Hello all,
My name is Eric. As some of you may know I am a welder. I currently have left my job in the nuclear field to pursue a degree in welding engineering. Now my problem is that I am having trouble adjusting to a student’s budget. So now since that I have more spare time. I was thinking of starting a small fabrication venture. I would like your guys input on what you would like to see in a fabrication shop/store.

Thanks a lot
Eric

 

Where are you located?

 

that's an extremely vague question. are you talking about machinery, or consumables? are you talking about materials, or production parts? is this custom, or production level? machined parts, or cuts and welds, or both? there's a lot more into it than what you might be thinking

 

Op you should make parts you can sell in your shop

 

I am located in Pittsburgh PA. I own a small shop that I am currently renting out for income. That is where I housed all my welders and tools. I now have all the contents of my shop at my place of residents. I have access to cheap exhaust pipe both stainless and aluminized. I also have access to an industrial account where I can buy sch 10 tubing and fittings for really cheap. I also have access to a tubing bender because my family owns an exhaust shop. So I can bend, flare, expand tubing up to 3inch for no cost. So here is the idea I am kicking around in my head. I would like to make exhaust fitting, merge collectors, etc…. and sell the sch 10 stuff for a low price on an ebay store/ website. Then if I have any sales move into the bigger stuff like manifolds and such. I have a friend who is an online retailer and he can get me exhaust flanges, turbo flanges, v bands etc.... for cheap also. He wants me to prove myself before he will agree to sell my products on his website. I currently don't have any machining equip or real access to it at an affordable price at this moment.

 

I was thinking about starting out by making

Sch10 1-1/2 merge collectors (both polished and unpolished and welded and un welded.)
Aluminized merge collectors
Stainless steel x pipes
Stainless and aluminized reducers (ex. 3 inch to 2.5 inch)
Selling bungs
Selling the sch 10 stuff
Selling flanges (Only mild steel stuff because that all I currently have but will order stainless)

All tig welded.

 

If you made a high velocity merge collector (tight angles) there may be people interested. Most of what is on the market are rather steep angles and rather wide.

 

sweet thanks that's the kinda input I need. I am trying to think of ways to stand out.

 

Well, I've searched high and low for T4 twinscroll collectors and only found one that was close to what I wanted. I want something with 1.25" sch 10 pipe and no WG port since I plan on using it with an EFR 7163 turbo with the internal twin scroll WG. The closest I found was a 1.5" cast collector from EFI express/Treadstone performance.