Guide on Starting A Vending Machine Business

Wanting to start your own vending machine business? Vending machine business is one of the few legitimate business that requires little time and

effort.  A vending machine business with a snack vending machine or other vending machine can be a great idea to kickoff a career in. Find out why.
   
  An individual who intends to initiate a vending machine business has wide range of options to choose form. One may easily obtain these vending

machines from various vending machine manufacturers and suppliers.

The machines which are sold on the two principles of electricity and motion come in the market in various sizes, shapes, colors as well as prices.

These vending machines serve various purposes based on the particular location where they are used. The most frequently used vending machines are

certainly soda vending machines, followed by snacks vending machines which are very famous at colleges, hospitals, bus stands and airports.

There are several vending machines readily available in the market which offer items like candies, foods, coffee etc. Popcorn machines are still

another type of vending machines which are also very popular. They are very easy when it comes to usage and also they may be personalized for products

like CDs, DVDs, consoles, computer games, disposable cameras and many more.

Now the most important question is that from where you may obtain these vending machines? The answer to this question is that you may easily get a

vending machine of any type from Vending Machine Suppliers. Nevertheless, if you are wishing to start a new business, you should know the most

frequently demanded items which can generate great profits for you. Once you decide on the product, the subsequent decision is about the kind of

vending machine, that is, an electric or an auto motion machine.

Now another very crucial decision is about the site or location where you would be going to install your vending machine. The particular location

should be clearly in your mind as soon as you prepare yourself to start a business. Then you have to convince the owners of that particular site about

vending the brighter prospects of a vending machine.

You should take confirmation about the vending machine, from the owners of the location in black and white. But remember that you should not make a

long term agreement as far as the location is concerned, since you are not sure whether or not your business will flourish there.

After you are almost ready to kick off a vending machine business, you will be presented a vending machine manual with all the guidelines related to

starting a vending machine. A manual is actually meant to make you understand and learn the basics of Vending Machine Business.

Buy Pfaff Sewing Machines for Your Needs

Are you going to get a new sewing machine in this season? If yes then you should be well acquainted with the machine. You should be clear in your mind about the kind of machine

you want to buy. This could be confusing if you don’t have prepared a chart for that. This is not an easy job. It is also that there is no specific brand for that. Your

compatibility with the machine is one of the first priorities. This should not be neglected. The second thing is the intention. What is your reason for buying a new sewing

machine is? You should not neglect it.
  
  The thing is sewing is not just a job. It is also used for the purpose of entertainment. Many people try it as some kind of hobby. Hence you should decide first what do you

intend it for? A good choice would be the Pfaff sewing machines. These are one of the earliest machines made by the human beings. The name is due to the inventor of this kind of

machine. There are certain facts about which you should be fully aware before buying a new Pfaff sewing machine. You must be familiar with the price variations in the sewing

machine market.

There are a lot of companies in this business and all of them claim to be the best. Not everyone of their product is the best. It is also true that not every machine suits with

every seamstress. It varies from person to person. Their price could be anything between $100 and it could up to $8000 as well. If you want to buy a sewing machine for

completion of your college projects then you should better hang up with cheaper one, which will help you, do your projects and also they could be very easy to operate. There are

a number of Pfaff machines available in the market, which will cater to your needs without any discretion.

Hence everyone can find their first choices in the market of the sewing machines. It is very enjoyable. Besides the company is very trusted and you could fully rely upon it. One

of the many advantages about the sewing machine is that you could learn many things with these machines. This is not one machine that you will outgrow very easily. It is very

durable in that sense. You can grow with this machine. There will be many advantages with this machine.

HTEC Education and Haas Value Help Kut-Rite Thrive

More than 20 years ago, Rick Sollars worked by day at Elkins Machine and Tool – a small manufacturer in Romulus, Michigan – and studied business and engineering by night at Henry Ford Community College (HFCC) in Dearborn, just a few miles from Detroit.

