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New Workshop Toys - getting serious now

1K views 7 replies 4 participants last post by  AseanAero 
#1 · (Edited)
My business is aircraft and industrial salvage and trading.

Occasionally some very nice packages come along.

These Swiss made machine tools came from a multi national company's apprentice training school (they don't train apprentices anymore) and was purchased by me for resale , I got them for a good price.

However the machinery market is slow at the moment so I've decided to use them when by chance the machinist we used for the Lamborghini project dropped in looking for work as his employer has just closed it's doors (engineering company 6,000 staff , 30 years in business).

They were too good to sell in a depressed market , I knew I was going to regret it.

So we can start designing and building more parts for our car projects

I'm getting the workshop I always wanted when I was 17 :)

I have a B737 in storage in the shed at the moment and once that is gone early to mid next year we'll move the whole workshop and set it all up properly

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#2 ·
VERY NICE, TONY!

I worked at Custom Metal Creations, on Maui, for a couple of years, using several of the lovely machines you pictured. You've done a very wise thing, by keeping them.
 
#3 · (Edited)
They were a bargain , price was about 3 times the scrap metal price but all the machines run and have complete sets of swiss made collets and machine vices.

The machinery market is odd in Indonesia , most companies use Chinese made machines now and the second hand price for a particular machine is referenced off what a second hand chinese mill would normally sell for (for example) so I will be lucky sell them at any premium over this.

The 'pride of the fleet' is the Fehlmann Picomax 20 mill (1997) which is normally used in tool rooms for prototype work.

Trying to work out if we can rebore S38 blocks with the Fehlmann mill which would be more accurate than the chinese machines most engine shops use for reboring work here. The S38B36 block will physically fit on the table and under the head of the machine , the problem is the machine stroke is 110mm so I need to check the bore lengths.

Dumpster diving from big multi nationals can be rewarding.


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#6 · (Edited)
Thanks Mark ,

I guess you could say I'm semi retired at 53 , my old job was a 7 day a week corporate thing (I was a consultant at Arthur Andersen, I have a Masters in Applied Finance)

9 years ago I gave all that up (when Andersen collapsed due to the US Enron scandal) to work in an area I find interesting , aircraft and cars, which have been my passion since I was a boy.

The best part is I don't have to deal with assholes on a daily basis and I can wear shorts or overalls to work (no more suits) , I have some great customers from all over the World and they've also become friends over the years.

While I'm not rolling in cash the lifestyle is pretty good but it's taken this long to start realizing the vision , the first few years I was swimming hard against the current of bills and starting in a new industry from scratch with no reputation or track record.

The only cars we work on are my own or some classic BMW friends cars (E34 M5s, E30 M3s, E9 coupe) and Taffy's Lamborghini LM002 (also an M5 owner) , I hate that Lamborghini with a passion ! :) (sorry Taffy)

The place ... an abandoned shed on a quiet corner of a military base, very under the radar

The cash ... as I said don't have so much of that , I got the whole machine tool package for around GBP 4,000 , it was a bargain.

I think I'm slowly morphing in Doc Emmet Brown , especially with my fuel experiments and there's 9 bunnies, a cockatoo and dog running around the workshop. One UK client recently let slip out that he thinks I'm eccentric (polite for crazy). The fact that I can still step back and look at myself and say yes it would seem a bit odd means I'm still hanging in there ... by a slim thread.

When I finally do retire there'll be a dyno in the shed (I like your dyno) and an old school classic BMW race car on the trailer.
 
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#7 ·
Tony, you are not even half-damned-crazy....yet.

I gotcha beat, braddah (Hawaii).

I was a Corporate Secretary at a British merchant bank, decades ago. Met with Ministers and even Presidente`s. (Sorry, my computer doesn't have the correct punctuation; the "e" is intended.

Yeah, I saw I saw your "bunny", and she's a damned HOTTIE! ;-} She can mix MY fuel, anytime! ;)

I've got five cats and six endangered snakes; that beats your rabbits. And I sure miss my GreenWing Macaw.

The question being: Are We Crazy, and the rest of the world is sane? (I mean REALLY, when's the last time either of us tried to kill a bunch of people? I'm a Tibetan Buddhist....Can't even boil a lobster anymore.) (Dammit) {But, hey, I shoot tin cans every few months. My neighbors have .50 cals and shoot engine blocks....;) }

Sorry, what was this thread about? Machine tools! Oh yeah! That's my kind of crazy!

You live in a place you mostly enjoy, you make enough money to have at least a bit of fun, you play with cars and planes, and sometimes make enough money to get by.

I have no idea how you deal with that many people, though, I couldn't handle that, I'm a hermit. sorta..... (Yea, I've lived in NY, LA, SF, London, Nairobi, Orlando, Daytona, Huelo, Kula, Haiku, Maui, and Terlingua, Texas, now Bumfck, NC.) Oh yeah, summer in Sydney.

From my point of view, Tony, you provide a very well-researched, experienced, and masterfully inventive approach to creating performance, in our cars. That's a racer's perspective. I think our cars are made for fun.

{Please, those who don't know me, grammatical and spelling errors were poetic license..... I hope....;) }
 
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#8 ·
On the hunt for a cylinder boring machine , we have 3 engines to build requiring rebores so if we can do it in house we can recoup a lot of the purchase price of the machine if we buy at the right price.

We can't do the rebore on the precision mill , it doesn't have enough stroke
 
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