Person

What Comes Off the Floor on Bellevue Street

WB Walt Brzezinski

People ask what a four person shop actually does all day, usually right before they ask whether we can make something. This is the honest answer: a mix of short production runs that pay the light bill, repair work that pays better than it should, and the occasional job that nobody else in the metro would touch. Photographs of finished parts all look the same, so instead here is what the work is, what it costs, and how long it takes.

01 The Work We Take

Three kinds of job keep the doors open. They are very different from each other and they need different things from a customer.

Overflow production

Short runs of 20 to 400 pieces that a bigger shop took and then could not fit. About half our hours.

A tool and die house in Macomb County lands a contract for 900 fixture plates and their capacity disappears. They send us 300 of them. We get a STEP file, a print, and a firm date. This is the least glamorous work in the building and it is the reason we are still here, because it is predictable and it is repeat. What makes it go smoothly: send the model, not just a PDF. Tell us the real date, not the date you wish for. And tell us which dimensions actually matter, because if every feature on the print says plus or minus five thousandths we will assume every feature matters and we will charge you for it.

One-off repair

Somebody brings in a part that broke and cannot be bought. Roughly a third of the work and most of the interesting days.

A printing press from 1974. A hydraulic press ram with a galled bore. A shifter fork off a truck older than most of my customers. The original manufacturer is gone or does not care, and the part has to exist by Monday. We measure what is left, decide what the geometry was supposed to be, and make it. Sometimes we improve it, quietly, where the original design was the reason it failed. Cast parts we usually machine from solid. Anything that has to be hard goes out for heat treat to a place on Dequindre we have used for twenty years, then comes back and gets ground.

Prototype and race work

Small quantities, fast, usually from a sketch and a phone call rather than a finished drawing.

Race shops in Wixom and Brighton, and two guys who build custom motorcycle frames. It arrives as a napkin drawing or a photo of a whiteboard. We talk it through on the phone, I draw it, they say yes, we cut it. The skill here is not machining. It is knowing enough about what the part has to survive to ask the right question before the material is bought. Ask what it bolts to, ask what the load is, ask what happens if it moves. Half the time the answer changes the part.
02 What Is In the Building

Machines, and why we keep the old ones when everybody says we should not.

The CNC side

Two Haas VF-2 verticals and a Mori Seiki SL-25 turning center, programmed in Mastercam, running most of our production hours.

The verticals have 4th axis rotaries and a decent tool library built up over fourteen years. The Mori has a bar feeder we bought used and rebuilt ourselves over two weekends. Nothing here is new. Everything here is maintained, which matters more. We check machine geometry twice a year with a ball bar and keep the results in a binder. Not because a customer ever asks, but because it tells you a spindle is going before it goes on a Friday afternoon with a job in it.

The manual side

Three Bridgeports, two engine lathes and a surface grinder. People tell me to sell them. They are wrong.

A single part, needed today, does not want a program. It wants a man on a handle who knows what he is doing. From print to finished part on a Bridgeport is often forty minutes for something that would take two hours to program, post, prove and run. The manuals also teach. An apprentice who learns to cut on a manual machine understands feeds, speeds and what a bad noise means. An apprentice who only ever pressed cycle start learns nothing except which button is green.
03 Apprentices

One at a time, always, whether or not it makes sense in a given year. Four since 2014.

How it works here

Four years, indentured through the local, 8,000 hours logged, and no shortcut on the manual machines.

First six months is deburring, saw, and running parts somebody else set up, plus sweeping, because the floor does not sweep itself and I did it too. After that a manual mill. CNC setup comes in year two. Programming in year three if they want it, and some do not, which is fine. What I look for at the interview is not experience. It is whether they can tell me about something they fixed. Anything. A dirt bike, a lawnmower, a bicycle. If a person has never taken a thing apart to see why it stopped, this trade is going to be a long four years for both of us.

We take applications year round and interview whenever the bench has room. Details and how to apply are on the shop site.

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