> This is really standard fare with professional carpentry. I don't understand why so many people here are in shock at the concept of blade servicing.
For me, I'm just surprised that the economics of it can work. I'd imagine such a specialist is not going to charge less than a $100/hr so I wouldn't have expected the cost of repair to make sense. But interesting that it does!
Welcome to "hiring a human to do a few hours technical labor involving low-volume parts." I don't think it's crazy, I think we just can't fathom how inexpensive per-unit manufacturing costs are and how efficient modern logistics is.
>and therefore not give credence to the claim that SawStop is intentionally designing a poor solution in order to sell more blades
This is the most asinine argument I’ve heard yet, and I am not a fan of this regulation.
Blades are typically cheap and the ones that aren’t are often repairable after an activation. Also, Sawstop barely sells any blades - I don’t know a single woodworker or cabinet shop that runs their blades.
> I had an opportunity last month to buy some shop tools (table, radial arm, band saw, sanding equipment), so I decided to finally give it a real shot.
The radial arm saw doesn't get enough love, probably because it has space planning requirements that table saws can bypass on account of their portability.
I have both, and use them all the time, but the radial arm saw is by far my preference.
Also often-ignored but fully worthwhile: decent dust collection. Not a shop vac.
Nice work there. It gets faster, but the pleasure is in the doing.
> A basic table saw is $200 on Amazon, a miter saw is $200, drill press is $200, a planer is $500 but there's hand tools for that, etc. Low end but they'll work. Biggest expense would be dust filtration system if you don't want to vacuum constantly. There's probably more people with garage wood shops in the US than makers.
There's people with little baby jigsaws and a circular saw. Folks with actual lathes, CNC routers that could handle hardwood, actual band saws or full sized table saws? Not so much.
> You keep assuming that you need industrial machines that can be used 24/7 to do these things when in reality you don't. You can use hand tools even but those take more time.
No, I don't. A school shop maybe runs the machines for a few hours every other day. It's still expensive.
> I'd call that a professional space since it's used most of the time rather than occasionally.
Okay, well I'd call "$200 on Amazon, a miter saw is $200, drill press is $200, a planer is $500" a professional budget to most people in America, so let's call it even?
> Think about what your time is worth to an employer. The cost of a replacement part is probably relatively low compared to the cost of your time to fix the machine. Not to mention the opportunity cost of not having the appliance working.
My example was for an item in private use, not commercial. I don't know of anyone who actively bills for their own personal chores at home (such as, say, vacuuming or mowing their yard).
> You're talking about a situation where you'd like to get a price down to $8. It's very tough to make money selling physical products at $8 a pop, let alone things that must be custom made.
Maybe so, but you have to admit charging > $20 for a part that probably costs less than 50¢ leaves at least some room for competition, no?
I don't understand. You opted to buy the inexpensive store brand tools (Kobalt is Lowe's house brand) and now you're complaining that shortcuts were taken and it didn't exceed requirements or your expectations?
I don't walk into Harbor Freight and expect Snap-On tools.
>Also it is just a nice feeling, every time you use something you've repaired.
I feel it's my personality, but as soon as I fix anything I am overcome with anxiety every time I'm near it for fear the issue will return or that my repair was faulty and inevitably prone to cause further damage.
I don't know why I get this way. In spite of all my worries I've yet to truly fuck up an appliance I've repaired (furnace, microwave, dish washer, workout equipment, countless car repairs, electrical, plumbing, carpentry...the works).
As far as I've ever bothered to explore the feeling, I think I have an inherent trust that products are manufactured with care and attention while my repairs are often ad-hoc suitable replacements with salvaged parts, or even just duct tape and glue. Experience should tell me that things are often built to minimal passing standards so this idea that a manufacturing line that spits out dozens(?)/hundreds(?) of these products in a day are any better than my attempts. Lack of documentation is often a big one. If my repair seems to make more sense why wasn't it done like this before? Am I missing something that should be considered? What caused it to break that I haven't addressed? etc.
> A tool for metal stamping that costs me 5KUSD in China was quoted to me for 55KUSD in the East Bay. And, the 5K cost gets refunded to me after 40K pieces are bought...
Mechanical engineering in the US DRIVES ME CRAZY.
For electrical, China is 1/2 to 1/3 the cost. They also horribly screw up 1 in 3 that you have to redo completely. This is fine if you have the time. Otherwise, you go domestic.
Everything associated with electrical in the US understands that they are competing on turnaround, high-margin, high-value, and customer service. Yes, they're more expensive than China, but not unreasonably so.
The mechanical stuff is just totally out to lunch in the US. My gut feel is that mechanical shops in the US are in two categories: 1) competent, and running at 100% capacity or 2) incompetent, and running at almost 0% capacity. This is a recipe for frustration. You either can't get time ot can't get knowledge.
Consequently, all of the good electrical manufacturers I know have mechanical on site too (CNC milling, lathe, and probably injection molder). Even if it sits idle 95% of the time, that ONE time they need it NOW, it just paid for itself.
>I’m sure if you do woodworking for a living a CNC is amazing, but I’ll take the slow path on this.
Similar here. I do wood carving as a hobby. I could buy some carving tools, like chisels of various shapes and sizes, and a mallet or two, but I prefer to just use a knife - a normal kitchen knife, a Cartini, somewhat more expensive than a no-name brand, but still cheap. Of course, that means that I cannot create even moderately complex pieces, but that's okay. I am still a beginner at it, and I am fine with creating only simple stuff. I just do it for fun.
After some time, I do plan to research some carving tools, and may buy a few if I get good advice on it, and if the tools seem to make sense for me.
> I've been in countless meetings with countless executives where the Google Sheet is busted out featuring engineering cost and tool cost and where cost/benefit is aggressively decided.
That is the problem though. It isn't the engineering cost vs the tool cost. It is the engineering cost vs the tool cost PLUS the engineering cost of dealing with the tool once you buy it. Everything you have said so far leads me to believe you are missing this aspect of the cost of buying the tool.
You are right that there is a time and a place for buying over DIY, but in order to make those decisions reliably you need to know how much effort is going to go into dealing with the tool once you buy it. This isn't something you can figure out using Google sheets, because you have to actually evaluate the tool and get a sense of how dangerous the foot guns are.
You're probably right about scaling though. That sounds like an area where the ROI of paying someone else to do it is pretty good.
> After seeing the framework, I'm more than a little annoyed that I fell for this.
Me too. An I'm annoyed I fell for the lie that board level repair is impossible. What the manufacturers really should be saying is "it's impossible for us" because it's obviously possible for 3rd parties to do it and make a business out of it.
I'm willing to pay +$100 for something that's assembled with screws instead of glues.
> If this is expensive to you, then it’s not for you. This is for people who are making real money with these tools, not hobbyists dicking around.
That's an odd perspective. Imagine if this type of sentiment were applied to paint brushes. There is a lot of useful work that is not economically viable per se, and to discount that and to be pejorative feels wrong.
> Not really sure about its feasability, just incredibly dissapointed in the offerings that I was presented with in our free-enterprise system and perhaps a bit idealistic about locale-specific workshops that might serve consumers better.
This "free enterprise system" offered you the craftsman who - free of the shackles of guilds - would have given you a price that you didn't agree on, for the kind of work you would have liked to have performed.
I don't understand what you are disappointed about - that skilled craftsman get to charge well for their work? That cheaply produced products don't live up to the work of a skilled craftsman? Have you calculated the opportunity cost of doing it yourself?
For me, I'm just surprised that the economics of it can work. I'd imagine such a specialist is not going to charge less than a $100/hr so I wouldn't have expected the cost of repair to make sense. But interesting that it does!
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