He Taught Himself CNC in 2021. Now He's Doing Aerospace Work ｜ Specified Manufacturing Shop Tour)

This thing is massive. We were running cases for IR sensors and making about 10,000 a month. Wow. It was able to run for 27 hours at a time. Oh, it's beautiful. You load it up Saturday morning, come back Monday. Four years ago, Jared was standing in his garage with a single use machine, zero machining experience, and no safety net. No investors, no debt, no roadmap. Just the conviction that he could figure it out. What year did you buy your first machine to get into this? 2021. So from 21 to now, you taught yourself machining, upgraded to this shop. Now you're doing aerospace parts to ISO sander. From garage beginnings to aerospace critical in just four years, this is Specified Manufacturing. Oh, this is a sweet unit. Yeah. So this is your first spot out of the garage and you went from that to this. Yes. And what made you kind of decide on this location here and, you know, this amount of space? Because that's a big jump. Yeah, I was figuring out like, just we're constantly trying to grow. And so just wanted to get extra space. We originally started with the VF2 just in here, all alone, completely empty space. And then within about a year, we started filling the place up and now we're out of space. And how many people work here now? Just one. And how did you get into machining? Because I have a feeling you don't come from an original machining background. What was your path towards it? Yeah, so I first started, I bought a machine and put it in my garage at home. Didn't see a CNC machine in my life in person before I pulled the trigger and bought a old Haas. Started making lower ARs and then decided to branch out and do other companies' work. For a guy that had never operated a CNC, what was that drive to like, I'm putting one of these in my garage? I'd always seen videos on CNC machines and always thought it was interesting. And so I was like, yeah, let's give it a shot. So you mostly self-taught or did you take a course or how did you kind of get to the place where, I mean, look at us now. Yeah, all self-taught on YouTube, watching videos and just figuring it out. Perfect, let's take a look at this place. You got a nice VF2, oh, VF4 offsets here. You're running a trunnion on that right now. Yep, fourth axis allows us to do a lot of more intricate parts, less ops. So we're able to get a lot of parts that would be three or four ops down to two. And how was the learning curve throwing in a fourth axis for the first time? A lot, a lot. There's a lot of different offsets that you're not used to going from three axis to four. So you're taking typically your one offset that you have and then now you've got up to four or five offsets that you're needing to take. And once you get the hang of it, it's like you're on a bike. Yeah, it's not that bad. Now this one's kind of running a tombstone. Is that kind of typical for how you'd have this set up right now? Or I guess it's essentially just a trunnion, but would you be switching out your attachment on this, your trunnion, or is that kind of how you run this most of the time? Most of the time we're running the trunnion. We do have attachments to do like one part and be able to do 360 around. But for most of the parts that we do, we try to stay to the trunnion and then we'll build a sub plate to be able to mount our different stocks and things like that. Just to kind of touch on quantities, like what's a typical run look like here? You guys are doing aerospace defense. What's the industry and kind of what are the quantities you're doing? Yeah, so we just got our AS 9100 and ISO 9001. So we're doing more aerospace and defense. Quantities anywhere from 100 to 300, but we'll also do the prototype work, like one to 10 parts. And just because I think it's very interesting for people who are looking to start a shop, what year did you buy your first machine and get into this? 2021. So from 21 to now, you taught yourself machining, upgraded to this shop. Now you're doing aerospace parts to ISO standard. Yeah. It's insane. That's amazing. Like that's the dream for a lot of people, right? So that timeline is very, very fast. Yeah, I think a lot of people shy away from the ISO work and because, oh, I got to create a quality manual, do all that. When you dig into it, it's really not a lot of extra work. It's more paperwork, tracking, stuff that you're already doing anyway. Machine maintenance goes into the programs and then inspection, just writing down everything. You're already inspecting to provide good parts. So you're just documenting that and whatnot. So it's not that difficult. I would suggest a lot of people move into that if you're looking to grow. And you found that's really opened a big market for you that way. Huge, yeah. And I mean, especially here in Arizona, there's a lot of manufacturing. Yeah, exactly. You guys have a lathe over here. Yeah, so we just got this lathe. Again, self-taught. So I'm trying to get into figuring out how to lathe and run it. It's somewhat similar, but we've been so busy with mill work that finding the time to actually lathe a part or turn a part, it's been put on the back burner. And I know everybody always says it's easier to learn turning than milling. And I find it way more difficult because I'm a mill guy too. Yeah, exactly. Trying to learn just how the axes work and where