Thinking of getting into the small hardpart market, i have access to some machines(cnc mill, lathe) Do you guys think its worth it? I figure start small with replacement parts and kinda go where the wind blows
-
-
Yea why not , lots of people wanting things that no one is turning out. I think it’s worth it and don’t listen to the few that will jump on here and say this negative thing and that negative thing. It’s cool if you can make some cash and satisfy the needs of parts for some.
-
Well, I was thinking of doing another run of everlasting pull pins.Thanks for commenting, now the real question is where to start
If you want to give it a shot I'll loan you an example to work from and you can price out a run for me. Send me a message if you are interested.
You can see my last batch of them here: https://www.mcarterbrown.com/forum/b...n-or-evo-styleComment
-
Make the pull pin have 4 o ring slots
One on the end where it is now.
One on each point where they can center the bolt
One on the side of the pin handle to line it all up precisely without having the pin head delrin wear out over time causing slight looseness
Or try it and see if it's nice.
The ccm bolt and pin work well because the o ring being on the bolt holds the bolt in place relative to the pin.
I think this design would be loose on some bolts where spring tension on the BB used to lock things in.Comment
-
Go for it. If you have the machines already and the time to crank out parts, you have nothing to loose.
Probably just stay away from regulators and mods for them through for liability reasons, unless you want to set up an LLC. The liability aspect of a regulator makes it a bad idea to mess with.
Comment
-
Go for it. Especially if you already have some good ideas floating around in your head. It sure would be satisfying to turn those ideas into pieces of milled aluminum 😊
Hopefully superman or Doc will stop by and offer some wisdomComment
-
-The big question is "as a hobby", "as a side gig", "as a tax shelter", or "as a day job".Originally posted by Mr. View Post
Hobby? No sweat. Lots of guys are doing things like 3D printing parts, or punching replacement seals or the like.
Side gig? Depends on how much beer money you hope to make. I'll tell you right up front the market in general isn't all that good right now. If you're not necessarily looking to earn $X per hour or pay off Y machines in Z time, and don't mind just making a few bucks here and there, go for it.
Tax shelter? That's a tricky one, and you'd want to talk to a tax guy about it, but a small home business is a good- and legit- way to do it. Especially if you don't expect to make any real money off of it.
Day job? I don't wanna say an outright 'no', but I will say you need to think long and hard on that one. It doesn't sound like you're heading that way, so I'll spare you the sob story- I'm pretty sure I'm the only guy on this board making paintball products as a full-time day job, and trust me when I say that, especially in this economy, you'll never get rich at it.
BUT... the hobby or side gig? Go for it! This sport was founded and built on home shops and garage shops. Bud Orr started making Snipers with a bandsaw and a drill press in his garage. Dave DeHann started DYE in a tiny rental industrial unit. There were photos around here somewhere of the original Sterling (as in Sovereign) 'factory'- which was similarly a small industrial unit that might have been 800 square feet. I've been operating out of little more than a two-car garage for 25 years now.
Doc.Doc's Machine & Airsmith Services: Creating the Strange and Wonderful since 1998!
The Whiteboard: Daily, occasionally paintball-related webcomic mayhem!
Paintball in the Movies!Comment
-
Thank you guys for the replies, i really do appreciate them.
Hellion i pmed youComment
-
I have been making some custom parts at home, I think it may make lots of sense for me to make 5-10 of something rather than one or two and just sell the excess to make the parts cost less. My current goal is to build some of these Spyder bodies I have into more useful paintball makers (i.e. not stacked tube blowbacks). I am really considering making some custom parts for Shoebox Shockers, because they don't get the love they deserve. I only have a tiny basically toy lathe, a Dremel with a cross slide table and a drill press so lots of what I have done so far is using places like Shapeways, Sendcutsend, or Xometry to either make the part or make something that gets me in the ballpark of the part, so quantity makes it much cheaper for me usually.
