Projects take forever....is this common?

[Thrud]

Production is one thing - you have to do things the quickest way you can to make a profit.

Your own projects is another story - part of the pleasure of the hobby is making something better than you can purchase (pride in workmanship gone ape****). Tools are a good example - if you make a tool for yourself going that extra 7 miles always puts a cheshire cat smile on your face when showing your "baby" off.

I have to admit I have been forced to make things for contracts that I would never admit I made - even when the customer's expectations were greatly exceeded - it was still crap as far as I was concerned and I was embarrassed we made it (I made sure we never stamped our name in that stuff - by "accident" of course)

[This message has been edited by Thrud (edited 03-15-2002).]

[spope14]

I have the same problems when I do my production work in the summers. Seems I go to the shop to work, I get the real wierd stuff. here is an example:

Make 250 "bearings" on a CNC lathe(more than this than I will say.

#1. Check the print get the tools.

#2. Grind the inserts for the special width grooves.

#3 Re-adjust the coolant hose to get in the groove

#3A. ind the wrench to fit the metric fitting.

#3B. Find out the fitting is neither metric or english, but a cobble job. Make a new wrench.

#3C. Put in the new fitting, find out why it was a cobble job in the first place.

#3D Make a new fitting

#3E Cobble up an addition to the coolant hose.

4 Make special gauges in the toolroom to fit the special profiles. Program profiles on the mill.

5. Call engineering from the home company I work for, tell them that there is no way on earth or in the 4th dimension that you could make what they need, it was an optical illusion that the customer dreamed up while drinking.

6. Call the customer, explain this, our engineer who never worked in a shop can't figure it.

7. Get new print via e-mail.

8. tell them (nicely) they need to convert it right next time, get next print one hour later.

8. Find out they just wanted a 1" thru drilled hole in a 2" diameter piece of brass 1/2" thick, the material has now been changed from hasteloy, and the outer and inner profiles and grooves proved to be ineffective after all, thus the engineering changes.

Make the parts in fifteen minutes. Time on card, 16 hours.

It just does not work right all the time, even when you need it to make money.......

[KACHINKOO]

I AGREE WITH KAP, MAKE IT AS GOOD AS NEEDS TO BE. MY BOSS WOULD HANG ME IF I TOOK AS MUCH TIME AS I WANTED FOR UNNEEDED PRECISION. SOMETHING ABOUT "TIME IS MONEY"

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by kap pullen:
I'm not like you guys.
For too many years what went out the door dictated what my family had to eat.
I make it as good as it needs to be.
That dosen't mean shoddy workmanship.
Lifes too short. Too many projects in my mind to dally around.
Balls to the wall, full speed ahead.
Gotta go make chips.
see ya!
Kapullen</font>

[michaelj]

I've really enjoyed the comments about this topic. Concerning Wade and Kap's recent entries, I've kind of learned over the years that, while you should always give it your best shot, the greatest enemy of "good" is "better."

[SGW]

Kap has a good point -- doing it for money certainly changes your perspective. A month or so ago I had a small paying shop job making 45 custom antenna mounting brackets for a startup company's prototype product. All of a sudden, how efficiently I could work mattered a lot.

[rmatel]

spope14 had the right word, "prototype". Where I used to work we only did prototyping. Oftened wished for a chance to make another. Got the wish one day; order for 21 from 3 different sources. Stopped wishing ;-)
But I digress. We finally had graphics dept make up a large poster.....

"EVERYTING IS COMPLICATED!!"

[wade_he]

Problem is, once I get going, I always want to make it better and better, or I need to build umpteen jigs - all of which takes much time.

Wade

[kap pullen]

I'm not like you guys.
For too many years what went out the door dictated what my family had to eat.
I make it as good as it needs to be.
That dosen't mean shoddy workmanship.
Lifes too short. Too many projects in my mind to dally around.
Balls to the wall, full speed ahead.
Gotta go make chips.
see ya!
Kapullen

[bpsbtoolman]

If you didn't love dinking around in the shop, you got no business trying to make money from it. I have done a lot of jobs free, but on my time schedule. One job I did for myself was a 1/2" left hand nut. Tried a number of comercial places locally with no results. Mail oder was a consideration but wanted it now. Bought a $10 left hand tap and rough machined a nut thread and taped it. Worked fine. A week later I was in an ACE hardware looking for a casteeled nut right hand thread. In the same tray I found four 1/2" left hand nuts at 58 cents each. Pays to look before you leap.Well at least I have a new used one time 1/2 LH tap.
toolman

[hms50]

Rotate,

"as way leads on to way" Robert Frost

Chief,

"and malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways" A.E. Houseman

sorry to sound like a liberal artist, but isn't this the truth?

[Robert Jones]

If I got paid by the hour for the work I do in my shop, I'd be rather poor. This "hobby" has taught me patience and I find that it has overflowed into my other endeavors. I seem to want to do a better job on most any task I undertake.
I do have the luxury of being retired now, and don't really care how long some things take. It can be a lot cheaper in the long run to zip off to Lowes and buy the small items, though.

[SGW]

It certainly take ME "forever." Even when things go well. The other day it took me three hours to make two custom 5-40 bolts. The sane thing would have been to drive to the hardware store and get a couple of 5-40 Allen screws, but I thought I'd save some time. (Haw!)

Then there is the typical case, as illustrated by scope14's example, when things don't go well.

And Dave (Thrud) is right -- a lot depends on how picky you are, and the more you do this hobby, the more likely you are to be picky, I think, because you're more able to recognize the way it SHOULD be.

[Thrud]

The pickier you get, the longer everything takes - no point in doing a job half-assed unless you really could care less...

[metal mite]

Typical,
Most people have no concept of what is involved in machine shop work.
That's why it takes some guys 10 years to build a locomotive.
mite

[spope14]

Welcome to hobby and in fact prototype machining. I teach the stuff, here is some of the great stories.

I get a call to make some money for the students by making slots in a plate. Drop them by, I will talk.

#1 - easy looking job, I take it foolishly. Students can do this.

#2, plates have warp, need to straighten.

#3, Need to find a way to clamp plates to mill table - just bigger both ways than mill travel to boot. Buy Mitee bites, create additional fixturing to extend beyond the table. Buy metal to do this. Try to explain, end up having to design it, and it takes 10 hours of student and my time. 3 days gone.

#4 - Metal is tough and Gnarly, buy carbide end mills. Buy a new dresser for my old diamond wheel to sharpen the end mills - Find the darned wheel in the first place, put it where I would not forget where it was five years back, where the hell was that.....

#5 - Borrow old beater wheel from a factory close by, pleade stupidness and poverty from the school. Get lecture about being more careful, take the grief, get the wheel - gimmee, . Five days down on a 20 minute job.

#6 - Mill the slots part way, sharpen the mills, onre more day.

#7 - finish the slots, deburr. Create new tool to beburr one part of the plate.

#8 - I did so good on this 20 minute job that i get $50.00 for the school shop (spent $85.00 of my own), and now they want metric holes drilled and tapped in the plate.

One guy so impressed, he wants us to do all his work (all the school shop work I do MUST be referred by a sponsor shop, we do not compete).

All in all, the project was very successful.