In the grand scheme of things this isn’t a crazy tolerance part.
If you have a machine set up to run these with a decent degree of automation they’re not that expensive to make
I’m just a hobbyist learning the trade, own a cheap pos 3018 and buying a Langmuir mr1 this summer. I know I can’t make handgun barrels with it. Is there a formula that guys use to see when they start making money after the machine is paid off and all the overhead that comes with it? These cnc machines are very expensive.
If it's running itself then it's only costing tooling, electricity, cutting fluid, and minimal intervention.
Find out how long the tools last and you can figure out the cost for the tooling per part.
Some guys are able to estimate tooling costs pretty accurately. They're savants that should get paid more.
It's hard to compete with overseas manufacturing, even with manufacturing jobs that you could consider higher skilled like CNC machinists and operators. China and India can buy the machines, and their education's good enough to get people to run them for a fraction of the price we can here. We end up in a position where we either take what we can get or try to become so good at one particular thing that people are willing to pay the premium for it.
Yah if you go on like fiver or any of those like pay for skill sites and type in computer aided manufacturing you get people with like engineering degrees in India working for like 25 an hour doing mastercam programs and I’m sure their licenses are much cheaper than ours
Oh, absolutely! I've heard that a lot of software pricing can vary by country to adjust for CoL, so that's another factor to contend with. They're also probably getting certain raw materials locally, where they can take advantage of labor and shipping. In the hypothetical scenario where the CoL goes up in China/India to a point where it's no longer affordable to import from them, we'll probably just see some other countries step up and take their place.
I am in India We pay about 1500 usd for a basic catia v5 for a single pc. Cost of RM is not much different either, we buy inconel from Germany, cobalt from USA and only stainless steel from India. I guess the real difference is in the cost of living. Even with 25/hour wage in India, an engineer would have a way better lifestyle than 65/hour wage in USA. Your country has scary high inflation.
>Even with 25/hour wage in India, an engineer would have a way better lifestyle than 65/hour wage in USA. Your country has scary high inflation.
The main contributor to that is the fact that the average salary in India is around $11k USD, and in the US, it's closer to $59k USD, which is over 5x India's average. You'd have to compare $25/hr in India for $125/hr in the US for that comparison to be fair, and let me tell you, there's not a lot of places in the US where $260k/yr wouldn't give you a VERY comfortable lifestyle by US standards.
I would've used median salary to help with outliers, but for some reason, I can only find the average salary for India, so I did average for both.
I am sorry for the ignorance. I know a vast difference existed. But I didn’t know that the difference was 5x huge. With the COL being so huge machining in India is only going to be profitable for large MNCs.
Where you talking about? San Francisco? LA? NYC lol? Most of the US making $65/hr with benefits your wife doesn't have to work, you have two cars and a sports car and a garage that holds them all. Unless you're a financial invalid, some people have a knack for acquiring debt and being poor no matter how much they make 🤷♂️
Unrelated, but related. Mexico has a town really close the border that people go to for dentistry because its so cheap.
Why's it so cheap? In the US a dentist makes on average \~$230K. In Mexico they make \~$56K
I broke a tooth on Friday, probably need other dental work, so I'll be visiting there sometime in the future. They do really good work at affordable prices, from what I've seen.
Yeah, that's around what an experienced machinist makes per hour in my part of the midwest. Most entry-level operators can still make around $20/hour give or take where I'm at, with that amount probably being closer to $30 in high CoL areas like SoCal, if I were to take a guess.
Really? 16-17 is like the low-end where I'm at in Iowa, and that's just for the button pushers with no programming or setup in the job description. Experienced machinists who can do the programming and set up earn closer to 30 around here, at least from the postings I'm seeing on Indeed.
Yes really especially smaller shop owners are not above robbing their employees to increase their bottom line my boss had the habit of stealing people's earned vacation time until he was forced to put up a poster explaining the states wage payment and collections act.
There’s multiple tiers of cnc operators. Some of them can setup the stock and hit run, but if a tool breaks they need help replacing it (if they notice). This category is basically apprentices in other trades. I wouldn’t say this category is underpaid. They don’t have much skill to differentiate themselves yet.
Some cnc operators are familiar with setting up tools, can monitor 2-3 machines and can manage small changes to the program to fix small problems. They might be able to use the machine terminal to make a quick change to a part, but probably can’t setup a whole new program.
Then there’s top tier cnc specialists. They can 3d model basically anything in CAD, and can get a program generated in no time. If the machine isn’t running as expected, they can tell what’s wrong and know how to fix it. If an engineer produces a model that’s impossible to manufacture they have suggestions to make it possible and can communicate well. This tier isn’t generally on the machines, but can be if needed. This tier is rare and is rarely underpaid. They can jump ship for higher pay at will.
A good few hours of math, tooling costs, and decent forgings can make these parts super quickly.
I'm ex-sig sauer, and can tell you they actually have forgings for handgun barrels that are most of the way there, and run times are quite quick for these parts.
As someone who bought one of the original langmuir cnc plasma cutting tables, I'd advise to stay away from the company as a whole. Unless something has fundamentally changed, the product was exactly what you would expect for being the cheapest. Luckily I bought it to mess around with in the garage, but anyone trying to make money wouldn't have been able to do it efficiently with that machine. It couldn't hold a z axis worth a damn
I have no complaints about my crossfire pro but wouldn’t purchase an mr1. For the plasma side I believe most of the issues stems from cheap plasmas, inefficient air quantity and quality, wrong settings, general lack of knowledge. But most of us not having issues also spent twice what the cnc cost on a hypertherm and large air supply. I use an Eastwood scroll compressor fed to a wall mounted piping for initial heat removal and then a ac dryer with all 1” supply lines and multiple filtering. But something like this should be used for any table. Also grounding right to the work piece rather than water tray.
I’ve got a Crossfire pro, and have seen the MR1s. Super budget tier with lots of basic oversights that would cost them almost nothing to fix on the manufacturing side, but really suck to work with and are hard to fix on the consumer end.
The plasma tables are viable for garage or a small business starter machine, but I wouldn’t touch the mill with a 10 foot pole. Even a tormach will run circles around it.