you're at and where your axis is. It's confusing, but that's a nice unit. Oh, and you got a BF2 over here. Yep, so this is the second machine that we bought, 2008. It still runs great. I haven't seen that screen before on a control. Is that custom? No, I mean, this machine was like in the middle of them going from the old gen to the new gen. Okay. The same one that I've got still in my garage. It's a middle of the road one that when they were trying to figure out their next gen stuff. Right, yeah. Because I have an 05 and a 2010 and my 05 and my 2010 look nothing like this. Like even like that curved panel on the spindle there. That's cool. And that control screen I've never seen before in my life. Now, when you're running stuff in here, right now I see one vise on the table. Are you tending to try to stack things up or do you run one offs? Like when you're running a part, like one at a time? Is this pretty typical for what's in this machine? No, so we run different, all sorts of different stuff. It just depends on the job. Right. So like the part that we're running now is pretty high tolerance. So we want to measure each one that comes out and things like that. But we have done, we'll machine a whole aluminum plate and mount it. Sub plate. And then, yeah, be able to stack, you know, 30, 40 parts all at once to be able to do things and let it run without us having to touch it. And the other reason we're not seeing a lot of parts in here right now is you're actually doing a ton of ITAR work. Yes. Which of course we can't show on camera, which is a good thing, but getting into that ITAR space, was that difficult compared to ISO or was that kind of the same challenge? No, I mean, typically with ITAR, you're just signing up with the government and saying, hey, you know, we're going to follow these rules. Obviously don't show parts, don't take pictures. Document control also falls into that as a different internet security, things like that. But pretty, pretty standard stuff again. Just have to document it and follow the rules. And of course that's a massive market out here. The amount of defense manufacturing happening right here in Arizona is off the charts. Yeah. Another VF2, you guys like VF2s. Yeah. Most of the machines that we've gotten are from auctions or are used. We find, you know, we can get used machines for 20 grand and they work and they're good. Being able to throw 20 grand at a machine and be able to pay it back within a couple of months is a lot more digestible than buying a new machine. You're keeping your overhead low, which is key because, you know, one bad month and you have 30 machine payments, you're having a bad time. Now one question, because I don't really buy used machinery and I know a lot of people who do, but when you go out to these auctions, how do you evaluate whether that machine's actually going to be worthwhile or not? Yeah, I mean, typically you can get them inspected and then there's certain sellers here in Phoenix that I trust to be able to go, okay, if I'm buying a machine from them, even at auction, they've inspected it and they stand by it. And then we've also had sellers that we've bought used machines that, you know, it came without a spindle, like the EC400. We turn it on for the first time and the spindle sounds like there's a bunch of garbage running and so I call the sales guy and he's like, we'll put a new one in. Beautiful, that's not a cheap fix. Yeah, exactly. And let's take a look at this thing because this thing is massive. How big is that tool magazine on there? 70 tools. That is not soft for these, I don't think, is it? I think that was an option. Possibly, this machine actually came right out of the Haas factory. Oh no. Yeah. Wow. So it was making Haas parts and I was able to get it at a very affordable price. And this is clutch for when you're trying to do large production runs, right? Like, look at this, you have a full, you have a pallet pool full of tombstones. Yes, so we were running cases for IR sensors and making about 10,000 a month. This was an upgrade that we got. We were running them on the VF2s, which was a lot of hands-on. We, you know, bought this probably 60 grand investment. Wow. But it was able to run for 27 hours at a time. Oh, it's beautiful. You load it up Saturday morning, come back Monday. Yeah. Wow. And did you make all these tombstones yourself? We programmed and machined the tombstones, but we bought them straight from Haas. So they come blank. They're actually not solid. Oh, they're like a welded plate? I guess, yeah. So they're lighter. They're easier for us to move around even by hand. And then, yeah, we got the Anderson and Mighty Bites on there. And did you come up with that fixturing pattern yourself? Yep. That's beautiful. Like you can see, you'd have part here, part here, part here, two rows on both. You're tightening a bunch of screws and that thing's just running. Yeah, each one could run 40 of the parts that we were running. Now that you, that work may not be your focus anymore. What's this kind of doing these days? Not much right now. I mean, the thing with the EC400 and especially the pallet pool is you want to be able to program it to run mass production, right? So if we don't have mass production, we'll probably look at possibly switching another machine out, getting this out, and then looking at trying to get into fifth axis. And for now, I mean, it's