I'm in SoCal and the situation my be different but I doubt if it is
worse then in the rust belt. We have been in business for over 25 years
now, have excellent CNC and conventional equipment and I am having to
feed the company right now. Haven't had a paycheck for several months.
We may not have done everything right but the current climate in
manufacturing sucks. I would suggest you forget your own shop and use
the money to develop an unique product or buy a going manufacturing
company in a niche. We seem to lose a customer to China as fast as we
can find new viable customers. Since we do CNC turning and milling,
small lot stamping, light plate fabrication, conventional machining
and sell used machines we should be very prosperous but we can't get
decent prices for any of our areas of expertise. I am not a negative
person and intend to stay in the machine shop business but to start a
new shop is is just plain silly. There are 5-10 shops a week closing
within 50 miles of mine and my neighbor is on overtime and buying new
machines to keep up with his one customer. Leigh@MarMachine