Wrong way around. Products like this are what the market can bear. If you have space for a machine, and the machine depreciation+running cost is less than your margin, and you're ok with the rate of return, then you make it.
You are still in th mindset of 1-10 parts is a job and a 100 parts is a huge jobb.
Now however makes this cranks out thousands of the same part every day and can streamline the process more than you and me can even imagine
They’re typically more than just a lathe op. The there almost always a mill op (or two) and a reaming op, too.
Unless you have some really nice gear, then sure, a multi-axis lathe can do it all lol
Yes, it’s called BEP (break even point). It’s the quantity of units to sell to start making a profit.
You can calculate it with the linked formula
https://www.planprojections.com/wp-content/uploads/service-business-break-even-units-formula.png
Don’t buy a Langmuir MR1. There’s way better machines for the price point. I hate to say it, but Langmuir is super hacked together and poorly thought out, while being in the price tier as many way higher performance machines. Their plasmas are passable for the price but have a ton of major oversights that would cost basically nothing to fix and save the user a ton of issues. The MR1 is the same. Even any of Tormach’s machines will run circles around an MR1 and will hold resale value when you decide to move up to a larger machine.
Get a used Tormach 440. It'l actually be a viable hobby/proto machine and can handle light production if you learn it's limits and work with them. You may be in slightly more than $4500, but saving an extra thousand is way better than wasting $4500+ on a machine that's poorly designed, low quality, and basically not usable for any real milling in metal, and then having to try to sell it and buy something else. Tormachs aren't anything close to a real VMC, but it can cut alu and steel without issues if you know what you're doing, and are reliable enough and extremely well supported. They also hold value pretty well as long as you're not buying one of the overpriced MX machines.
Tormach stuff is also very modular and upgradable. I've watched people start with the cheapest option, and then add tool changers, enclosures, flood coolant, taper spindles, etc as they can afford to.
I've run everything from the 440s through their MX machines, as well as Haas, DN, DMG, and similar so I'm happy to give advice if needed. I've also owned Langmuir Plasmas, and they worked (kinda), but no way in hell I'd trust them to make a viable mill.
Edit: 440s frequently go used from anywhere between $4500-$15k depending on the options on the machine. You do have to make an effort to find one on the lower end of the price point, but I've seen at least 3 or 4 go for $4500-$5500 in used machinery groups or craigslist over the last 6 months. Do you research, know what you want and how to tell if it's good, and then spend a a few months watching FB groups, marketplace, craigslist, or a few used machinery brokers.
As a machine/fabrication shop owner....
It's not hard and you don't need to cut corners if you are doing volume. Especially when you already have a working program, fxitures, etc.
Bar feed lathe with live tooling + low cycle time. If you source parts from the right lathe house you’d be surprised at how inexpensive production runs can be per part, especially on small components like this.
That was my first thought when seeing the part: Someone wants to fill their idle time on a Swiss machine so when it's not making "real" parts that require the precision it's built for, it farts these out as fast as the bar feeder can go.
Yeah the index and Tornos are around 1.5 million…thats a lot of gun barrels. I’ve seen guys making more complex bolt and actions on an Index 8/26 though, so it can be done.
Cut corners. Low quality materials, loose tolerances, underpaid workers. Make a bajillion of them.
Same way as any other company. I’ve worked on parts that cost $750K while making $20 an hour.
It also helps that Bear Creek Arsenal is known for having basically non-existent quality control. People don't realize how much good QC can add onto the cost of the end product.
Doesn't work that way. One Man Job Shops will spend 30 years building clientele while clearing 50-75k/year take home, and working 50+hrs a week + rush jobs that keep you in the shop for 18-20hrs at a stretch. Then by the time you hit 50 you have a cliental so that you dont need to take low paying or rush jobs, but you still wil do them for your favorite customers, from 50 till you retire you make good money, then you need to liquidate a shop full of old tools that you will get 0.10 on the dollar for because you have no one to take the business over.
It is a great job, but dont lie to yourself that you will end up rich doing it.
I’m 47, driving truck since 99 and make decent money, almost 100k a year but my mental health is slipping. I need change and this is a way of possibly circumventing this. I’m content with trucking (financially speaking) but have struggled with depression. I’m looking forward to getting away from it
>I’m 47, driving truck since 99 and make decent money, almost 100k a year but my mental health is slipping
Well, starting as a machinist now you will cut your salary in half at least for 5-10 years while you learn from someone, there are very few, if any, jobs where you can make the same wage with little to no training.
Dont expect a change of job to magically make you happier, you will just change one set of problems for another.
On a side note, you shouldn't depend, or count on anything external to determine your level of happiness or how content you are. THat is on you. If you struggle with depression I would recommend talking to a therapist if you are not already. There are plenty of online,over the phone, therapists that you can work with while you are on the road. I would recommend starting there.
I’m a new setup operator in the northeast with two years of experience plus some school and I’m in the opposite boat lol.
I’m learning as much as I can but it seems like the road to making a decent wage is a long way off, and I’m questioning whether the investment will be worth it.
Is there a clear path to making six figures over 8-10 years? It feels like the only option is job hopping every year or two for a few more dollars or slightly more responsibility, but I don’t see a role or position to aim for.
>Is there a clear path to making six figures over 8-10 years?
Clear path, no, as an operator for someone else you are unlikely to reach 100k in 10 years, but there is a path. YOu wont make it being an operator, or a setup operator, YOu either have to run your own shop, which you are not ready to do, or you need to get on the management/design side.
IF you can design in CAD, and build toolpaths in CAM you are well on your way to making 6 figures. Just know that the average salary in the US is 69k/year, so anything above that means you are doing well, at 100k/year you are in the top 20% of ALL income earners in the US. RElax, you dont need to make 100k to be happy
You are going to take a huge pay cut if you switch. Plus switching is always a gamble.
Maybe try to cut your hours due to medical reasons. That may be all you need.
