What's up with Nummech???

[automeister]

Is Nummech still making new products and will they make more frames or is the owner not interested. I am surprised they have been out of stock as long as they have been.

[superman]

One of the owners is a teacher that teaches at a tech school. They machine parts for other paintball companies too not just nummech parts. Most of the smaller stuff is pretty simple to setup and run. detents, feednecks and the like. The frames were being held up from a redesign of the on/offs. That has been more than a little while now.

I will say that when you go to tackle those projects they can take significantly longer than expected. Especially with setting up, machining, testing rinse and repeat before releasing, not including the production run.

[DocsMachine]

I know nothing of Nummech or their plans or method of operation.

BUT... I know something of trying to run a small machine shop, and it all comes down to machine time. I'm given to understand that Nummech is a sort of side operation to a regular job shop, and as such, those customers tend to come first.

A properly run machine shop rarely has 'spare' machines sitting round, idle. Point in fact, I'd wager that the Nummech production is in part to use up a small amount of occasional idle machine time. They may easily have six months of big-client orders waiting on time for whatever the machine or machines are they they use to make the grip frames.

Hell, I'm a tiny one-man shop and my one major machine is booked pretty solidly for the next three or four months. The shop I used to have doing some of my stuff, wound up with enough big contracts- ten or twenty thousand part orders- that my little podunk 100-200 part orders weren't worth his time.

Nummech probably only makes 100 grip frames at a time- the sad fact is, there's just not as much demand for paintball products, as there was a decade ago. Those 100 parts take a back seat to the contract for 1,500 Widgets, the standing order for 3,000 Gadgets, and the rush order for 10,000 Thingamabobs.

That's why I like seeing more of the small garage shops- like Superman with his new CNC mill, and all you fellows making fun buts with 3D printers- because this sport simply no longer has the demand to attract the attention of big production shops anymore.

[Edit] Beardy seems to have the inside scoop. But everything I wrote still applies.

Doc.

[automeister]

Thank you both for your time and insight. Superman, does he have a timeline at all on frames? I want one and would be happy with a used one if it wasn’t best up. Will he be making Automag and Autococker frames?

[superman]

Last i heard the frames were machined at least the mag frames were, but were waiting on the on/off redesign. That was awhile ago. I was sent a beta for the mag frame and it did not pass the test. He was planning to do something similar for both mag and cocker frames from what i understand.

[ejacksophoto]

If you're looking for Autococker frames, keep an eye on Mozak Machine. He's the only one I know of that has been doing runs of frames somewhat consistently, and he's the only reason I was able to build a nice pump recently instead of paying $1000 for a beat up old CCM.

What Doc mentioned lines up with what I saw Simon from Inception Designs post at one point - the high complexity and low profit margins mean he can't justify the machine time to make autococker frames anymore.

[superman]

I have frames on my eventual list.

[ejacksophoto]

More options for frames are always welcomed. Bodies are cool too, but there's plenty of old WGP stuff out there that is still usable. It's the shortage of good frame options to pair them with that really hurts.

Mozak's single trigger hinge frames are amazing for pumps - I do not miss having to source beat up benchmark slide frames for pump builds.

[superman]

Bodies are on a shorter list, than the frames. Fingers crossed i have some more free time coming up to dig in to that stuff.

[automeister]

Would you make gas through frames?

[superman]

no plans to.

[automeister]

Copy that

[Trbo323]

I've been waiting on a mag frame for 2.5 years now

Emek drop forward as well

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[DocsMachine]

What Doc mentioned lines up with what I saw Simon from Inception Designs post at one point - the high complexity and low profit margins mean he can't justify the machine time to make autococker frames anymore.

-It's not just Inception, every machine shop operates that way. It's simple math- the shop has to pay employees, building rent or lease, utilities, payments on the machines, etc. A run of 200 paintball parts doesn't pay those bills.

Simon once told me, years ago, when NPS/KEE was tooling up for the re-release of the Trracer, that if they couldn't sell a hundred thousand of them it wasn't worth the time. The first CNC shop I ever dealt with made me a couple runs of 250 or so parts, but after those, said they couldn't afford that- they wanted me to order at least five thousand- and I couldn't afford that.

Again, that's why I like to see us garage-shop guys making stuff. My overhead is thankfully pretty low, so I can afford to run... shall we say, narrow-interest parts.

Doc.

[automeister]

I've been waiting on a mag frame for 2.5 years now

Emek drop forward as well

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

Did you pay for it that long ago, or are you waiting to put an order in

[Trbo323]

Did you pay for it that long ago, or are you waiting to put an order in

Waiting to put an order in. They've never been for sale in that whole time

Sent from my motorola edge 5G UW (2021) using Tapatalk

[automeister]

Superman, it seems you are somewhat close with Nummech, would you be willing to ask him for an update on these? I imagine certain members of the forum community may be thankful as well.

[superman]

I wouldn't say that close. He is like 14ish hours away. lol

[Ydna]

Sorry dudes, mr Bearded Superman is right, just not much time to complete the projects lately. I don't have any estimated restock dates since planning the finishing steps is tricky as of late.
We have a LOT of items that are almost finished up but batch size increased after the covid shutdowns and it had the side-effect of making the batches noticeably longer to complete. Double-edged sword unfortunately. We used to be nimble to create short runs here and there, but that's when I had way more time to spend in the shop. But we're getting there... I'll upload some pictures to tide you over. Jake threatens to mail me a box of snakes every time somebody brings up the pre-98 roller triggers uggh

[Alexndl]

Thanks for the update!
Keep us informed when you get a chance to complete some parts. Like many I have been waiting for one of those nmag frame couple of years (at this point I would even be interested on buying raw frame without asa). I will keep on looking for when they will be ready.

[maggot]

Agreed with Alexndl! Please keep us posted when parts drop, many of us don't do facebook.

[superman]

And many of us can't even if we wanted too. stupid zuckerberg.

[automeister]

Thank you so much for the update!!! It is appreciated!

[automeister]

Will you be taking pre-orders? Or how will that work?