I looked at some E-bay sellers to collect some data, and it really doesn't look good as a sort of job. Right now depending on overtime I can make $60-80K at my job and once you factor in matching 401K, stock options, healthcare, etc I would need at least $100K profit to replace it, and like literally no one seems to be making that kind of money on E-bay selling new self-built parts for paintball. It is possible some people are, and I missed them or they get sales on a forum or private website, etc where I can't see how many have sold out of a listing or maybe their margins are much better than I estimated. Still, I have no aspirations to do it for a job, because I am not convinced it is even possible.
The more of us that make stuff the better, honestly I feel like paintball was a much better place when it was mostly a cottage industry rather than a few companies dominating everything as it is mostly now. Like just looking in magazines from the early to late 90s and people were making absolutely wild things and I miss those days. Maybe we can bring some of that back.Comment
-
I make custom parts for my friends. The only "profit" i make is seeing janky old/custom markers back on the field.Comment
-
-Oh, that's a whole 'nother ball game. If you already have the equipment, and some idle spindle time, by all means try to make that time earn it's keep.We make other things atm, im basicly looking for fill in work etc. Sometimes the lathe sitting while the mill is going fullbore, and vise versa. I figure i could throw some stuff in the mix and possibly start another stream of work.
The flip side of that coin is cost vs. benefit. Really, any paying job you get out of unused spindle time is a bonus, BUT... you also have to look at how much time, tooling and effort it actually costs. That is, how long does it take you to set up the machine for a part, what's the material cost, how much time do you spend marketing that part, etc. versus how many do you sell?
The paintball market is in the dumps right now, mainly due to the general malaise of the economy, but also because paintball seems to be losing interest overall. So the question becomes, do you take the time to set up the machines, buy the material, and go through the time and effort to make two hundred parts... only to actually sell fifteen?
I am absolutely not saying "don't bother" or anything like that. What I am saying is do your homework, same as any other product.
The only people making that kind of money are the manufacturers. Eclipse, DYE, maybe Nova, etc. I'd wager even Palmers' didn't do all that much better than that in a year- profit wise, anyway.I looked at some E-bay sellers to collect some data, and it really doesn't look good as a sort of job. Right now depending on overtime I can make $60-80K at my job and once you factor in matching 401K, stock options, healthcare, etc I would need at least $100K profit to replace it, and like literally no one seems to be making that kind of money on E-bay selling new self-built parts for paintball.
The vast majority of small-shop sellers in this sport- I'd wager to say damn near all of them- do it as a side gig. Part simple enjoyment of the sport, part weekend beer money, part tax shelter. And, often as not, the day job funds the side gig.
Which is also why you don't see all that many of them- or that the ones you do see, only have a few products. Putting in eight hours a day at work, then coming home and putting in another two to four hours, starts to be a real drag after a while. You realize that if you did one hour of overtime at the regular job, that makes you more money with less hassle than four hours in the garage making parts.
That's why we don't have anywhere near as many custom gunsmiths as we used to. There's work to be had, and if you're any good, you can get the business, but there's a hard limit to what people will pay for work on a single gun, and a hard limit to how many guns you can work on in a day- and combined, the income from that will never be anything close to a decent 'day job'.
I could harp on that one for a while- things like also the effort of dealing with customers, constant email communications, constant deadlines ("The tourney is this weekend! Where's my gun!") the fact that, in these connected days, you're never really "off" of work, etc.
Again, I'm by no means saying "no, don't do it", but again, I am saying gather your data. There's a reason I'm one of a very, very few full time airsmiths out there. (Mainly because I make a poor employee, I'm not married and have no kids, and I have severe brain damage. )
-Ditto, but with an asterisk.The more of us that make stuff the better, honestly I feel like paintball was a much better place when it was mostly a cottage industry rather than a few companies dominating everything as it is mostly now. Like just looking in magazines from the early to late 90s and people were making absolutely wild things and I miss those days. Maybe we can bring some of that back.
We started out in garages, because the sport wasn't big enough to support proper manufacturing. A lot of those early products back then, didn't have enough of a market to justify having a "production run" done.