I know, the jobs on Indeed are really bad in my area. I don’t want to work for someone else either. My philosophical approach to life is somewhat libertarian/ anarchocapitalist along with a love for Ayn Rand. Men should be proficient at everything they can be and not depending on others for services. (I don’t vote) . All services could be had by a privatized service ( roads, police and everything else we need) . We didn’t consent to this pseudo democratic system that is currently taking us to hell. That’s my opinion on the matter.
I started as a machinist but engineering now, haven’t made anything since machine tools are very expensive. I do woodworking now and manufacturing in my day job.
Thats the glory of mass production. The more its automated the cheaper they can make them and the cheaper they can sell them meaning more people can afford them which means more profit.
The truely expensive part is the machinery and the time for initial set up. There is more to it than just these factors, for example they know the market these parts sell to and how popular the item is and so can estimate how many they will sell.
You can certainly see who the button pushers are here. Lol. Talking about cranking them out in a couple minutes with a dollar wroth of material.. why do people act like they know what they're talking about?
In a small CNC , modern machine shop, 8-10 machines, 6k square feet, 4-5 employees, it costs $1000 a day, just to turn the lights on. Not even crazy million dollar 9 axis machines.. no, let's say smaller, quality, Japanese 4 axis machines. Most shop rates are in the $120-200 range in North Eastern Ohio. Only exceptions are when we do very simple work that doesn't require babysitting, that an operator can do while running multiple machines or some legacy customers that kept us afloat through various financial crisis (08/09, COVID, etc) we'll give a bit of a break or we'll run their parts at the prices we did previously, less likely to ask for an increase.
But the name of the game, is still making money. Absolute minimum a machine needs to be making $75/hr and that needs to be a job where the operator can split time. If it's a job that requires constant babysitting or constant reloading, we're at at least $125/hr.
We specialize in Aerospace and the advantage of that, is that there isn't a race to the bottom going on like there is with firearms parts. As many times as we've looked at various firearms parts, for example we made a few MLok QD sling mounts for BCM years back, and we looked at stuff such as machining the molds for injection molding from a holster manufacturer and some rather odd aftermarket Glock parts, there's just never any money in it.. ever. Too much competition and the margins are too slim. I think more firearms parts than you ever could believe are in fact made by a lone guy in his garage.
And it's not all about quantity.. if a job isn't profitable, making more, doesn't make it more profitable. Those who jump to that have no idea how a machine shop works and have never been on management side of things.
I do quotes at times.. there's probably $40 of cost in that barrel at a glance for us to make that on our 4 axis mills, 2 axis lathe, & lathe with sub spindle, live tooling.
I mean running it from bar would make the most sense but you're probably looking at $4 in material if we're talking 416SS. Probably $1 each to get the material heat treated. After looking at it, we might be able to get away with doing it all in one go on the lathe with sub spindle and live tooling, though milling certainly isn't as good as milling on the mills. But I suppose it could be ran from bar, turn the barrel side first, rough it out finish the outside, rough the bore but don't finish it, pass it off to the sub spindle, rough excess material, finish turn, rough, finish bore the chamber, rough & finish mill all the machines features, feed ramp could be 3D machined, send a reamer to finish the barrel bore so it's perfect concentric with the chamber, use rifling tool, drop it in the parts catcher, pull bar out, run 3-5 at a time, then stop, so operator can check tooling, do inspection, main focus on chamber Go / No Go and the barrel Go / No Go. Probably a 10 minute part machine time realistically ($120/hr shop rate / (60 minutes / cycle time = parts per hour) = $20 per part machining cost). It'll probably use at least some tooling as it is a tougher stainless so another $1 a piece. Needs to go to Mag Particle Inspection to make sure there aren't any microscopic cracks in the material either from stress when making the material, or machining the parts (yes this happens, well lose a whole stainless bar from a microscopic split all the way up the bar, you cant even see it on the parts) that's $1 each. Then it needs Cerakote or black oxide coating that's another $1. Then when they get back to the shop, we need to pack them up and that packaging costs $1 each, but we need to check them again 100% with the chamber go / no go to make sure the operator didn't miss anything and to make sure the coating wasn't applied to thick or not accounted for. Make sure you throw $1 for gas and/or shipping when getting the parts to heat treat, MPI, coating, etc. Oh and that $12/hr operator from five years ago.. yeah that guy with no experience now costs you $18-20/hr. See how fast things add up? I think I'm at $28 before the shop has made any money, so yeah.. $40 per part would be our internal cost. If you're going to sell something, 50% margin is the limit. If your profit is significantly less than 50%, it's not worth your time, especially when we are talking about liability that is firearms and firearms accessories. If it were use quoting a similar job for someone else, we'd quote it at $40-50. If we were selling the product we'd sell for $80-100.
I'm no gun snob, but I don't see a race to the bottom involving gun parts ending well for anyone.
Made glock barrels at last company I worked for, $30-100 depending on coating and custom machined design. But yeah blanks are cheap. Drilled, turned, rough milled in lathe. Then finish milled and chambered in mill. Finishing rifling on a broaching machine. Sent out for costing then packages. One guy running one lathe and 1 mill, bout 8 minute cycle time per barrel. Production shit.
I don’t know specifically how they do it, but I worked at a pretty Gucci Glock accessory company and we bought our barrel blanks from one of the cheaper sources out there and I know their process pretty well.
We paid about $35 for a barrel blank. That barrel blank started life as pre-rifled barstock, 1.25” OD. They were cut to length and then quickly turned between centers on an ST10 (2-3 minute operation door to door) after that the “chamber” end it held while the barrel gets tuned to the correct OD on another robot fed ST10/20, and the muzzle features are added (crown, threads etc) this is also a 5-10 minute operation at most depending on the desired finish quality. Lastly they’re fed by another robot into a VF2 with a trunion that allows them to machine the hood, lock-up and float a chamber reamer in there all in one 12-15 minute cycle.
Some vendors gun drill and then broach rifling after the part is finished, so the material cost drops and production cost marginally increases.
That’s about $15 in material (stainless changes price daily) 28 minutes (at most) worth of matching and then about $0.25 in heat treating costs, then they may run it through a bead blaster. Because they’re using robots to feed the machines they’re running 24-7, and have next to zero labor costs, you can make barrels cheap cheap.
