6 months for one of my competitors to use most of my ideas to upgrade theirs to do the same thing I invented mine to (that none had ever done before). Naturally theirs came out at 40% less money, but I still sell a crap load because many people can tell the quality just from the design and pictures, not to mention reviews and magazine articles. Plus there are actually a few of us left that buy American; I went with a Haas mill and Epilog laser specifically for that purpose.

Make a good product and people will buy it. Make a cheap product and people will buy it. Make a product with a small market and it better not be cheap. Make a product for iPhone market and it better be cheap. I have a very limited clientele for my Omni and my new line of products has an even smaller market unfortunately but retails at almost $200-$700 per sale.

There isn't much I would change if I could about what I have done. I own my own business. Have a shop. Lots of toys. Most importantly I'm the boss so I get to work whichever 12-16 hours a day I feel like it.

Last toy was a $3000 high speed spindle Cat40 for the Haas to make up for the Tormach Spindle Speeder I just sold with the mill. Previous toy was an industrial parts tumbler. Next big toy will be a 6,000 lb+ slant bed lathe. (already have one in mind). They say you should ask yourself what you would do if you had a million dollars. Whatever you would do with it is what you should do for a living. If I had a million dollars I would buy a free standing shop with a large outside fenced in lot, fill it with a few more Haas machines, hire someone to do the damn paperwork, and do the exact same thing I do right now. I haven't "worked" a day since I quit my day job, but by god I have never had so little free time in my life either.

[EvolveES]

I would love to see what Bryan Suggested. I have pondered the same thing, the best ideas i can come up with so far is a plate that indexes off of 2-4 surfaces on the bottom that when flipped and aligned with reference surfaces (wither bolted to the mill or like the jaw of a vice) is will be such that it has rotated around it's center. A rotary table would be far better.

[CadRhino]

If you really want to make a ton of money with your tormach, hire a bunch of nice looking models and shoot them with your machines- it would make a nice 'shop' calendar. Old tormach geezers like me would buy one.

[sansbury]

WOTDesigns has a great story, and I think he might make it sound a lot easier than it is. I'd guess that he's in the upper 5-10% (maybe 1%?) in terms of sales volume and price point. Most inventors are doing ok to move a couple hundred units at any price, let alone one that makes money. The difference between "That's a great idea!" and "Here's $50 for one!" is the difference between watching an Angelina Jolie sex scene in a movie and having a roll in the hay with her.

I bought my mill to work on a product idea which I'm on year 2 of 3 towards making a reality. I give it a 20% chance of breaking even, which I'm ok with because it's not my day job. I also do 1-20 part runs for inventors and researchers like Steve does.

I could probably get more of that work than I do, but I don't look for it too hard. You could order up some cards and go visit some machine shops in your area and ask if they do one-offs for inventors. When they say "Not really," you can tell them "Great, because I do, have some of my cards!" and they might refer somebody to you. Bear in mind, you'll mostly be getting the clients no one else wants, but if you can figure out how to make minimum wage making parts for goofballs, then it beats flipping burgers.

If you just want to make money, CadRhino's calendar is probably the best idea so far.

[SCzEngrgGroup]

WOTDesigns has a great story, and I think he might make it sound a lot easier than it is. I'd guess that he's in the upper 5-10% (maybe 1%?) in terms of sales volume and price point. Most inventors are doing ok to move a couple hundred units at any price, let alone one that makes money. The difference between "That's a great idea!" and "Here's $50 for one!" is the difference between watching an Angelina Jolie sex scene in a movie and having a roll in the hay with her.

It's not quite THAT bad! I've had several products that have done well, considering I was not interested in building a lot of them. I had several products I did for classic Jaguar cars. There was always more demand than I cared to meet, so I did limited runs of each product, some lasting months, some years, then moved on to something new. The trick is finding a niche that is specialized enough that there is some barrier to entry, but there is a ready market. With Kickstarter and similar sites to get the word out, I sometimes think almost anything will sell.

Regards,
Ray L.

