Topic: Our cutting shop - starting to take shape (Read 153300 times)

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #150 on:** March 02, 2013, 02:22:58 PM »

Some pics of the new office/machine shop expansion building.

Outside of Building, Concrete Block Construction, 14 foot eves

Office Demo in progress

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #151 on:** March 02, 2013, 02:26:41 PM »

Back Left Welding Shop 30x30, Needs demo and cleanup

CNC Shop (32x85), Needs center wall demo

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #152 on:** March 02, 2013, 02:34:23 PM »

Tiny power (200A 240 1PH) - New Power going in 400A 480V 3PH

Ancient at&t phone system. Being replaced with Cisco VOIP (UC520s)

Location for roll up door being added to the back of the bldg. (One on each side)

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #153 on:** March 02, 2013, 06:40:49 PM »

Looks good. I'm surprised a place like that would only have 200a power coming in. My house has 300a. 200a for the house and 100a dedicated to the shop.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #154 on:** March 03, 2013, 02:05:32 AM »

We're 99% sure they down graded the service. There is 700 MCM to the weather head, and the meter/distro box is setup like a 400A service where the power doesn't actually go through the meter, it's just sensed. That said, even if I swapped it back, 400A of 1PH is relatively worthless for our equipment. Probably fine for a newspaper though (what this place was for past 25 years).

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #155 on:** March 03, 2013, 08:27:49 AM »

Yea, I'm sure a huge chunk of your stuff is 3ph

crxvtec91 · « **Reply #156 on:** March 12, 2013, 10:18:53 AM »

New building looks great!

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #157 on:** March 12, 2013, 07:45:34 PM »

Well, I decided I didn't like anything about any of the walls. So I knocked them all down (with the exception of the cement wall down the middle that I cant mess with.) Just couldn't get an efficient layout.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #158 on:** March 12, 2013, 07:50:52 PM »

The walls weren't sealed very well. So we tore all the old crap off. They are using some sort of sealer, then foam board, then sheet rock.

Trying to decide on colors. I like the right one. The wife and employees out voted me and they are using the middle color. Notice the greasy hand prints on the 4 color swatches on the left, part of their "testing".

I've come to the conclusion that I dont get an office this month so I moved into the cnc shop temporarily. It's not bad.

Atleast dont have to listen to waterjets 5 feet from my office anymore.

ratcityrex · « **Reply #159 on:** March 12, 2013, 08:25:09 PM »

Looks good Adam.

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #160 on:** March 13, 2013, 10:58:13 AM »

One day forums will have "like" buttons. I have nothing relevant to say, but like where this is going.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #161 on:** March 13, 2013, 01:07:11 PM »

I remember doing this the first time back in 2004 when we bought our first building, and I really wish I had documented it. This building looks like a golden nugget in comparison to that pile.

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #162 on:** March 13, 2013, 10:17:22 PM »

I understand if you don't want to answer this in public, but I'm curious how that kind of cash is acquired. Do you use a line of credit, or keep that kind of cushion in your checking account?

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #163 on:** March 14, 2013, 12:23:45 AM »

It depends upon where you are in your business life cycle.

If you are a startup or within the first 2 years you use what you can get. We maxed our credit cards, student loans, parted my car, and sold almost everything we owned. Then re-invested every dime we made back into equipment and inventory. My wife actually paid the bills the first 2 years while I worked 18 hrs a day trying to pay off our first bender.

Now a days, we don't operate with any loans, or lines of credit for inventory or expenses. We pay for all current liabilities with cash flow generated from daily sales. The only loans we carry are a few mortgages that are left, but for the most part we own almost all of our facilities.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #164 on:** March 14, 2013, 12:34:26 AM »

I should note that businesses that operate on cash flow that don't own their inventory, or cant control their expenses can get themselves in deep shit operating like this. I knew a certain tuner that was doing $250k a month in sales on a margin of about 25% before expenses. He built up this huge staff to achieve those sales, and if I remember correctly his payroll was right around $90k a month. His profit on parts sales were only about $62.5k a month before expenses, and he was operating the entire operation off the net30 float. A couple years of this killed his business and when he shut down he had outstanding debts totaling over a million.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #165 on:** March 15, 2013, 04:49:26 PM »

Got some less than wonderful news yesterday. Anything that we touch related to moving electrical circuits around to change lightning configurations between the rooms has be redone with the steel sheathing over the wire to meet current code.

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #166 on:** March 15, 2013, 05:44:28 PM »

Like conduit or a type of wire?

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #167 on:** March 18, 2013, 07:40:04 PM »

I guess back in the day it was ok to run romex everywhere. Now-a-days they require you to run it in shielded cable for commercial. Just a stupid requirement.

These pics are from last week. Haven't been to work since thursday, this bug/flu/sinus thing
that is going around has been seriously kicking my ass.

This is the 2x8 wall dividing the front office from the back shop. The area behind that wall is 40x40 minus a 10x10 bathroom in the right corner. Major improvement from the incredibly strange room that was back there before.