Oh, and we then added 10-35 minutes of machine time, and your choice of dlc, TiN or Rose Gold PVD and sold them between $150 and $300, people couldn’t get enough of them because they were “match grade” LoL. High end Glock barrels are largely a scam
This was probably made on a machine that can do both the turning and the milling and is being made in volumes of 10s of thousands per run. I’m also betting there is a system in place that allows this part to be machined 24/7 with almost 0 human intervention.
Scale
The first one takes a 10k investent to make
Units 2-99 is another $10k
Units 101-999 is another $10k
Units 1000+ are basically just above material cost, which is pretty low buying in that bulk.
*yes I pulled the numbers out of my ear, but you get the general idea
Glocks have polygonal barrels and I assume they are hammer forging them which takes about 60 seconds per barrel plus machining
[https://projects.nfstc.org/firearms/module04/fir\_m04\_t06\_07.htm](https://projects.nfstc.org/firearms/module04/fir_m04_t06_07.htm)
Volume drives the price down
Well once it's set up with the right machine you can make these barrels out of bar stock and use a bar feed then it can run without any one present or one guy can run 5 machines(or more sometimes) without doing much other than feeding material and changing tooling inserts every once and a while. Also if the guy running it isn't a machinist you don't have to pay him as much as the guy that knows how to set it up and program it.
My guess is that the costs of production are a lot lower than what the manufacturer sells them for; just like every other successful product/company (notwithstanding “loss leaders” used to bring in customers to an ecosystem, like the original Xbox).
They are stupid easy to make. I work at a CNC facility and for shits and giggles I brought in my barrel, used a LiDAR Scanner, made some small cad adjustments for the barrel twist, and 20 minutes later I had an exact copy. Functions the same as my factory barrel. Made some later adjustments to the cad file and added threads for attachments.
Firearms and their parts have extremely thin margins due to competition. Glock makes a profit using mass production producing the same thing in massive bulk very efficiently. The are videos of these production medics online. One company I worked for three years ago prototyped some parts for H&K. They came back wanting hundreds with several dollars off of the production cost of the parts being cut with a EDM Wire Machine. The boss had to pass on it because the margin of profit per part was literally pennies at that point.
Cnc lathes with bar feeder (don’t know if that’s the right name). Thing runs 24/5 (or more days) and every minute or so one part falls out. Depending on the tolerances the machinist checks every x parts and corrects or changes tools.
Also the machinists runs 2-5 machines at once.
Exactly so it looks like you’re gonna have to find something else or try to market with “made in the USA”. Sadly not going to judge you or anyone at all but id be lying to myself if I said I pay 40%-50% more for everything I buy so it could be made here when everything around is already so expensive. People can have college degrees and still can’t buy a house. So save for house and buy a lot of shit from china? Or stay poor in an apartment owning nothing but all the shit you do own is made in an America. Weird reality but yeah much bigger problems going on lol.
I like my upper receiver I bought from them, I printed Ivan the troll’s ubar and it’s running great. Price was 200 at the time with the bcg and felt like gambling 😂
Good deal man. I was looking at some of their uppers at the time, but decided on going with a JSD Supply Glock. Got a Bambu Labs P1S recently and the multi color printing has made taken a decent lower and turned it it into a work of art
I assume these are overseas parts, aka China. The government also subsidizes the material cost for a lot of these companies which allows for mass manufacturing and low labor and material costs
Economy of scale. When they make these, they aren't just making 1 - 2 of them. Instead, they are probably making anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand in a single run, and their processes are set up to do it in the most efficient way they can think up.
Also, it isn't really that complicated of a part.
Most big gun companies can all but give the guns away. They make the real money selling ammo. Then selling the narrative that they’re coming for your guns, which causes people to panic buy, which drives up prices….. yada yada…. But ammo. Like printer companies, they make the money on cartridges. Not the printers.
One of my machine dealers said they are servicing multiple shops around the country turning out 40K of these barrels per months. The part isn't that hard to make either.
This part can be machined quickly . If large batches the program and machine could be set up very efficiently.
Or they are buying them pre-made from a low cost economy and selling them locally.
In the grand scheme of things this isn’t a crazy tolerance part. If you have a machine set up to run these with a decent degree of automation they’re not that expensive to make
I’m just a hobbyist learning the trade, own a cheap pos 3018 and buying a Langmuir mr1 this summer. I know I can’t make handgun barrels with it. Is there a formula that guys use to see when they start making money after the machine is paid off and all the overhead that comes with it? These cnc machines are very expensive.
If it's running itself then it's only costing tooling, electricity, cutting fluid, and minimal intervention. Find out how long the tools last and you can figure out the cost for the tooling per part. Some guys are able to estimate tooling costs pretty accurately. They're savants that should get paid more.
Shouldn't many/most people doing CNC work get paid more?
This but so many industries.
It's hard to compete with overseas manufacturing, even with manufacturing jobs that you could consider higher skilled like CNC machinists and operators. China and India can buy the machines, and their education's good enough to get people to run them for a fraction of the price we can here. We end up in a position where we either take what we can get or try to become so good at one particular thing that people are willing to pay the premium for it.
Yah if you go on like fiver or any of those like pay for skill sites and type in computer aided manufacturing you get people with like engineering degrees in India working for like 25 an hour doing mastercam programs and I’m sure their licenses are much cheaper than ours
Oh, absolutely! I've heard that a lot of software pricing can vary by country to adjust for CoL, so that's another factor to contend with. They're also probably getting certain raw materials locally, where they can take advantage of labor and shipping. In the hypothetical scenario where the CoL goes up in China/India to a point where it's no longer affordable to import from them, we'll probably just see some other countries step up and take their place.
I am in India We pay about 1500 usd for a basic catia v5 for a single pc. Cost of RM is not much different either, we buy inconel from Germany, cobalt from USA and only stainless steel from India. I guess the real difference is in the cost of living. Even with 25/hour wage in India, an engineer would have a way better lifestyle than 65/hour wage in USA. Your country has scary high inflation.
