Hey guys im new here awesome sight. I am looking into starting mobile line bore and welding company. Is there a demand for it and does anyone have any helpfull tips. Thanks
Well we have a man around here we use and he is busy all the time and travels all over the state and even into Ohio and NY.
Thanks seems like there is a lot, of work out there for it. I woild like to travel doing it as well.
If you do good work, charge reasonable rates and show up when you say you will, you'll have to turn your phone off on weekends. By the way, when you get to the point of having too much work, raise your rates.
Question: Do you have around $80-90k to invest in equipment..? Because that's about what a decent line boring & wire welder will cost, not including the actual welding machine. Judging by what we used to get charged for line boring it is an extremely lucrative business - that's why finally we bought our own machine, and the number above is what it cost. We estimate the machine will pay for itself inside 18 months.
What sort of equipment is in the area? You need some industry that runs machinery hard so you have a constant supply of worn our gear,preferably mining and quarrying. A few companies doing civil work as well with diggers (20 ton+) and loaders. Don't assume you are going to make a decent living boring skid steers and small excavators. If you have that my advice would be to equip yourself with decent gear which as Nige says is going to run to 80K plus and then as you establish the business get more gear to allow you to take on a bigger variety of work.The type of work you do will dictate what you need to buy. As said it can be lucrative but only if you have good work,good clients and you provide a service that is ontime, quality work that fits together properly after you finish it. If your work all goes together sweetly the fitters won't say anything. If something doesn't line up it will be all over town in ten minutes.
Do I really need a 80k dollar setup to get started. I was looking at bore systems for 25k or so I already have the machines. I would like to start with smaller bores. What is going rate for boring/welding
There is a lot of quaries around and some good size dirt moving companies. I also would like to do gearboxes and tug boat stuff.
Start wherever the demand is, if you can get enough work to make it pay on smaller stuff, go for it. You can always grow into the bigger jobs. :my2c
You can start off with cheaper gear and some make their own. I started with a professional and that allowed me to take on a few contracts that put us on our feet within the first 12 months. I couldn't have done than work with cheaper machinery.
What are you going to be boring with that, Tonka toys..? Problem is as Ray says you won't be able to make a living boring small stuff, the bigger kit is where the money is made. My estimate of $80k was probably a bit conservative because as I said before that only includes the suitcase wire feeder and not even the welding machine to supply the power. Our rig cost us $85k 2 years ago, it would probably be more than that today. Add a 5-600 amp diesel welder on top of that at about $25k and you're already up to $110k before you look at a vehicle to move it around with.
I have a commander 500 welder and will use a LN25, can you give me some links to the bigger units you guys talk about, I'm open for suggestions to succeed in the industry at my last job we made one for boring gear boxes what is going rate or do you bid jobs
linebore 141, Check out "shop talk" page 5 is "some work pictures" from TomV. It appears Tom does just fine on the smaller stuff. There should be more money in the big mine stuff but there is also more risk. Besides I'm the kind of guy that would rather be on some farm one day then on a logging job the next, variety is what fuels my fire......TIO
I was wondering if the boring machine will apply the weld bead in addition to doing the boring (machining) process?
IMO that is the best set up. My gear does that. Most equipment will come with a separate system to do the welding which if used correctly does a good job. Plenty of pics of my system here
Ray what brand do you have, would I be better starting off smaller the system I looking at does 1.6-11" then step up to a big system
Ray has a Hoffman machine, we have a Climax. Both will wire-weld the bore and are extremely good machines. There are some photos of our setup on Ray's thread as well. I'm sorry if I sound negative but I get the dreadful feeling that you are thinking you can "do it on the cheap" (in other words you are thinking you need far less funding than you really will need to get started) and if you go into the deal underfunded from Day 1 you will be setting yourself up to fail. Mobile boring and welding is an extremely useful service if done correctly, the reason we bought our own machine was because we were being raped having outside contractors come in and do it. We were paying contractors upwards of $30k for boring 6 x 8"-diameter bores each one about 10" long.
As a comment line boring is only a small part of Tom V's business. I spent a lot of time on the phone to him when we were looking to purchase our boring machine. He does lots of other things besides boring. The financial viability of a person setting up as a mobile line boring company, a one-trick pony if you will, compared to Tom V who does pretty much everything could not be more stark. And how much money do you think Tom has invested in that rig of his plus all his equipment..? I'd guess the sunny side of $500k.
I totaly understand where you are coming from, I will have to look into thoes gears. I dont want to go in it cheap. How do you charge on jobs, by the hour, bid the job, or by the bore
You need input from RayF or Tom V on that. We do it in house so we don't price jobs per se, we just go ahead and do them. However as I said before we estimated a 12-18 month payback for a total investment that must be around $100k by now. Here's a link to Tom V's thread......... You'll need time to read it, there are 60+ pages of it.
Nige, When your company started to do your own line boring did you have someone employed that had previous experience with line boring ? Or did you have someone sent somewhere to be trained ? Obviously this is not a skill that can be self taught.