The huge door frame for our steel fire door. Still cant believe an interior door can cost $1200.

We kept some of the old paneling and plastered in the grooves as I'm notoriously hard on sheet rock walls (personally). I tend to knock/punch/bump holes in them over time. Ive already tried to punch through this stuff and it took it just fine.

Supposedly the walls all textured and primed aside from the new wall that they are still doing some fire proofing things to. Hoping to be able to crawl out of bed tomorrow and see how close we are getting. There electricians were in there all weekend fixing all the old romex crap.

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #168 on:** March 18, 2013, 08:10:46 PM »

that door is nowhere near big enough to cost $1200

Joseph Davis · « **Reply #169 on:** March 22, 2013, 09:49:56 AM »

Quote from: mandrel-bends on March 14, 2013, 12:34:26 AM

I should note that businesses that operate on cash flow that don't own their inventory, or cant control their expenses can get themselves in deep shit operating like this. I knew a certain tuner that was doing $250k a month in sales on a margin of about 25% before expenses. He built up this huge staff to achieve those sales, and if I remember correctly his payroll was right around $90k a month. His profit on parts sales were only about $62.5k a month before expenses, and he was operating the entire operation off the net30 float. A couple years of this killed his business and when he shut down he had outstanding debts totaling over a million.

That is retarded on so many levels. I know four man operations doing almost that in sales - their dyno collects dust, it's all sales. I doubt there is more than $16K/month in payroll there.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #170 on:** March 22, 2013, 08:40:04 PM »

This was painting yesterday.

One of the offices.

All the power & data/phone lines installed in the new wall.

Finished removing debris from demo. We are just about to remove all the lighting and all the ceiling tile/tracks. We have to open this room up to a full 12' height. The machines are tall. Going to sheet rock the ceiling, then re-install lighting.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #171 on:** March 22, 2013, 08:46:40 PM »

Updated expenses below.

ratcityrex · « **Reply #172 on:** March 22, 2013, 09:51:52 PM »

Looks good. Its amazing how paint can make everything look better.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #173 on:** March 23, 2013, 04:36:52 PM »

They got the ceiling out of the back room.

Lighting wiring through the rafter so we can sheet rock.

Probably the last day this room will look like this. All the ducting is being redone tomorrow, and all the walls are getting foam boarded/sheet rocked.

Dad's office window. It's a slider. He's very excited.

From entry way.

Data/comm rack partially populated. Most of the patch panels are fully wired, just not patched into switch yet.

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #174 on:** March 23, 2013, 07:24:33 PM »

Looking good Adam.

Btw, I sent you an email about an intake plenum spacer.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #175 on:** April 06, 2013, 01:34:33 AM »

A $1200 metal fire door.

Wall being sheeted from front side of office.

The wall is 2x8, and they are jamming as much foam and insulation as possible into it. This back room will have 2 waterjets and 4kw trumpf laser cutter, so it will be very loud in here.

Carbonized Bora Stranded Bamboo Flooring. Being installed saturday morning.

Wi-fi bridge (bridged link), ~300 mb/s @ 560ft between buildings across the street. Amazingly these are only ~$220 a set.

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #176 on:** April 06, 2013, 01:51:17 AM »

For those who love to ogle the numbers. Here are some updated totals from the past month:

Electrical: $4655 (includes materials)
Contractors: $6395 (includes some materials)
Permits $1077
Engineering: $1800
Shop Labor $2650
Rental Expense: $842
Data/Comm: $1460
Bldg Materials: $1104
Flooring $5240
Furniture $2200
Fire door $1200
Dump Runs $630
------------------
$29253 for March

Predicted expenses for April/May:

Electrical 480V 3PH Install: $18.5k
Door Cut outs $2k
Steel Framing for Exterior Doors $1k
Engineered Wall to abutt the rear wall (seismic requirement) $1200
2 Roll up Doors $10k
Office floor Install $2.5k
Addtl Office Furniture (4 wrk stations): $5k
Addtl Office Computers $5k
Contractors: $8k (w/ materials)
Our Labor $5k
------------------------
$56.2k for April

mandrel-bends · « **Reply #177 on:** April 06, 2013, 02:09:37 AM »

These expenses make me sick. I hope this thread is illustrating relatively typical costs to build out a building with very minor upgrades. I know businesses that have spent 3x this much money in 6 months building out their space ... in a *leased* space even at that. Absolutely insane. ***always buy your buildings if you can -- BEFORE you build them out***

PhilStubbs · « **Reply #178 on:** April 06, 2013, 08:05:29 AM »

That's crazy. I couldn't imagine spending that kind of money in 2 months. That's half of my house price.

rawr · « **Reply #179 on:** April 06, 2013, 11:40:25 AM »

That exceeds my house price by the amount of my student loans.

Its a lot of money, but its not in the long run. You will make it back having the increased space and capability.

News:

Author Topic: Our cutting shop - starting to take shape (Read 153300 times)