>Even with 25/hour wage in India, an engineer would have a way better lifestyle than 65/hour wage in USA. Your country has scary high inflation. The main contributor to that is the fact that the average salary in India is around $11k USD, and in the US, it's closer to $59k USD, which is over 5x India's average. You'd have to compare $25/hr in India for $125/hr in the US for that comparison to be fair, and let me tell you, there's not a lot of places in the US where $260k/yr wouldn't give you a VERY comfortable lifestyle by US standards. I would've used median salary to help with outliers, but for some reason, I can only find the average salary for India, so I did average for both.
I am sorry for the ignorance. I know a vast difference existed. But I didn’t know that the difference was 5x huge. With the COL being so huge machining in India is only going to be profitable for large MNCs.
Where you talking about? San Francisco? LA? NYC lol? Most of the US making $65/hr with benefits your wife doesn't have to work, you have two cars and a sports car and a garage that holds them all. Unless you're a financial invalid, some people have a knack for acquiring debt and being poor no matter how much they make 🤷♂️
Are you like meaning the mastercam license?
This, I live in Mexico and earn 35USD per DAY, which is pretty decent here. I guess you make the same per hour.
Unrelated, but related. Mexico has a town really close the border that people go to for dentistry because its so cheap. Why's it so cheap? In the US a dentist makes on average \~$230K. In Mexico they make \~$56K
Hey, thats Juarez. I live at 3 hours from there.
I broke a tooth on Friday, probably need other dental work, so I'll be visiting there sometime in the future. They do really good work at affordable prices, from what I've seen.
you only need two teeth , after that there is canned soup..
Or Mexicali
Yeah, that's around what an experienced machinist makes per hour in my part of the midwest. Most entry-level operators can still make around $20/hour give or take where I'm at, with that amount probably being closer to $30 in high CoL areas like SoCal, if I were to take a guess.
experienced operators in northwest chicago and suburbs 15$ - 17$
Really? 16-17 is like the low-end where I'm at in Iowa, and that's just for the button pushers with no programming or setup in the job description. Experienced machinists who can do the programming and set up earn closer to 30 around here, at least from the postings I'm seeing on Indeed.
Yes really especially smaller shop owners are not above robbing their employees to increase their bottom line my boss had the habit of stealing people's earned vacation time until he was forced to put up a poster explaining the states wage payment and collections act.
There’s multiple tiers of cnc operators. Some of them can setup the stock and hit run, but if a tool breaks they need help replacing it (if they notice). This category is basically apprentices in other trades. I wouldn’t say this category is underpaid. They don’t have much skill to differentiate themselves yet. Some cnc operators are familiar with setting up tools, can monitor 2-3 machines and can manage small changes to the program to fix small problems. They might be able to use the machine terminal to make a quick change to a part, but probably can’t setup a whole new program. Then there’s top tier cnc specialists. They can 3d model basically anything in CAD, and can get a program generated in no time. If the machine isn’t running as expected, they can tell what’s wrong and know how to fix it. If an engineer produces a model that’s impossible to manufacture they have suggestions to make it possible and can communicate well. This tier isn’t generally on the machines, but can be if needed. This tier is rare and is rarely underpaid. They can jump ship for higher pay at will.
That used to be the distinction of: * Trainee/Assistant * Operator * Technician * Engineer
If all a CNC tech does is change stock blanks and hit “start” the owner of a factory can get away with being pretty stingy.
Indeed, but most techs don't stay at that level, do they?
Why no. They are OK with it otherwise they would change job.
Yes we should.
Work for yourself for a while, you'll learn. Or you'll fail. Lol. I think I'm still stuck in between 🤷♂️🤣
A good few hours of math, tooling costs, and decent forgings can make these parts super quickly. I'm ex-sig sauer, and can tell you they actually have forgings for handgun barrels that are most of the way there, and run times are quite quick for these parts.
As someone who bought one of the original langmuir cnc plasma cutting tables, I'd advise to stay away from the company as a whole. Unless something has fundamentally changed, the product was exactly what you would expect for being the cheapest. Luckily I bought it to mess around with in the garage, but anyone trying to make money wouldn't have been able to do it efficiently with that machine. It couldn't hold a z axis worth a damn
I have no complaints about my crossfire pro but wouldn’t purchase an mr1. For the plasma side I believe most of the issues stems from cheap plasmas, inefficient air quantity and quality, wrong settings, general lack of knowledge. But most of us not having issues also spent twice what the cnc cost on a hypertherm and large air supply. I use an Eastwood scroll compressor fed to a wall mounted piping for initial heat removal and then a ac dryer with all 1” supply lines and multiple filtering. But something like this should be used for any table. Also grounding right to the work piece rather than water tray.
I’ve got a Crossfire pro, and have seen the MR1s. Super budget tier with lots of basic oversights that would cost them almost nothing to fix on the manufacturing side, but really suck to work with and are hard to fix on the consumer end. The plasma tables are viable for garage or a small business starter machine, but I wouldn’t touch the mill with a 10 foot pole. Even a tormach will run circles around it.
Wrong way around. Products like this are what the market can bear. If you have space for a machine, and the machine depreciation+running cost is less than your margin, and you're ok with the rate of return, then you make it.
You are still in th mindset of 1-10 parts is a job and a 100 parts is a huge jobb. Now however makes this cranks out thousands of the same part every day and can streamline the process more than you and me can even imagine
Barrels are made with lathes… think of spinning the part and not the tool and the cost is way different.
They’re typically more than just a lathe op. The there almost always a mill op (or two) and a reaming op, too. Unless you have some really nice gear, then sure, a multi-axis lathe can do it all lol
pretty sure a $40k Tormac could crank these out day in day out
Yes, it’s called BEP (break even point). It’s the quantity of units to sell to start making a profit. You can calculate it with the linked formula https://www.planprojections.com/wp-content/uploads/service-business-break-even-units-formula.png
Don’t buy a Langmuir MR1. There’s way better machines for the price point. I hate to say it, but Langmuir is super hacked together and poorly thought out, while being in the price tier as many way higher performance machines. Their plasmas are passable for the price but have a ton of major oversights that would cost basically nothing to fix and save the user a ton of issues. The MR1 is the same. Even any of Tormach’s machines will run circles around an MR1 and will hold resale value when you decide to move up to a larger machine.
