“Building in the open” – I was told this is startup speak for sharing ideas, plans, and progress publicly on social media. For me, I find incredible value in tossing ideas out into the universe and seeing what happens. Sometimes the ideas are terrible (people will let you know), sometimes they are great (people will let you know), and sometimes information will come out of left field and change your world forever. As I said in my last post, we’ve committed to opening a “job shop.” Not only is it the logical first step towards our bigger vision, but it will also teach us a TON and allow us to fuel growth through cash flow. We’ve scraped together some seed money and are looking for angel investors to cover our startup costs. No salaries, just the two of us making parts. With that said, here are the technologies we’re considering: - Machines (min envelope of 30"x15"x20"): SYIL Machine Tools Inc, Haas Automation, Inc., DN Solutions America - Cutting Tools: Kennametal & Iscar Metals (love their high feed indexable tools) - Fixturing: SCHUNK USA, Pierson Workholding, and other good value options - ERP: ProShop ERP - Quoting: Paperless Parts - Machine Monitoring: Chatter.dev - CAD/CAM: Autodesk Fusion360 - CMM Programming: CAMIO We’ll round out our internal processes and knowledge management with help from GitLab, Notion, Slack, and ChatGPT. Curious to hear what people think of these... #CNC #Machining #Manufacturing #Reindustrialize #Startup (09-03-24 edit) - While the bootstrapping a Job Shop idea was a noble pursuit, we've decided that our best chance to chase our "pie in the sky" dream is to leverage VC investment and partners. https://lnkd.in/e3bbwVJJ
StartProto ERP can handle quoting + full ERP with almost no implementation. Made just for machine shops. Just sign up for a free trial. Also consider InventorCam because it comes with 1 license for fusion 360 but the inventor cam can be used for ITAR. But you also get access to fusion 360. (Same CAM software). 5th axis work holding bases will also work with the schunk vises or you can use 5th axis vises. We went schunk paired with 5th axis and we love the schunks and use the Pierson pallets with schunk vises mounted to them.
Would love to see a use of Fusion 360 in there for CAD/CAM work. I believe they are working on Ai plugins for programming as well so it would definitely be interesting to look into!
Machinist turned entrepreneur. Founder of ZYCI, Fast Radius, MFG.com and 3DATUM.
7moIf your plans include doing ITAR work, you can’t use Fusion360. If you plan to stick with commercial work, it’s a great choice.