[sansbury]

It's not quite THAT bad! I've had several products that have done well, considering I was not interested in building a lot of them. I had several products I did for classic Jaguar cars. There was always more demand than I cared to meet, so I did limited runs of each product, some lasting months, some years, then moved on to something new. The trick is finding a niche that is specialized enough that there is some barrier to entry, but there is a ready market.

Absolutely. One thing I like about your example is that I'm guessing a lot of classic Jag owners have a few bucks to spend even if they're not Jay Leno-wealthy. I think people underprice their products far more often than they overprice them, and the problems that causes are more often fatal.

With Kickstarter and similar sites to get the word out, I sometimes think almost anything will sell.

The issue with that line of thinking is that you don't see the projects that fail because lack of publicity/attention is a leading predictor a project will fail. IIRC around 60% of Kickstarter projects fail, and the success rates on other, less-selective sites are a lot lower. I've made parts for some people who've been successful on KS, and known a few others who've had varied results, and one of the things that I've seen from this is that crowdfunding sites are a potentially good place to take an idea from 100 buyers to 1000, but a terrible place to take an idea from 0-10.

I forget the exact numbers but a huge percentage of successful kickstarters get 25-50% funded within the first few days. It's very much a rich-get-richer dynamic. If you have 10 or 20 people interested, I'd cover that myself and do a small batch just for them, then use them as part of your marketing strategy to build an audience. And the people who've had successful campaigns that I know, they all spent real money--$5k or more--producing videos and hiring designers for their websites, that sort of thing. It's a huge improvement over 10 years ago when your only choice was to take out a second mortgage to pay for a run of 100 or 1000 units that you didn't know would sell, but it's still a tough hustle.

[CNC-Dude]

I forget the exact numbers but a huge percentage of successful kickstarters get 25-50% funded within the first few days. It's very much a rich-get-richer dynamic. If you have 10 or 20 people interested, I'd cover that myself and do a small batch just for them, then use them as part of your marketing strategy to build an audience. And the people who've had successful campaigns that I know, they all spent real money--$5k or more--producing videos and hiring designers for their websites, that sort of thing. It's a huge improvement over 10 years ago when your only choice was to take out a second mortgage to pay for a run of 100 or 1000 units that you didn't know would sell, but it's still a tough hustle.

I actually agree with this point of view. And in fact, when I was doing my KS campaign 2.5 years ago, I found an article on how KS hides the failed campaigns so that it looks like most of them are successful.

The real truth with KS is that if you don't have a large following (or a lot of cash to start with), it is not as easy as it seems. Most of the ridiculously successful projects usually come from people who already have some kind of funding (sometime millions!).

This is not to say that KS is a lost battle. If the product is really good, and you manage to spread the word so that the project becomes featured, you could get some very nice exposure and end up with way much more cash than anticipated!

I would love to do a KS and get some serious cash overnight, although to be honest that is not the kind of project I am looking for. In essence, and at the moment, I am looking for the proper excuse to buy more tools. Basically, my nose crosses the solar system whenever I tell my wife something like "I need this tool to make more money!" And such weight is starting to mess my back ;-)

[joeyjrc]

Learn selling on ebay, almost anything you make will sell on ebay. You need to know how to list it properly, category,key words, prices...
I've made a nice side business from machining parts and modifying existing parts and selling them on ebay. I only list what I have made and ready to ship so its not stressful. If I'm too busy at my full time job I don't make anything or list anything, no big deal. Or if I'm exhausted from work but I just want to get my next group of parts finished and listed on ebay I'll suck it up and after I help put the kids to bed get out to my garage and machine parts.
I've had my tormach 770 for almost 3 years now, love it. When we buy a bigger house and bigger garage I'll buy a hass mill, but I'll most likely keep my little 770. Love that little machine.

[CNC-Dude]

Like I was saying the other day, my intention of making a few bucks is so that I can justify buying more tools. My wife is no longer buying the "I need this and this in order to make money". Clearly I have exhausted said argument. Here is a quick cartoon I put together to illustrate what many of us may be going through, heh heh heh...