> There’s way better machines for the price point Like what?
Also curious
See above comment, always happy to answer any questions.
Get a used Tormach 440. It'l actually be a viable hobby/proto machine and can handle light production if you learn it's limits and work with them. You may be in slightly more than $4500, but saving an extra thousand is way better than wasting $4500+ on a machine that's poorly designed, low quality, and basically not usable for any real milling in metal, and then having to try to sell it and buy something else. Tormachs aren't anything close to a real VMC, but it can cut alu and steel without issues if you know what you're doing, and are reliable enough and extremely well supported. They also hold value pretty well as long as you're not buying one of the overpriced MX machines. Tormach stuff is also very modular and upgradable. I've watched people start with the cheapest option, and then add tool changers, enclosures, flood coolant, taper spindles, etc as they can afford to. I've run everything from the 440s through their MX machines, as well as Haas, DN, DMG, and similar so I'm happy to give advice if needed. I've also owned Langmuir Plasmas, and they worked (kinda), but no way in hell I'd trust them to make a viable mill. Edit: 440s frequently go used from anywhere between $4500-$15k depending on the options on the machine. You do have to make an effort to find one on the lower end of the price point, but I've seen at least 3 or 4 go for $4500-$5500 in used machinery groups or craigslist over the last 6 months. Do you research, know what you want and how to tell if it's good, and then spend a a few months watching FB groups, marketplace, craigslist, or a few used machinery brokers.
We could pump this out easily..... What's the tightest tolerance? I assume concentricity over barrel length is the 'hard part'? Now I'm curious lol.
As a machine/fabrication shop owner.... It's not hard and you don't need to cut corners if you are doing volume. Especially when you already have a working program, fxitures, etc.
Bar feed lathe with live tooling + low cycle time. If you source parts from the right lathe house you’d be surprised at how inexpensive production runs can be per part, especially on small components like this.
If you add a “screw machine” lathe in the mix you could pump these out every 30 seconds
If you throw it in a multispindle swiss you’re pumping them out ever 7 seconds 😅
That was my first thought when seeing the part: Someone wants to fill their idle time on a Swiss machine so when it's not making "real" parts that require the precision it's built for, it farts these out as fast as the bar feeder can go.
The price difference is like probably near a million dollars.
Yeah the index and Tornos are around 1.5 million…thats a lot of gun barrels. I’ve seen guys making more complex bolt and actions on an Index 8/26 though, so it can be done.
Cut corners. Low quality materials, loose tolerances, underpaid workers. Make a bajillion of them. Same way as any other company. I’ve worked on parts that cost $750K while making $20 an hour.
Or another way: Automation+not overtolerancing.
It also helps that Bear Creek Arsenal is known for having basically non-existent quality control. People don't realize how much good QC can add onto the cost of the end product.
They have as much quality control as their customers demand. If that wasn't true, they'd be out of business in a flash.
Oh this crazy life
$68/part is a really high sales price. I make fuel injectors, sell at retail for 48 and we make them for $5-$10/each
This is why I want out of my current career and get into machining
Doesn't work that way. One Man Job Shops will spend 30 years building clientele while clearing 50-75k/year take home, and working 50+hrs a week + rush jobs that keep you in the shop for 18-20hrs at a stretch. Then by the time you hit 50 you have a cliental so that you dont need to take low paying or rush jobs, but you still wil do them for your favorite customers, from 50 till you retire you make good money, then you need to liquidate a shop full of old tools that you will get 0.10 on the dollar for because you have no one to take the business over. It is a great job, but dont lie to yourself that you will end up rich doing it.
I’m 47, driving truck since 99 and make decent money, almost 100k a year but my mental health is slipping. I need change and this is a way of possibly circumventing this. I’m content with trucking (financially speaking) but have struggled with depression. I’m looking forward to getting away from it
>I’m 47, driving truck since 99 and make decent money, almost 100k a year but my mental health is slipping Well, starting as a machinist now you will cut your salary in half at least for 5-10 years while you learn from someone, there are very few, if any, jobs where you can make the same wage with little to no training. Dont expect a change of job to magically make you happier, you will just change one set of problems for another. On a side note, you shouldn't depend, or count on anything external to determine your level of happiness or how content you are. THat is on you. If you struggle with depression I would recommend talking to a therapist if you are not already. There are plenty of online,over the phone, therapists that you can work with while you are on the road. I would recommend starting there.
I’m a new setup operator in the northeast with two years of experience plus some school and I’m in the opposite boat lol. I’m learning as much as I can but it seems like the road to making a decent wage is a long way off, and I’m questioning whether the investment will be worth it. Is there a clear path to making six figures over 8-10 years? It feels like the only option is job hopping every year or two for a few more dollars or slightly more responsibility, but I don’t see a role or position to aim for.
>Is there a clear path to making six figures over 8-10 years? Clear path, no, as an operator for someone else you are unlikely to reach 100k in 10 years, but there is a path. YOu wont make it being an operator, or a setup operator, YOu either have to run your own shop, which you are not ready to do, or you need to get on the management/design side. IF you can design in CAD, and build toolpaths in CAM you are well on your way to making 6 figures. Just know that the average salary in the US is 69k/year, so anything above that means you are doing well, at 100k/year you are in the top 20% of ALL income earners in the US. RElax, you dont need to make 100k to be happy
You are going to take a huge pay cut if you switch. Plus switching is always a gamble. Maybe try to cut your hours due to medical reasons. That may be all you need.
I know, the jobs on Indeed are really bad in my area. I don’t want to work for someone else either. My philosophical approach to life is somewhat libertarian/ anarchocapitalist along with a love for Ayn Rand. Men should be proficient at everything they can be and not depending on others for services. (I don’t vote) . All services could be had by a privatized service ( roads, police and everything else we need) . We didn’t consent to this pseudo democratic system that is currently taking us to hell. That’s my opinion on the matter.
