Ok I'm 42 not 24 and Blogging is, well, not natural. I'd rather stand on a soap box in front of the whole town and shout....LOUDLY...
If blogging is the new way to reach customers then I'm behind because I thought it was web sites and video content www.ericstoolroom.com neither of which I'm the best at but I get my point across and I'm geting better at it everyday. My forte is machining. I've been in it for 30 of my 42 years. I literally had a south bend lathe in my grandparents basement when i turned 13. CNC's are kinda new too me but computers are not. I was on the internet in 1984. it was called compuserve at the time.
I own 7 CNC machines now. 2-three axis mills, 2-four axis mills, 3-two axis lathes large, medium, and small. each machine has its own PC station and everything is networked with a system I call clones drones and servants. I can personally take these things apart and put them back together again and run them too.
A clone is a PC with a cloned operating system like win 2000 or NT and has CAM sofware on it, A drone is a CNC machine, and a servant is a PC with other operational software like quick books, E2 and other aplications... So far it works out well and I can find all customers drawings on my network server after being placed there by a servant. I can then goto the clone station and work up any cad files necesary for a job and write and post the apropriate program to the drone after its been saved to the network server.
I can actually set my tools and hit the button and walk away from the machine and leave the drone un attended for the duration of its cycle on all but the 2-three axis mills. I use these mostly for quick set up or tooling build and not so much for production. I have some high volume production and need a little more but I mostly concentrate on the large scale parts over 500# and under 3,000# This is where my shop realy excells.
I can do anything with parts in this range. I can swing it on a 30 inch lathe, mill it on a 42 inch rotary table. and here real shortly I'm going to have a 5 axis mill with a 42 inch rotary table and a swiveling head. My goal is to be able to manufacture absolutely any tool you can imagine of almost any size in a shop completely automated with a minimal staff. This goal has largely been met as now I have no more tool makers. I don't need them. No more programmers because I don't need them either. all hardware in this shop is networked and can be operated by me and my one and only self if necesary. I do have some employees that help out with some remaining manual work, inspection and getting tooling set up. This is my plan to compete effectively. by eliminating all the manpower I can, and automate automate and automate some more. I allready know what my next goal is and how to achieve it but before I tell everyone what I'm going to do next lets see if anyone out there has caught up with me now..
I don't know if this has been a good read for you or not, but for me. It's a Blog, I'm waiting to see if anyone cares....
