Hi everyone, I work at a mid size machine shop that specializes in Machined Components in Iron, Steel or Aluminum Castings, as well as Machined Steel Bar Stock, and flat work.
We offer secondary services such as heat treat, welding, painting, coating, etc., to provide the complete product that our customers require. We specialize in low to medium production runs from 50 to 1500 per year.
Is there a need for anything in the preservation world that we might want to consider looking into. I understand most places only need one item, and usually make it themselves or have the large established railroad shops do it, but I was asked for idea's, so here I am.
Thanks
Brian.

Normally I would push a post like this to the Classifieds page, but this time I suggest we respond with ideas about what needs we have, or how we reproduce parts, and ideas about where we get work done.

I.E., Make this a general discussion about sourcing machined parts.

Thanks, Randy

There's a lot of opportunity for one-off custom work in preservation, and for multiple runs of such items as staybolts.

I'd encourage you to develop specific expertise in the design and use and materials used and regulations about applicability for many common parts like rods, axles, bearings, etc. Customers who know they need a new axle for example can ask you to quote the job without their having to develop the materials and tolerances specs first - that additional service can reap benefits for you. Babbitting bearings and scraping finishes is another art form that isn't common these days, but is very useful. Facing journals and wheel profiling requires equipment capable of handling large metal objects.

Metallic packings for piston and valve rods, either replacement segments or entire packing assemblies is another market. These can include historic designs like Paxton or King, and replicate modern alternatives like the France Compressor stacked segmental girdled varieties.

Rings and liners require a source of fine grained cast iron very heavy pipe. When a ring breaks, having it on hand with the ability to hog out a replacement or two immediately is money in the bank.

So, expert knowledge, regulatory knowledge, knowledge of commonly required components, and having stock of hard to find materials is what you will need to be a specialized supplier to our industry. If you pull that off, becoming a vendor and presenter at the annual conference will expose your business to the target market very efficiently. I'm less concerned about the classifieds if this is an exploratory thread.

We need good suppliers who price reasonably and stand behind their work - best wishes.

dave

Hi,

What kind of equipment do you have and do you only do fabrication of new materials? Has your shop done hot riveting?

Regards,

Art S.

On the subject of needs, for restoration in progress of three 1936 CBQ Budd Texas Zephyr ex-Denver Zephyr cars, I need to have made from scratch about 8 or 10 replicas of some exotic looking speaker grills, to match originals which can be viewed in the Zephyr trainset at the Illinois Railroad Museum, and also need to copy some brass door handles out of those cars, about 10 of them, and some light fixture plates. Also some very large square tubular aluminum divider grills once on top of partitions in the cocktail lounge of the Silver Lining, and a few other items looted from the cars during their 40 year sojourn in Hill City South Dakota.

For all of these items I have photographs of originals. The old Budd drawings would be useful but seem to be held on to tightly by Thyssen-Krupp, without hope of duplication for restoration purposes.

The problem is, orders of this nature are not very lucrative for any machine shop, since they are so small and specialized. If you could make that machine shop mobile, and move it to South or West Texas, we have such an incredible oil boom in progress here that you would have no shortage of lucrative work.

Small machine shops, it seems to me, would do well in these cases perhaps to subcontract to larger shops temporarily overwhelmed with work. For instance, consider all the new railroad tank cars being built to the new higher safety expectations, those contracts are going to carbuilders who seem unable to keep up with demand, because the wait times are reportedly lengthy.

People think of Budd as a carbuilder, in the 1930s and 40s, but what it built was the shell of the cars, which it then finished out with parts ordered from a great many suppliers. In other words, to an extent not much discussed in the historical record, it assembled the cars out of parts made elsewhere, by a great many other companies, a list of which is impressive. And this remains the pattern today in many manufacturing businesses. It seems the key to growing a small machine shop would be to become a supplier of services to some of these manufacturers or their vendors.

And finally, perhaps a small machine shop should give consideration to a quantum leap in technology. The things I need for my Zephyr restoration project were originally machined out of solid metal, but now we have 3-D printers making objects. Those "printers" will get larger, better, and cheaper. When someone like me needs a copy of something in metal, and of a smallish size, in the future, might it be "printed" rather than machined? Right now they "print" in plastic, but lately they have started "printing" in food (!) and before long they will possibly be "printing" in metal. Perhaps this is already being done.

There is something unusual going on in the fabrication and manufacturing business. I see it (as an energy attorney in Texas) reflected in the massive drop in prices of solar PV panels in the last three years. The City of Austin recently signed a contract with a large solar power provider for a twenty year term at 5 cents/kilowatt hour, less than half the price it could have gotten only three years ago. And nearing rock bottom for the wholesale rate, which in this state is about 3.5 cents/kilowatt hour for coal-fired power. In the last year or so, it has become the general opinion here that we may never see another new coal-fired power plant built in Texas.


William Osborn, Austin, Texas william(a-t)texasenergylaw(dott)Kommm

My gut reaction is to refer this person's services to the Fire Up 611 committee.
lois

No need to replicate ;-) I can supply new off the shelf.....standardized design packing which is a direct replacement for Paxton and of course can go into a King gland with appropriate part change-out..... Just sayin.

Cheers, Jason

Thanks for the idea's, keep them coming. All our work so far has been new material, andI don't believe we have ever done anything with rivets. We have 50+ machines, CNC, mills, lathes, etc. I'm IT, so I can't say a lot about the business, but I can share the idea's present here with those in the know. Thanks again for the education.

If your shop was given a deteriorated iron 'thing' of substantial size, could you reverse engineer it, and make a run of the components, including rivet holes, bends, metal treating, etc., totaling say 30 'kits', that could then be sent off to be assembled with hot rivets?

Has your shop dealt with real wrought iron in sheet or rolled form?

Regards,

Art S.

This is another good thread on RyPN - reminds me to check out the Classifieds...again! :-)

3D printers have made rocket engine parts using metal. Some parts have been test-fired and are under evaluation.

So as not to hijack this topic, please see the new thread.

-Jim