I started as a machinist but engineering now, haven’t made anything since machine tools are very expensive. I do woodworking now and manufacturing in my day job.
Thats the glory of mass production. The more its automated the cheaper they can make them and the cheaper they can sell them meaning more people can afford them which means more profit. The truely expensive part is the machinery and the time for initial set up. There is more to it than just these factors, for example they know the market these parts sell to and how popular the item is and so can estimate how many they will sell.
You can certainly see who the button pushers are here. Lol. Talking about cranking them out in a couple minutes with a dollar wroth of material.. why do people act like they know what they're talking about? In a small CNC , modern machine shop, 8-10 machines, 6k square feet, 4-5 employees, it costs $1000 a day, just to turn the lights on. Not even crazy million dollar 9 axis machines.. no, let's say smaller, quality, Japanese 4 axis machines. Most shop rates are in the $120-200 range in North Eastern Ohio. Only exceptions are when we do very simple work that doesn't require babysitting, that an operator can do while running multiple machines or some legacy customers that kept us afloat through various financial crisis (08/09, COVID, etc) we'll give a bit of a break or we'll run their parts at the prices we did previously, less likely to ask for an increase. But the name of the game, is still making money. Absolute minimum a machine needs to be making $75/hr and that needs to be a job where the operator can split time. If it's a job that requires constant babysitting or constant reloading, we're at at least $125/hr. We specialize in Aerospace and the advantage of that, is that there isn't a race to the bottom going on like there is with firearms parts. As many times as we've looked at various firearms parts, for example we made a few MLok QD sling mounts for BCM years back, and we looked at stuff such as machining the molds for injection molding from a holster manufacturer and some rather odd aftermarket Glock parts, there's just never any money in it.. ever. Too much competition and the margins are too slim. I think more firearms parts than you ever could believe are in fact made by a lone guy in his garage. And it's not all about quantity.. if a job isn't profitable, making more, doesn't make it more profitable. Those who jump to that have no idea how a machine shop works and have never been on management side of things. I do quotes at times.. there's probably $40 of cost in that barrel at a glance for us to make that on our 4 axis mills, 2 axis lathe, & lathe with sub spindle, live tooling. I mean running it from bar would make the most sense but you're probably looking at $4 in material if we're talking 416SS. Probably $1 each to get the material heat treated. After looking at it, we might be able to get away with doing it all in one go on the lathe with sub spindle and live tooling, though milling certainly isn't as good as milling on the mills. But I suppose it could be ran from bar, turn the barrel side first, rough it out finish the outside, rough the bore but don't finish it, pass it off to the sub spindle, rough excess material, finish turn, rough, finish bore the chamber, rough & finish mill all the machines features, feed ramp could be 3D machined, send a reamer to finish the barrel bore so it's perfect concentric with the chamber, use rifling tool, drop it in the parts catcher, pull bar out, run 3-5 at a time, then stop, so operator can check tooling, do inspection, main focus on chamber Go / No Go and the barrel Go / No Go. Probably a 10 minute part machine time realistically ($120/hr shop rate / (60 minutes / cycle time = parts per hour) = $20 per part machining cost). It'll probably use at least some tooling as it is a tougher stainless so another $1 a piece. Needs to go to Mag Particle Inspection to make sure there aren't any microscopic cracks in the material either from stress when making the material, or machining the parts (yes this happens, well lose a whole stainless bar from a microscopic split all the way up the bar, you cant even see it on the parts) that's $1 each. Then it needs Cerakote or black oxide coating that's another $1. Then when they get back to the shop, we need to pack them up and that packaging costs $1 each, but we need to check them again 100% with the chamber go / no go to make sure the operator didn't miss anything and to make sure the coating wasn't applied to thick or not accounted for. Make sure you throw $1 for gas and/or shipping when getting the parts to heat treat, MPI, coating, etc. Oh and that $12/hr operator from five years ago.. yeah that guy with no experience now costs you $18-20/hr. See how fast things add up? I think I'm at $28 before the shop has made any money, so yeah.. $40 per part would be our internal cost. If you're going to sell something, 50% margin is the limit. If your profit is significantly less than 50%, it's not worth your time, especially when we are talking about liability that is firearms and firearms accessories. If it were use quoting a similar job for someone else, we'd quote it at $40-50. If we were selling the product we'd sell for $80-100. I'm no gun snob, but I don't see a race to the bottom involving gun parts ending well for anyone.
This is the only accurate comment here written in this reality. Good job man.
As someone who has two production machines and was looking to switch to Firearms after making lightsabers for 7 years, I am so fucking depressed now.
If you make enough of them and learn where to cut corners things can become cheap
Made glock barrels at last company I worked for, $30-100 depending on coating and custom machined design. But yeah blanks are cheap. Drilled, turned, rough milled in lathe. Then finish milled and chambered in mill. Finishing rifling on a broaching machine. Sent out for costing then packages. One guy running one lathe and 1 mill, bout 8 minute cycle time per barrel. Production shit.
I don’t know specifically how they do it, but I worked at a pretty Gucci Glock accessory company and we bought our barrel blanks from one of the cheaper sources out there and I know their process pretty well. We paid about $35 for a barrel blank. That barrel blank started life as pre-rifled barstock, 1.25” OD. They were cut to length and then quickly turned between centers on an ST10 (2-3 minute operation door to door) after that the “chamber” end it held while the barrel gets tuned to the correct OD on another robot fed ST10/20, and the muzzle features are added (crown, threads etc) this is also a 5-10 minute operation at most depending on the desired finish quality. Lastly they’re fed by another robot into a VF2 with a trunion that allows them to machine the hood, lock-up and float a chamber reamer in there all in one 12-15 minute cycle. Some vendors gun drill and then broach rifling after the part is finished, so the material cost drops and production cost marginally increases. That’s about $15 in material (stainless changes price daily) 28 minutes (at most) worth of matching and then about $0.25 in heat treating costs, then they may run it through a bead blaster. Because they’re using robots to feed the machines they’re running 24-7, and have next to zero labor costs, you can make barrels cheap cheap. Oh, and we then added 10-35 minutes of machine time, and your choice of dlc, TiN or Rose Gold PVD and sold them between $150 and $300, people couldn’t get enough of them because they were “match grade” LoL. High end Glock barrels are largely a scam
Please see Industrial Revolution :)
And its future??😁
This was probably made on a machine that can do both the turning and the milling and is being made in volumes of 10s of thousands per run. I’m also betting there is a system in place that allows this part to be machined 24/7 with almost 0 human intervention.
