unusualfabrication
+1y
I'll break it down a little more than Brian. Shop owners have machine costs, material costs, consumable costs, overhead, and of course labor costs. Wether you lease or own your shop, tools, and machinery it costs money. Electricity to run heavy machinery and welders cost money. You have maintainence and upkeep on all your equipment that costs money. It costs money to have air compressors, mills, lathes, TIG welders, MIG welders, gas and wire for welders, plasma cutters, any CNC machines, depending on how you notch your tube ends (end mill, hole saw, chop saw, bandsaw), drill press, drill bits, end mills and shell mills for making cross shafts, taps, reamers, and on and on and on...... I think alot of times people forget about all the cost involved in producing any part. It's real easy to say that you can make a set of tube arms in 2 hours with "HF Pipe Bender" and get rich but your forgetting about all of the other operations that need to be done in order to make a set of arms 100%. Now with that said, you can build a set of arms without all the tooling but IMO they will look pretty rough and it won't be very efficient. I know that atleast 3 people that have posted in this thread build parts full time. Its not a hobby, we're not building one set for our truck or one set for our buddies truck. We don't have a 9-5 job where we mooch off our employers machinery, tools, consumables, and electricity. Building and selling parts puts food on the table and a roof over the head.