As an aside, that's been my problem for literally decades- I have stuff that I'm reasonably sure will sell 20, 50 or even 100. But any CNC shop won't even want to talk to you unless you're ordering a thousand, or five thousand, or ten thousand.
Then, the sport DID get big enough and the manufacturers either grew out of it (DYE, BLAST, WGP) or jumped into it (Winchester, Daisy, Carelton, etc.)
But now we've come back full circle. The boom times of just before the last recession- the heady days of "gun of the month"- are gone, and unlikely to return.
AND... you also have to remember those early markers. You HAD to modify them in order to make them "tournament ready". A box-stock 1999 'Cocker needed a better inline reg, a barrel, a drop, a microline kit and an LPR just to be rec-field reliable. An Automag needed a barrel, a ULE kit, a 45 grip, a gas-thru and a drop. The old shoebox Shockers needed a 9V conversion, a power switch, a vertical reg mount and sometimes a whole board replacement.
The garage-shop aftermarket was there to take care of the factory-supplied shortcomings.
But today, you can pull an Inception 'Cocker out of the box, gas it up, and go play a for-money tournament with it. Ditto a Gtek- drop a battery in, screw a tank on, add a loader, go play. Factory barrels these days are just as good or better than most of what the aftermarket can offer. There's not much past maybe a custom trigger you need to do.
-Ditto. 100%.I make custom parts for my friends. The only "profit" i make is seeing janky old/custom markers back on the field.
I've done a LOT of work over the years, for which I made either very little or no income. Those Montneel seals I made last year are a classic example. I spent almost two weeks making those, start to finish, plus material, making a couple custom tools, etc. Even if you discount my time and labor, I'll never make a single dollar off that run.
But, if it helps a few people keep those guns on the field- over thirty years after they stopped being made- it was, to me, worth it.
Doc.Doc's Machine & Airsmith Services: Creating the Strange and Wonderful since 1998!
The Whiteboard: Daily, occasionally paintball-related webcomic mayhem!
Paintball in the Movies!Comment
-
Ah. So this is 'work', not 'play'. My recommendation is to find something that has the opportunity for a better payout. Find something with a much larger market than paintball. Preferably, find something industrial rather than consumer focused - industrial products have greater scale, greater margins, greater everything really. Easy mode is to find an industrial application you can improve upon with changes that are offered more cheaply than it would cost them to duplicate your efforts, make a small stock pile of inventory yourself while also ordering from vendors that can scale up if demand booms (getting caught out of stock for more than a few weeks is a death knell in industry), demonstrate the improvement publicly, share with some folks in industry, and wait for the orders to roll in. Do this ~10 times and hopefully 1 will take off, so be prepared to eat 9 of these.We make other things atm, im basicly looking for fill in work etc. Sometimes the lathe sitting while the mill is going fullbore, and vise versa. I figure i could throw some stuff in the mix and possibly start another stream of work.
EDIT: To add, once something starts to boom - make a few more tweaks/improvements and patent it (~$10k) before you get cloned out of business.Last edited by Siress; 01-20-2024, 12:59 PM.Paintball Selection and Storage - How to make your niche paintball part idea.
MCB Feedback - B/S/T Listings:Comment
-
In this market.... Find a better industry.
Since 2015 I have basically shuttered my machining side hustle that was aimed at paintball. Guys don't want the same things anymore and even custom work is niche at best with maybe one guy wanting something a year.
I did briefly spearhead the 3d printed emek market but was quickly stamped out by cheaper inferior products that cater to the "fast and cheap" crowd.
Right now... I have defocused my efforts for paintball. I made more in 2023 designing friggin draw pulls to be printed in stainless steel for a client then I did in 2019-2022 combined for paintball.
Comment
-
I've been on this board, and others, since the early 2000s and never knew you did custom work, or saw it mentioned anywhere. Maybe I just never paid attention - dunno - but what did you do?Originally posted by Ecapnation View PostComment
Comment