One semester at HFCC, young Sollars decided to take a specialized class in CNC machining taught by manufacturing technology instructor Ken Wright. His decision to take that class – a forerunner to what is now the Haas Technical Education Center (HTEC) program – would result in many years of business success.

Sollars is now a partner in KRMC LLC (known as Kut-Rite), which manufactures and distributes concrete grinding, polishing, vacuuming, and scarifying equipment and tooling. The company’s four-building, 60,000-square-foot manufacturing campus in Romulus includes Kut-Rite; Multi Machining Capabilities, the precision engineering arm of the corporation; and the Elkins shop where Sollars worked 20 years ago, which serves as a general machining plant.

“Back then,” Sollars says, “we weren’t using Haas equipment in the shop. We were using lesser machines on the factory floor, with poor results. But when we shopped jobs out, those companies often used Haas machines. So I thought I’d take the class at Henry Ford with Ken Wright. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. We ended up buying a used Haas machine from the college. In fact, it’s still being used today, and I still consider Ken Wright a very good friend.”

The HTEC connection continues to flourish

Wright is famous in CNC-training circles for his reality-based, no-nonsense approach to education, teaching students to work smarter and faster to keep ahead of the global industrial curve.

“To succeed in manufacturing,” Wright says, “the learning environment needs to match the conditions students will encounter on the job. The HTEC program does that,” he says, “by linking educational institutions – high schools, community colleges, technical colleges, and universities – with local Haas Factory Outlets (HFOs), to provide cutting-edge technical manufacturing education.”

The approach obviously benefitted Sollars. The old Haas machine that Elkins Machine and Tool acquired from HFCC two decades ago now has plenty of company on the reorganized Kut-Rite campus. The inventory of machines includes four Haas CNC lathes: an HL-2 with bar feed; two SL-20s, one with bar feeder and one with live tooling; and an SL-30 with bar feeder. It also includes six Haas CNC mills: three VF-1s, a VF-2, a VF-4 with pallet changer, and a Mini Mill. And more are on the way, says Sollars; he plans to add a TL-1 Toolroom Lathe, a VF-1, and a VF-2.

Why the Kut-Rite road always leads back to Haas

It was the upgrade to Haas equipment that enabled a then-fledgling manufacturing firm to grow rapidly at a time when many American companies, especially in Michigan, were closing. Instead of focusing on just tooling support, KRMC “saw an opportunity to diversify” a decade ago, and branched out to create its own successful line of concrete scarifying, grinding, and polishing machines, as well as industrial vacuums – all under the Kut-Rite logo.

The Kut-Rite/Haas success story comes down to four key factors: eliminating high outsourcing costs, streamlining production dynamics, reducing service time and costs, and always staying with the machinery that gives the best value.

“Expanding capabilities is always an issue here at Kut-Rite,” Sollars explains. “It’s all about value. We were outsourcing heavily – 30 percent – at high cost; but once we started buying our own Haas machines, we were able to bring that work back into our facility.” As a result, Kut-Rite’s revenues grew by 300 percent – from $3 million to $9 million.

“When you’re looking at our relationship with the Haas equipment, you also have to understand our own production dynamics,” Sollars continues. “We’re a smaller production shop – more West Coast Choppers than Ford Motor Co. assembly plant. We do custom work without all the large mass-production, so the affordability and reliability of Haas equipment really pays off for us.

“And we found that Haas’ service is just plain easier for us than other companies. Through the HFOs – and we’ve got one right down the road from us in Flat Rock – any problems we have with Haas machinery are solved in a less-expensive and faster way. That’s a huge issue with any manufacturer. Sometimes with other machine makers, something goes down and you wait days for the maintenance guys to fly in. You spend tons of money on them, you miss deadlines, and it costs you on many levels. Nobody wants large maintenance bills and a lot of downtime. Those types of things can cost us thousands of dollars at a time.”

