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Thread: Is a CNC router a good investment as far as making money off woodworking?

  1. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by Martin Wasner View Post
    Gross or net?

    Gross that's nothing. Net that's doing pretty good.
    They don't define that. Since I'm not even close to $100k/year (would love to be!) I just had to agree that we're under that number.

    David
    David
    CurlyWoodShop on Etsy, David Falkner on YouTube, difalkner on Instagram

  2. Quote Originally Posted by David Falkner View Post
    I agree, Marcus. And the good thing about treating it as a business is that once you draw that line in the sand then in most cases you can go three years without showing a profit on your tax return. So equipment, material, and shop improvement purchases can exceed your shop income and that will help your tax situation. Once the three year mark is hit the IRS expects you to show a profit, even if it's a small one. Otherwise they may come back and say it was a hobby all along. Your CPA can better advise you.

    One area I've found success in is doing work for trophy shops. I make a boatload of trophy blanks in Walnut and also do custom one-off work. Since I started at the beginning of the year there hasn't been really any time that I haven't had jobs stacked up. You can see some of these things on my YouTube channel - along with other items I've cut on the CNC.

    David
    I really don't thing making an extra $5000 a year would be a problem. When You break it down it is less than $450 per month, or right around $100 per week.

    The first thing I would determine is what is the market niche you want to tackle. If it is a CNC machine type project cool. Can you go and talk to several local hardware stores, building supply stores, coffee shops, hair dressers, etc and see if they would like to become a distributor of your product. You could make a nice sample that advertises what you do and leave one at each location with a brochure or just a business card.

    It is time to start thinking about 4th quarter. Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween.

    The biggest drag about the hobby/business conversion is that you will potentially be doing work that is boring, routine, and outright dumb. At the end of the day pallet wood ghosts will pay the bills in October.

    A long term vision is the key. Over time you will develop relationships that will want more and more custom work. I am not the starving artist type so a mix of profitable work and personal creativity allows me to continue doing what I want on my terms will earning a living. The more you try to treat it like a business the more time you will spend away from what you love doing customer service, sales, marketing, accounting, etc. Just be prepared and you will be fine. Plan, execute, analyze, repeat.

  3. #18
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    Well I'm not looking to make $100,000 a year, I'm just hoping to at least make the machine pay for itself. There's one still for sale for only $2,000, but it's a homemade unit. Would this draw any red flags to you guys? He is willing to show me how to put a program in and watch it make something, so it seems legit

  4. #19
    I've seen home built machines made fantastic, others framed with wood. The wood framed ones would NEVER be consistently accurate. Do you have any pics, specs, etc. ?

  5. #20
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gerry Kaslowski View Post
    I've seen home built machines made fantastic, others framed with wood. The wood framed ones would NEVER be consistently accurate. Do you have any pics, specs, etc. ?
    I can't quite post a picture from my mobile device, but it's aluminum framed and has a watercooled 2.2kw motor. The area it's able to work is 32x22x5"

  6. The water cooled spindle and the aluminum frame sound promising, especially for $2,000. You might get a list of parts used to build it, drive type (lead screw, etc.) drivers (Win PC, Mach3, LinuxCNC).

  7. #22
    My input would be, unless youve got an established revenue stream where the CNC can either create product outright, OR an existing product line where it will speed up accuracy or production to increase your profit margin, the answer as to whether you can make money (by default) with a CNC is a flat out NO. You will find that you'll think the CNC will fly out dozens of parts rapid fire making you a fortune. But in practice you will find that design, fixturing, tending the machine, tooling costs, and so on, will make the production far less profitable than you'd planned.

    If you are building cabinets or boxes however that have intricate detail or other component parts that you can be running while the CNC is doing is thing, it may be a good compliment. Things like sign work, creative inlay work (cutting boards and more signs) are beat to death on the internet by people who charge perhaps $10/hr for their machine just because its fun. You'll run yourself, and your machine, into the ground chasing that business.

    Even with a large production machine, when you start to quantify your shop/machine/tooling time, and apply it to your end product, things get very tight.

    Its all easy math. Dont fall into the trap of "Im not trying to make a million". Whether you are trying to have fun, pay for the machine, cover your overhead, or put money in the bank. The math is all the same. You have your investment cost amortized over the life of the machine, your consumables (electric, tooling, air, spoil board, etc).

    And your time, loading, off loading, preparing stock, changing tooling, programming, etc..

  8. #23
    The size is kind of odd --- rather a shame it isn't 48" in the long dimension --- that way you could feed through full sheets as indexed cuts.

  9. #24
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    My experience is totally different than Mark Bolton's. I have found my CNC Router to be very a profitable machine, in fact simple flat work has been the most profitable over the years. The only thing that I do different than most is that I only do commercial work. I have mentioned before that when I ordered my ShopBot PRT Alpha it was paid for one one week. Granted I had a big job in process so the Router went into production the first day I got it running but all of the signs I made with it were simple flat vcarved and laser engraved signs.

