How to Start a Machine Shop

We started Land Aero Group for the simple purpose: make cool things and make them well. Our founder is a Mechanical Engineer with over 30 years of experience in Aerospace designing and improving critical components. While we have an extensive background in Engineering, we quickly realized manufacturing is a different animal. Demanding expectations, short lead times, complicated assemblies, and high startup costs are a few challenges machine shops face on a daily basis. If you don’t have experience or think you can just shell out tens of thousands on a CNC Mill and get cranking, think again. This isn’t to say it can’t be done, but we make parts for demanding applications that are exciting and innovative - we’re not making bottle cap openers and paper weights. There’s nothing wrong with that though, it’s just not our typical job here. We make cool things and we make them well.

No rational person would battle the daily obstacles of buying new equipment, training new hires, pursing new customers, reorganizing production schedules, balancing financial books, ordering expensive materials, and engineering new designs all while maintaining relationships with current customers and constantly shipping quality parts out of the door just to do it all again the next day. We’ve learned that commitment to our brand values and guiding mission is integral to our success as we face these challenges. Make something and make it well. And that goes for anyone whether you’re a vlogger, programmer, accountant, engineer, or chef. When you make something you have an attachment to it and that passion should permeate everything you make.

If you can’t tell already, we believe that we are more than engineers and machinists; we are makers. We strive to support other makers trying to do good for the world rather than those who are out to make a quick buck. In fact, we tell our potential customers that if they are just looking for the lowest price, we may not be the machine shop for them. But if you truly believe in your idea and want to see it realized with unmatched quality and passion, then you’ve come to the right place.

Whether you are starting a machine shop, a bakery, a coffee shop, or an E-Sports team, you need to have a guiding belief in what you’re doing. That’s how you start something. That’s how you start a machine shop. Sure, you need to hire the best talent you can find and invest gobs of money in the best equipment, but what’s going to keep you going through the tough times are your values. If you were looking for a “how to” article on programming a CNC or learning what equipment brands to buy, this article did not answer those questions. This article is titled How to Start a Machine Shop, and you start with a mission, the why and not the what. For us at Land Aero Group, it’s to make cool things and make them well. We’ve made parts for nuclear reactors, space flight, aviation, gas turbines, and so much more. These jobs get us pumped in the mornings, along with good coffee and good music of course.

If there’s anything we can teach, it’s to just start making. You never know, you just might make the next best machine shop.

Thank you for your time.

Land Aero Group

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