- Thread starter Rocketman
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outofthefire
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His rant was aimed at some of the previous comments about him paying peanuts
its sort of irrelevant how much he was getting paid isnt it? he took on the work knowing what it paid and did a **** job, end of. i dont know about you but i am of the opinion that if you agree to do a job then you should try and do a it to the best of your ability (well at leaste do a half decent job)
F.J.
The least I know, the least i am responsible for
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Absolutely, as you say, this guy was obviously happy to take one the work for that price otherwise he wouldnt of done it. I am constantly told by my biggest customer that I am cheaper and better than another supplier they used to use but that doesnt make me want to up my prices. I charge what I am happy with. And thats with overheads of my own. Most people would dream of earning a grand a week and im certain they would do a damn good job to justify that price.
Well guys I gave him a call today and in no uncertain terms told him he wouldn't be doing a job for me again and cancelled the 3 jobs I had lined up for him - got a bit shirty about but It's tough titty for him.
You shouldn't let standards slip as you guys have suggested. The guy has been doing it for 30 years and in the past has done good jobs for me - it's just got more hit and miss in recent times.
This guy fully understood I was sub-contracting to him after getting the job so he would never be on as high rate as winning a job himself. So I take an initial cut (my overheads/time). But it's always better to be busy than sitting doing nothing. OK it looks like he then took more work on in the week promising it would be done as well.
I really could do with taking on a apprentice so I wouldn't have a need for subcontracting anymore. I'm having to turn down far to much work lately because I just simply don't have the time.
You shouldn't let standards slip as you guys have suggested. The guy has been doing it for 30 years and in the past has done good jobs for me - it's just got more hit and miss in recent times.
This guy fully understood I was sub-contracting to him after getting the job so he would never be on as high rate as winning a job himself. So I take an initial cut (my overheads/time). But it's always better to be busy than sitting doing nothing. OK it looks like he then took more work on in the week promising it would be done as well.
I really could do with taking on a apprentice so I wouldn't have a need for subcontracting anymore. I'm having to turn down far to much work lately because I just simply don't have the time.
MattF
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It's better to take on only what work you can handle and do it all well rather than trying to take on all work and risking a sh*te reputation for churning out slipshod work.
You had no-one but yourself to blame for contracting a numpty more than twice, (second time could be classed as giving benefit of the doubt. Third time onwards is just masochistic). Much better to say no to work you can't manage and keep standards high, IMHO. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, but it's far easier to ruin a reputation than to build and maintain a good one.
Yeah your quite right.
Like you say reputation is what counts. Hence me spending the weekend fixing it and fortunately the client is happy. Though when your 3 year old daughter comes up to you at the weekend and says 'Daddy why are you always working' it is heart breaking.
the snooper
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be warned make time, work to live NOT live to work, you will regret it later in life when your children are grown up and you look back and wonder where the time went and why you didn't spend more time with them, I was fortunate enough to be able to spend weekends with them and on a night but I still wish I had more, infact I wish I had my time to do it all over again, there is no way to get that time back or make more memories
MattF
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Like snooper says, make time. I'm sure we'd all do things differently with hindsight. It's easy to look back and wish you'd paid the bairn(s) more attention, but once they're grown it's too late. Nowadays I make sure I spend more time with the youngest than I did with the eldest. Can't turn back the clock, but I can definitely make sure not to make the same mistake twice. Better to work enough for merely a comfortable life and enjoy what you have, than to work silly amounts of hours and never have time to appreciate what you have.
hard tooling and soft tooling....common phrases in injection moulding, much quicker to do a soft tool in alloy for a short production run of a few thousand parts, the blocks are availible of the shelf as blanks, block fittings, IE ejector pins, coolant couplers for block cooling, location dowels, all parts that go on tooling blocks (bolsters, if you want to get technical) and for your information, Ive done hundreds of 3D tooling blocks, we had our own injection moulding machine and made all our own tooling for it...its not rocket science, and its not even difficult work, I got out the tool making game because there was better money to be made elsewhere. no-one can compete with the far eastern workplace, the problem we discovered that the "british " way of jiging and tooling often meant a £100 jig for a10p part, and a part run of only a few 100 parts, and nobody wanted to listen to different ways of making jigs and tooling, we had many large expensive mould tool bolsters wit a small replacable block inserted that only cost a few pounds and could be changed in minutes when a design was altered......no more £1000s on the shelf rusting away, but nobody interested
The terms for tools is ali, steel or fully hardened.
You have ally tool which are out of grades such 7075 t6 /alumec 89 / certal etc but the idea they do a couple of thousand is plan and simple not true. They can do up to a couple of hundred thousand.
Next up is p20 tools.
After that you can go to hybrids of partially hardened or fully hardened tools.
Blocks and blanks aren't terms - you have plates / bolsters / inserts.
Bits used in the tools are called ancillaries.
We can compete with the far east it just depends what the tooling is for. As for tooling/design is easy it really depends on the part you are moulding - a complex tool takes great skill to design and manufacture and it needs to work.
