Main Point:
I may need a trainer or operator for the Hass Monday or Tuesday (6/6/22 or 6/7/22). Please private message me if you are qualified and interested in making some cash in this time frame.
Background Information
I have been a DMS member for 3 years and I am the engineering manager at a company south of Fort Worth. At work we have a Hass CNC mill very similar to the one at the DMS. It is down due to a worn out spindle and the repair is taking much longer than expected and on Friday the company doing the repair (awaiting parts) was not returning our calls or emails. If they are not able to fix it Monday we would like to explore other options for a priority job. Our preference would be to get a DMS membership for our lead mechanical engineer and have him qualified on the DMS Hass. He installed, maintains, and has been the primary user of our Haas for 3 years.
If we can not get a trainer to help us in that time frame, we would like to work with someone that is qualified to use the Hass for about 8 hours.
If you can help with the above request in any way, please private message me.
Thanks,
Charles
One of the “flaws” of Talk is that all the relevant people don’t necessary read the category all the time. This tags them…
I’m sure. You’re seeking immediate access to a very expensive piece of equipment (that is arduously maintained for free by volunteers) in exchange for a paltry $60 membership fee.
Unless the company you work for is also a not-for-profit, this is exploiting DMS. Come on … you’re basically asking to “rent” the most expensive piece of equipment we own for a commercial job in exchange for a $60 fee; and asking for a volunteer to get your guy trained in the next day or two.
Why don’t you get a quote from another machine shop, then offer to donate that same amount to DMS? Or offer to help maintain our equipment? Or have your expert conduct training on it for us?
We seek participating members - not customers. We are not a commercial shop. Your offer doesn’t seem to have anything in it for DMS.
On the other hand, if we have a member willing to do this
helping a professional out of a tight spot can generate a lot of good will in the community, and could lead to good feels helpfulness like mentioned elsewhere
Yeah that’s not enough time. Some of us work for a living.
Thank you everyone that replied, both privately and publicly. I appreciate your suggestions and comments.
I think it depends on what that goodwill is. If the goodwill is “hey if your machine breaks down then we can just hog DMS equipment for our enterprise for $60 a month, isnt that awesome!” then we probably dont want that goodwill.
I’m not against profitting off of the space, but we do have to be careful about what kind of profitable behaviors we accept because we dont want to open the doors to being the “oh shit” button for other machine shops that need to mass produce parts. These businesses do not just keep to themselves. Word will get around to other shops that we allowed a company to use our equipment for an entire workday for $60 to meet a production target that they couldve easily done by using their capital to rent a machine elsewhere.We would risk getting into a position where individual members would be kept off the machine to meet some business’s production goals.
Ultimately, I think this is a committee chair decision and, like @John_Marlow said, the organization should absolutely get something more in return for using DMS this way. Businesses have got money that the little guy doesnt.
DMS Reserves the Right to charge commercial rates for the use of it’s machines. I know about 4-5 years ago a machine shop had the same idea for the Haas. They were told the machine rental rate was about $125hr an hour, that was for the time they tied up the machine, not run time. They decided to go elsewhere.
That’s interesting! I didnt know that. I could see this being the case since we charge for things like laser time and so forth.
In in the rules. We’ve had much of a problem. Usually when someone hogs the machine.
From Rules:
Commercial Use
- The Dallas Makerspace is based on open source ideals and thus encourages its membership to embrace those ideals as well, however members reserve the rights to all of their creations.
- DMS may invoice members for incurring costs to DMS significantly in excess of their monthly dues. Determination of excess to be submitted by Committee Chairs and the member billed by resolution of the Board.
Thank you so much for posting this. My understanding of this is that a committee chair determines whether excessive cost has been incurred and then they submit their determination to the board and the board has to vote on whether to bill the individual member. Does the board have to pass this resolution prior to use of the machine or can it be done after the machine is used?
I would imagine that the final bill could only be determined after use, but I would imagine that no company would be willing to use DMS machinery unless a rate was set in stone ahead of time (which I do not mind, since they have other options that they should probably be trying first).
Not necessarily. There are a lot of companies out there that will roll the dice. Of those, there are some that would not pay the bill anyway.
Many have strict PO requirements. Mine included, no po no pay. They didn’t get to be larger companies without screwing over people/companies in the process.
Edit, not saying that OP is going to do that. Just wanted to clarify.