30 years ago this month, November 1983, J&D Machine started in the basement of our family home in New Hampshire. Back when we started, we only had a few cam machines and a cam shaper, and we did not know that we would become the successful CNC machining company we are today. 30 years later we only have CNCs (and a few more of them). In 1985 we moved into our first commercial space. We had 1250 square feet in our unit, and that’s when we added our first CNC machine. Back then we did a lot of electronics work as well as defense work. We stayed in that space for about 12 years and eventually tripled our space in 1997 when we purchased 3 identical units a few buildings over. This is where we still do business today. We currently have about 4000 square feet of manufacturing space, and 7 CNC machines. At our peak in 2009, just before the recession hit, we had 9 CNC machines.
Tag: Machine Shops
Forging Relationships with Other Machine Shops
Here’s an example of a job that was sent out for silver plating.
One of the best things you can do to grow a CNC machine shop is to develop long-lasting relationships with other machine shops. It’s important not to look at all the other businesses in your industry as competition, but as colleagues. Not only does it help to have support from the manufacturing community when you need it, but it’s also important to have trust in other machine shops that have different specialties when you need them. It’s difficult for a CNC machine shop to be good at absolutely everything. There are many jobs that we have to send out to our friends to make sure they are of the highest quality possible. We send out jobs for heat treating, grinding and plating, and we are lucky to have a few go to shops that we can trust with every job we send their way. Since turn-around time is usually stressed in our industry, we need to make sure that all our work is done right and on time every time. The bonus is that the work we send out is usually reciprocated when these shops get work in that requires one of our specialties, any small CNC turning or lathe CNC turning.