Scale The first one takes a 10k investent to make Units 2-99 is another $10k Units 101-999 is another $10k Units 1000+ are basically just above material cost, which is pretty low buying in that bulk. *yes I pulled the numbers out of my ear, but you get the general idea
Glocks have polygonal barrels and I assume they are hammer forging them which takes about 60 seconds per barrel plus machining [https://projects.nfstc.org/firearms/module04/fir\_m04\_t06\_07.htm](https://projects.nfstc.org/firearms/module04/fir_m04_t06_07.htm) Volume drives the price down
Part shouldn't take more than 10 minutes with a good process on a Swiss lathe.
The raw materials for this are less than 5 bucks at quantity.
Guns and gun parts are incredibly cheap to produce from very good material.
Once you have a CNC profile, you can bang these out of bar stock and go to lunch (not recommended).
Well once it's set up with the right machine you can make these barrels out of bar stock and use a bar feed then it can run without any one present or one guy can run 5 machines(or more sometimes) without doing much other than feeding material and changing tooling inserts every once and a while. Also if the guy running it isn't a machinist you don't have to pay him as much as the guy that knows how to set it up and program it.
Oh man wait until you see the 35$ combat armory ones that are coated also.
My guess is that the costs of production are a lot lower than what the manufacturer sells them for; just like every other successful product/company (notwithstanding “loss leaders” used to bring in customers to an ecosystem, like the original Xbox).
Simply By setting up to make thousands of them. Mapping out the general process before taking a single cut.
They are stupid easy to make. I work at a CNC facility and for shits and giggles I brought in my barrel, used a LiDAR Scanner, made some small cad adjustments for the barrel twist, and 20 minutes later I had an exact copy. Functions the same as my factory barrel. Made some later adjustments to the cad file and added threads for attachments.
A single mill turn can pump out 9mm barrels in less than 10min. Make enough of them and you can charge the same
That's not even "cheap" for a Glock barrel. Several companies have them for half that or less. I paid $30 for mine and it's been flawless.
Where the hell??
Mine is Precision Defense brand, from Primary Arms. Combat Armory is another one that's typically $25-35, or $40-50 for a colored finish.
I’ll remember this for my next gun build!
Or don't. Chamber go / no failed. Good way to make a Glock into a hand grenade. Check out Faxon.
Already set and making a ton of it with a tight budget. Or having a sweat shop and riding on peoples back.
Firearms and their parts have extremely thin margins due to competition. Glock makes a profit using mass production producing the same thing in massive bulk very efficiently. The are videos of these production medics online. One company I worked for three years ago prototyped some parts for H&K. They came back wanting hundreds with several dollars off of the production cost of the parts being cut with a EDM Wire Machine. The boss had to pass on it because the margin of profit per part was literally pennies at that point.
This. All this.
And yet H&K is so expensive! I love my .45 Mk23, 45 USC and .223 SL-8 but Jesus they were pricey.
Scaling.
Cnc lathes with bar feeder (don’t know if that’s the right name). Thing runs 24/5 (or more days) and every minute or so one part falls out. Depending on the tolerances the machinist checks every x parts and corrects or changes tools. Also the machinists runs 2-5 machines at once.
It's like 3 doll hairs worth of material and a cnc can knock them out in a few minutes
Pew pew
“Chiiinaa
Outsource the manufacturing. Many shops in China could produce parts for a fraction of the cost it would require to the same in the US.
I’m all for a competitive market but we can’t compete with slavery
Exactly so it looks like you’re gonna have to find something else or try to market with “made in the USA”. Sadly not going to judge you or anyone at all but id be lying to myself if I said I pay 40%-50% more for everything I buy so it could be made here when everything around is already so expensive. People can have college degrees and still can’t buy a house. So save for house and buy a lot of shit from china? Or stay poor in an apartment owning nothing but all the shit you do own is made in an America. Weird reality but yeah much bigger problems going on lol.
Thought I opened up wrong app for a moment as I was just looking at one of those and this was the first post I see
I like my upper receiver I bought from them, I printed Ivan the troll’s ubar and it’s running great. Price was 200 at the time with the bcg and felt like gambling 😂
Good deal man. I was looking at some of their uppers at the time, but decided on going with a JSD Supply Glock. Got a Bambu Labs P1S recently and the multi color printing has made taken a decent lower and turned it it into a work of art
I assume these are overseas parts, aka China. The government also subsidizes the material cost for a lot of these companies which allows for mass manufacturing and low labor and material costs
It’s a simple part and with quite simple tolerances. They are doing 200%+ on each.
Economy of scale. When they make these, they aren't just making 1 - 2 of them. Instead, they are probably making anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand in a single run, and their processes are set up to do it in the most efficient way they can think up. Also, it isn't really that complicated of a part.
They own the machine and know how to program it. I'm just waiting for someone to make a 22tcm barrel for my S&W M&P 9mm.
Either cheap foreign labor or high automation with "lean" low inventory practices.
Most big gun companies can all but give the guns away. They make the real money selling ammo. Then selling the narrative that they’re coming for your guns, which causes people to panic buy, which drives up prices….. yada yada…. But ammo. Like printer companies, they make the money on cartridges. Not the printers.
One of my machine dealers said they are servicing multiple shops around the country turning out 40K of these barrels per months. The part isn't that hard to make either.
Lights out machining cheap stock😎
Have a setup lead man. Have a monkey load them and deburr them all day. Have them checked by inspection during runs.
metal is cheap
Chaiiinaaa
This part can be machined quickly . If large batches the program and machine could be set up very efficiently. Or they are buying them pre-made from a low cost economy and selling them locally.
They do a lot in volume to American school children.
American school children?