A few comments;

Putting up a separate building tends to raise the profile of the whole
thing to the point where it hits the local building officials' radar.
All of a sudden they take a LOT of interest in your activities, may tell
you that you can't do "light manufacturing" in a residential area or
similar.

Pricing your product is weird. As long as you are doing it as a hobby,
just want to cover the costs of your equipment, make a few bucks for
beer you get one set of costs/prices. As soon as you want to make real
money, pay yourself some semblance of an honest wage, actually pay down
the cost of your equipment, you get another set of costs/prices. The
latter is usually at least double the hobbyist version.

Then there is the risk part. In our lawyer happy society, it's really a
good idea to carefully review what kinds of things you make. Liability
insurance starts looking like a good investment. The company I used to
work for flatly refused to do any aircraft related work. Too much
liability. (Of course the fact that there wasn't much money in it
compared to our mainstream business had a lot to do with making us not
do what we said we were not going to do!)

I'd suggest that you figure out if your 'business model' actually works
before going too far. Pick one of your pet projects, make the parts in
the current shop, set up an e-bay store, see what happens for a few
months (or even a year). Keep accurate records of your out of pocket
costs and your time. Things like your CNC program development time, your
setup time to get a fixture mounted and aligned in the mill, the actual
run time, the time spent boxing stuff and running off to the post
office/UPS store, etc etc. See what the market will bear for pricing.

All that said, I know a fellow who lives in the country on a 20 acre
hobby farm. Has a mail order ONLY business making high end race ATV
parts. Has 2000 square foot office/warehouse/shop/garage to work out
of. Makes a comfortable living while employing his son part time as a
welder and his wife half time as the accountant/shipping clerk. Sounds
like a decent life style to me!!! Go for it. Just make sure you know
what you are doing before you commit a lot of time or money.

RogerN wrote:
Due to underemployment I like to do challenging hobby projects at home
mostly because I enjoy it, but it's nice to make something that's useful
too. I like automating equipment, cnc, and that type of work. Trying to
think what I'd like to be doing, I thought I'd like to design, build, and
repair automated equipment and automate manual machines.

I've been thinking about putting up a small building for my home shop and
start my own mini (low dollar home shop style) manufacturing business. When
I come up with a project idea, such as RC varmint control, I could program
the CNC machines to make the special parts needed and sell parts on the
internet for others interested in similar projects. That project would need
a camera to scope adapter, night vision infrared illumination, and a turret
type mechanism to point at the target. When I make parts for myself, I
could make a few spares and offer to sell them over the internet. If any of
the parts became hot sellers, I could set up to produce more.

The work would all be done on the side as a hobby and if I didn't make a
dime I wouldn't loose much since I'd be using the equipment I already have.
The idea is that once I do the setup and programming, the CNC machine can
make additional parts in a fraction of the time it takes to setup and make
on manual equipment. So even though any HSM'ers could easily make a camera
to scope adapter, they may not want to mess with it if they can buy one for
$5 that I could make on my CNC lathe in 5 minutes.

Another incentive for doing this is that my son in now 10 years old and he'd
be able to start running machines in a few years. He's interested in
mechanics and electronics and I think it would be good experience for him.
Best case, things could take off and my son could have his own business,
worst case he'd have experience with manual and CNC machines, operating,
programming, repairing, etc.

I know there are a lot of experienced business folk on here and thought
there might be some helpful advise and or direction..

Thanks!

RogerN