    When I throw in the towel and start selling the machines in my workshop my CNC Router will be the last to go. It can make money all by itself with no need for support machines. The key to CNC work is the same as any other, its all about marketing, marketing and marketing.
    .

  10. #25
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    Oct 2014
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    I would stay away from the home built machines if your looking to make a profit. I bought one of these five years ago (10K for 4x8 Home Built) it was nothing but problems. Machine manufauers like shopbot, laguna, cammaster, multicam and the list keeps going, have all worked out the troubling issues of Cnc machines. When you buy a home built (Most but not all) They normally offer no customer support, No warranty and can have a ton of bugs. Try to find a name brand used machine - Companies go out of business daily and the deals are out there.

    I also offer this idea and many people never take advantage of it - Talk to some local shops and see if they would make small runs of products for you. You design the item and they use there expensive equipment to make it for you - They normally can make it for alot less than you could starting off because they buy bulk wood and have fast machines and know there tools. Just an idea to think over - Many shops just want to keep there machines running so they will offer cheap rates for production runs. This is how I started out and it only took me 2 months before I had enough to buy my first machine.
    3X Camfive 1200 48" x 24" 100watt Tube
    Zcorp 450 3d Printer
    Laguna Smartshop 2 - 4x8 ATC

  11. #26
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    It depends on the machine Mechmate and Joes are 2 that could be very good

  12. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by Keith Outten View Post
    My experience is totally different than Mark Bolton's. I have found my CNC Router to be very a profitable machine, in fact simple flat work has been the most profitable over the years. The only thing that I do different than most is that I only do commercial work. I have mentioned before that when I ordered my ShopBot PRT Alpha it was paid for one one week. Granted I had a big job in process so the Router went into production the first day I got it running but all of the signs I made with it were simple flat vcarved and laser engraved signs.

    When I throw in the towel and start selling the machines in my workshop my CNC Router will be the last to go. It can make money all by itself with no need for support machines. The key to CNC work is the same as any other, its all about marketing, marketing and marketing.
    .
    Keith, I would agree completely in your situation or, as you say, in anyone situation who is heavily marketing "something". Your sign work is a perfect compliment to a CNC. I was just speaking to having an interest in woodworking and just jumping into CNC. There are tons of people on FB, Etsy, and all the others, that are churning out all sorts of stuff and most of it is so inexpensive there is no way they are quantifying anything remotely connected to shop costs, machine cost, and so on.

    That was my only point.

    We see it around here in the primitive world. Retail shops will call us asking to make something they were getting but they can no longer seem to get. When you delve into the price, you quickly find out why they guy they had quit supplying them. He went in cheap and then started to realize how much money he was actually making at the end of the day. When we quote it, there are just crickets on the end of the line.

    We will hang on to our CNC as long as possible as well, and we also do a lot of wholesale/commercial sales so very little contact with the retail consumer. In my personal experience it would be a risky jump to hop into the CNC world without some sort of plan. About anything any retail customer comes into the shop asking us to run on the machine, the instant we start calculating the run time and shop rate, they are on their way out the door.

  13. #28
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    Quote Originally Posted by William Adams View Post
    The size is kind of odd --- rather a shame it isn't 48" in the long dimension --- that way you could feed through full sheets as indexed cuts.
    That is almost the exact working area as my old CNC kit that fits in a 36" by 48" footprint. The OP will have to decide if it is sufficient for his use. I do not have a need for a 48" working area. My largest run was about 6" by 28".

    Steve

  14. #29
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    Mark I hear Ya loud and clear.

    Its almost impossible to compete with job low ballers who will work for practically nothing to land a job. That's the principle reason that I don't do any residential/retail work. You can't even pay for your time meeting with a customer, answering email or designing their job when they only want one item. If someone drops by my shop and I spend thirty minutes with them just to find out what they want I'm already over their budget for the job if they only want one sign for their house. I learned a long time ago that its a waste of time to try to sell anything to someone who can't afford to buy it. Since my work is all custom, commercial work was the answer for me. The good news is that there is plenty of profitable commercial work to bid and win and you don't ever have to spend your money to advertise. The best money is in very large construction projects like new buildings. For me these projects mean hundreds of signs with a two year window before they need to be installed. I get time to plan, schedule and build jigs and fixtures if necessary to make the job more productive.

  15. #30
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    Glen Mills, PA
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    After doing some further research, I think I'm going to reconsider at the moment. I do want a CNC machine for personal use, I already have a relatively decent woodshop. But I'll probably wait until I have enough surplus money where $2k or so won't hit me so hard. The original idea that came up in my head was building items like animal shaped cutting boards and signs, and I just started looking that stuff up on google and it's like $10-15 on Amazon, I was planning on selling for around $50.

    But like everyone recommends, I'll probably either work harder on an actual business plan or just wait until I have extra money to buy one just for hobby use. I may have marketing opportunities, for example I have a friend who does custom home renovations. If I found he had a need for custom size cabinet doors, then maybe. I also plan to build a tack trunk in my woodshop, I'll see if something like that gains any interest without a CNC design.

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