a great availability for open capacity. Absolutely. Right now, if somebody comes to you and says, hey, I need 20,000 with something. Yeah, we can do it. You're ready to go. And it's one of those things where it's probably paid for itself by now. Many times over. You know, I don't blame you for holding onto it right now, even though you're not running it as much. But you know, if the opportunity arises to get into fifth axis, that makes a lot of sense. Exactly. All right, this place is great. Oh, you got a huge compressor back here. Is that a compressor? What is that? That's a CO2 printer. Oh! Or a laser printer. I thought that was a part of your compressor setup. I've never seen one of those. And are these castings you guys are running back here? Yeah, so this is a manufacturing castings for a local company that they convert Harleys and Hondas into trikes. Oh, cool. With independent suspension. That's a nice little unit. Yeah. And then you have a lot of really cool little equipment in here. Like you got a bench. Is this going to use this for grinding tools or is this going to be a straight surface grinder? Yeah, we've used it for grinding tools and whatnot. We've kind of moved it around since we're getting pretty tight in here, so. That's okay though. It's a nice unit. What is this? Is this a press? Yeah. Oh, it's a brake press. Yep. And are you guys doing a lot of forming and stuff in here or did you kind of pick up the laser to get into more of the bad side or? So we, yeah, there's a lot of government jobs actually that are bending. And so usually we outsource, but we've been looking at, again, slowly putting it together when we get time. And then, yeah, it's a fully CNC press brake. They're out of Texas, I believe. And let me guess, before buying this, you've never run one of these before, have you? No. Where does that come from? The ability just to, I'm really impressed that you just say, hey, do you know what? I want to learn how to do something. I get it. You know, you have a CMM over here. Where does that come from? Because a lot of people don't have that. Yeah, it's just always an ingenuity and wanting to figure things out, challenge yourself, keep it interesting. You never get intimidated by it, do you? No, no. You're a better man than me, because that thing scares me. Anything fabrication, I get squirrely on. And you got another grinder over here. Are you picking this stuff up pretty much at auction when you see it or? We picked it up because we had some parts that were hard-chromed. Thought I was going to turn it in a lathe, but then realized hard-chrome's a little. Yeah, so we picked up grinders and we were able to grind it down to size. So this was kind of picked up for a job and then, hey, still works, let's keep it. Yep. Nice. And this is a cylindrical grinder? I-D-O-D grinder. I-D-O-D. Wow, look at this thing. It is a beauty. And you figured out how to run this yourself too, I guess? Yeah. Or you will? Yeah, we will. Yeah, exactly. And when it comes to adding new equipment like this or new capabilities to your shop, is it usually job-driven? So a job comes up, hey, you know what? I need to be able to do this. Instead of outsourcing it, I'm going to get a machine and do it, or is it kind of, hey, I would like to get into this kind of work? What kind of? It's a mix of both. Mix of both. Yeah, so we picked this up because we did get a bushing job that needed to be ground down to size on the I-D and O-D. And so we're like, well, we could figure it out. The drive to bring things in house is fantastic. I mean, we do some surface grinding, but I-D-O-D, I send out because we just, we don't know how to do it. But now after seeing some of this stuff here, I'm like, well, why haven't we done this? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, it makes perfect sense. I'm sure this didn't cost as much as it did new, but it probably still works really well. And hey, spend a couple of weekends, you could probably figure it out, right? Yeah, exactly. That's amazing. And you got a little metrology and heat shrink section over here. Yep. Now are you running a lot of heat shrink right now or? Yeah, we run heat shrink primarily for roughing tools and things like that. Used to only run ER-32. And then once I started learning more about what I could do with the machines and pushing it harder, got a lot of pull out, things like that. Yeah, the heat shrink is fantastic. It works super well when you have an application for it? Absolutely. Now you're talking about potentially getting a five axis. What kind of next things are, you know, in the works for the shop? Yeah, primarily fifth axis and then a new CMM machine. New CMM, I guess, because you're doing such tight tolerance stuff. Yeah, we're doing tight tolerance and we're measuring everything by hand, which adds a lot of time. And then obviously like when you're quoting and things like that, you're like, wait a second, I'm spending an hour measuring one part. This isn't... I'm working for $20 an hour now. Yeah, exactly. And when it comes to, I mean, obviously, people are gonna watch this and just go, this is my dream. What would you say to people who are looking to start a shop, but maybe haven't pulled the trigger yet? If you've got the drive to do it, absolutely. There's plenty of work out there and in every industry, it seems. And so find what you wanna do and then definitely go for it.