There’s this highly talented CAD artist I discovered whose shop looks like a dream-come-true. I asked him this question but he won’t respond, so wondering if anyone here has any idea.
If you scroll through the photos here you can get a sense of his machines/etc. I know the 3D scanner he uses alone is about $9,000.
What do you reckon it’d cost in total upfront $$$ for a CAD artist to deck out a shop like this for their own business? $30,000? $100,000? $500,000?
Well to put it in perspective, Haas is mass-market stuff that YouTubers use, they might only be $100-$150k each. Real pros use brands no one who isn’t an actual machinist will recognize(I’m not one, no idea what they are, I’ve just seen tool&die shops where each machine is closer to a million.) But remember the basic machine itself is only the start of the spending(as a past employer who was trying to set up in-house manufacturing was painfully unaware of.) That shop might be about a million if everything was new. Used is cheaper, and you don’t need to start out with, what is it, 4 machines?
Certainly they’re not Swiss, German or Japanese quality machines which mostly cost 5 times as much. But Haas machines are one of the best “bang-for-the-buck” machines you can get for production work.
Though I struggled a bit with CentOS, working with a good range of DMG Mori machines was a great experience. Though I got caught out a couple of times by the nuances between FANUC and Mitsubishi controls. But their mid-range NLX 2500s are by no means cheap. As embarrassing as it was to crash them a couple of times, I really enjoyed fixing what I could on them too.
We have a few Haas machines and I would agree that they are decent machines. Not as reliable as a Doosan, but pretty close. As for the cost to run a “state of the art” tool shop, I think the original poster is missing a couple of zeros at the end of his estimate. A couple of years ago we spent $80,000 just on tool holders. We’re looking at getting some new Lang vises and the estimate is around $150,000. And if you want to look at FCS work holding, you better be sitting down when you get that quote!
Not wanting to start a flame war, it is a simple fact that there are relatively few options for machining software that also runs on a Mac, and the ones that do are not especially high end.
There is no reverse engineering software that runs on a Mac, at least not any where you can fit surfaces to scan data. Surely you could use Rhino on a Mac to reverse engineer from scan data by creating sections curves based on the scan, but it would not be as efficient as a dedicated reverse engineering software like DesignX, or the Mesh2Surface reverse engineering plugin for Rhino which does not run on a Mac.
NX ?
Siemens does not mention Mac on their site. … I doubt that all of their software does, nor would it have the same functionality as some of the windows versions.
There are DLLs that simply have no Macintosh equivalent.
Dunno, ISTR lots of posts by Mac users vaunting NX as the ultimate CAD/CAM software for Mac…
Those dmg moris are making me drool. Need a 5-axis someday.
Depending on where you live, a decent part of the cost of this sort of shop is going to be the space itself. I have a small CNC business and finding space is a pain. Most residential zoning codes are very prohibitive towards industrial applications, so a backyard garage shop is illegal in most areas. Industrial space leases where I am located are usually 3 years minimum, hardcore business credit checks to make sure you can afford the space, and ~$10-15/sf/yr. Plus you are on the hook for big extra costs: real estate taxes, insurance, maintenance, utilities, etc. (NNN lease)
CNC shop costs also don’t end with the machine and space. Tool holders, bits, replacement parts, workholding, compressors, air filtration, PPE, other tools. These things add up fast, especially if you are buying quality goods.
Wow, that is wild. I’m blown away by the capital necessary to create a shop like this. M26 is literally one guy in his 30’s, and it seems impossible to secure that amount of money by one’s self. Are banks really that quick to loan out $1,000,000 to an independent LLC of one who works in CAD all day?
I have no idea why Discourse added +mac to this topic, since I’m on Windows 
Maybe he bought a few bitcoins when they were cheap… Maybe he has a rich uncle… Maybe…
Not to say it is in this case either, but many machines are just on finance deals.
Some of these workshops look really, really special. But a lot of it can be on the never never nowadays.
However, I have certainly seen in some instances that if you are really excellent at prototyping on a short turnaround, you can sometimes charge obscene amounts of money in certain industries; despite the high overhead.