We run a York bar with a BorTech welder with all optional equipment, welder is Miller AirPac. We usually work for sandpits and rock crushers, sometimes do as many as 2 - 4 jobs a week. Usually don't have to bid nothing. We charge $125 per in the field What you have to watch for is holes that are egged bad and who did it before you as far as metal prep. As far as boring bars and welder, we started with the basics and added to as needed. I've got almost two of everything except for the BorTech and had a toolbox built by DuTec to hold all of it that can be lifted with a crane or forklift to set out next to job and made a rack to hold my bottles and bars that you can also set out at jobs with out worrying about securing bottles. They are right $80,000 wouldn't touch it Thanks and Good Luck
Nige recently had some pictures of a large loader frame that cracked due to mistakes in a previous line bore job. If you are starting out with limited knowledge and assets, I wonder if part of the equation is some type of liability insurance.
We actually hired a couple of guys as mechanics/technicians who both had previous machining experience and had them trained on the boring bar plus the welding side. The great thing about the wire welder is that it is relatively simple to set up. Their prior experience in machining is/was a great help. I had completely forgotten about that. It's opening another completely different can of worms. Rework at your own expense can be very costly.
I will also be doing other fabrication as well. 125$ a hour seems cheap around here 135 is going rate for a mechanic from Cat or Rudd. How often do you need a truck with a crane while line boring I would think it is a must. You guys are great help understanding the needs and what goes along with the job
Has anyone got into boring strut tubes and other parts of tug boats
I don't think a crane is an absolute necessity, however if you have a hydraulically-driven bar like ours (Climax B5500) a crane would be more than handy to load/offload the HPU. Also remember the boring bars are heavy. Our longest bar is 16ft and takes 2 guys to lift, even then it's a struggle - a crane would be easier.
Nige. How big can you bore and how small will it bore
Our bar is 2-1/4" diameter. The standard machine will do bores from 2-1/2" up to 24" diameter. With a "small bore kit" it will do bores down as small as 1-1/4" diameter. We looked at a slightly smaller size machine that ran a 1-1/2" bar but it could only go up to 12" bores at a stretch so we figured out if we went to larger bores we would lose out on accuracy because of multiple factors. We are generally boring diameters from 8-14" and single bores anything up to 18" long to a specified tolerance of +/-0.002" on a fairly regular basis. Some boring machines you can couple bars together for longer spans, you can't do that with a Climax machine, at least Climax don't recommend it anyway. That's why we have a 16ft long bar for our longest job which is a shovel bucket. http://climaxportable.com/products/bb5000-boring-machine/
I was talking to a guy today that said that when doing say EMD journals you need at least a 3" bar or you will have chatter and out of round holes. Seems like cutting speed and bearing placement would fix that any input thanks
EMD? As in line boring crank journals for the crankshaft? I would think that a LOT more demanding than the run of the mill line boring jobs, pins and bushings are very forgiving in comparison.
That was my first thought also. Crankshaft journal boring is a whole other ball game. Instead of working to +/-0.002" as you would typically on a pin bore you'd be working to something like +/-0.0002". That's an order of magnitude difference that I would imagine requires a completely different machining setup.
Crankshaft bores with portable equipment are a completely different ball game. I have done a couple of Cat 3612's. They have two oversizes, a millimetre each. There is absolutely no room for any misalignment on that sort of work. Also to do them you need the backup of a very well equipped workshop. The alignment tolerance on a 3612 is 0.0015 between journals and .003 over the 7 bores. The first block I did I got 0.0015 over the 7 bores. After completion I felt like I needed a week off! The brain work is exhausting. You can allow a week to document the alignments,set it up and cut it. The bores are actually easy to cut. I think its a thou either way of size. With ship work its also a specialist game.Not all that hard to do but nothing like doing earthmoving gear. I've done a bit of it. Like the engine boring game I decided you need to do one or the other. Boat work involves a lot of long set ups. I've done prop shaft bores that involved alignments of a thou over 25 feet. Also often you have to set support bearings a long way apart which means you need to have bearings that follow the cutting tool down the bore. All easy enough if you do it all the time but its hard finishing a 988 bucket which is a brain dead job and then doing a prop shaft or a engine block which is 500 times more complex the next day.
Hay Now! You saying my 988H is not as important as a super tanker hauling a million gallons of oil across the ocean? Heck if that propshaft don't slip in just get the BFH! If the prop falls off just hand the crew the paddles!
No but I can do your 988 bucket with my eyes shut. I get sea sick so someone else would have to take out the BFH when that shaft screws off. :tong
So do you think equipment is more steady and profitable. I am going to talk to a guy that is retired from it and still does it here and there may be a better start than throwing 100k+ with no for sure work
Problem is some of those doing the line bore and bucket work seem to be doing just that! We had a 980G bucket rebuilt and the one end of cutting edge was about 1 1/2 inches off the ground when the other one was touching!
Hey, it's straight, nobody said anything about level! ointhead
I don't know whats steady and profitable in your area. Thats research you have to do. I would assume there isn't a heap of big engines there that are to big to for engine recon shops to machine. If you have a lot of earthmoving and mining they are going to wear out the gear. Any marine work and how much? Who does line boring there now? All things you have to sus out.
I have been talking to some guys that do it and they said that in the area its pretty scarse right now. Im going to start with mobil welding and hold off on the line boring for the time being. It is still something that I would love to do one day.