But Sollars doesn’t wear blinders. Like any businessman, he and his organization are always looking for the most bang for their buck. He readily admits that, on many occasions, he’s looked at other companies and other equipment.

“But it seems like no matter what we do or where we look, we always keep coming back to Haas,” he says. “It’s all about reliability and cost. Haas machines do the job for us. And when problems come up, it’s easier with Haas. And remember, the number one word is always value.”

Ease of use becomes Kut-Rite’s business model

“Much of our partnership with Haas equipment,” Sollars points out, “was about ease of use, ease of maintenance, ease of control. As we moved forward as a company, we used that model ourselves. Our equipment and tooling are all about creating something that makes the job easier for the operator. How it cuts his labor costs or time. That’s what caught our eye when it came to Haas machinery, and we’ve followed that train of thought in our business model ever since.”

Profits skyrocket as quality improves

By combining ongoing education with high-tech Haas equipment – and expanding its product line – Kut-Rite’s sales have continued to skyrocket.

“I really think a lot of our success has to do with our machining processes,” Sollars admits. “We take the extra step that a lot of others don’t; we stop and make sure that the post-weld machining is done well. Of course, it’s easier to do, because we have the right equipment, and we can take the time to do so.”

The process is best exemplified by the machining of motor-mount plates for Kut-Rite’s grinders. It’s a “machine-weld-machine” process. The steel plates are machined at the joints, and then welded together. They are then put back on the machine for finish machining to the design specifications. The centerlines of the inner diameter and outer diameter have to match, to prevent runout and vibration.

The materials involved are thick-wall steel DOM (drawn over mandrel) tubing and 5/8-inch-thick sheet metal, which are rough-cut to size before machining. Although flat sheet metal is usually machined on a mill, Kut-Rite engineers found that machining the parts on a CNC lathe worked best, and the Haas lathes offer the precision to do the work at a much lower cost.

The overall quality is something that Bryon Bruington, now technical sales director for Kut-Rite, noticed when he first joined the company. “One of the first things I noticed was that our equipment runs so smooth and precise compared to others on the market,” he says. “I think all of this ties together. It comes down to the precision manufacturing equipment, and the quality control. The Haas machines enable us to create that type of product.”

Knowing the equipment and pushing the envelope

Radu Stingu, another former student of Ken Wright, and now the operations manager at Multi Machining Capabilities, agrees. He adds that the basis of making successful products at Kut-Rite is directly related to having a solid understanding of the equipment you are using to produce those products.

“The key to precision machining is being educated, and understanding the Haas equipment,” Stingu explains. “When you understand the equipment, you understand its capabilities, you understand its range. Therefore, you are more successful at whatever you attempt to create. We’ve had a lot of success with what we make, because we understand the equipment we are working on.”

Walking across the factory floor, Stingu finds an example of his philosophy. In front of him is a Haas VF-4 CNC mill with a pallet changer. Inside is the gearbox/rotary head of a Conquer30 concrete grinding machine. The 30-plus-inch heavy-steel bowl needs nine holes machined along the outside edge, and four larger holes drilled on the inner hub.

“It’s a wide bowl,” says Stingu. “We used a smaller machine to work on it, but we were shutting it down constantly to move and reset the bowl. Instead, we looked at this mill. We couldn’t use the pallet changer, because the bowl wouldn’t fit through the slider door. Instead, we opted to put the bowl directly into the machine through the front doors. Despite the fact that the bowl is slightly wider than the table, it still works best for us.

“If you know the machines well enough, you know their capabilities,” Stingu states. “You can push the envelope.”

All of this is part of the reason Sollars continues to send Kut-Rite employees back to the HTEC at HFCC – at the company’s cost.

New products: America-made with American partners

Unlike many other companies in the concrete grinding and polishing industry, Kut-Rite has concentrated on creating and manufacturing American-made products, while teaming with firms that do the same thing – like Haas.

“Very few companies are actually building stuff here,” Sollars says of the concrete grinding and polishing industry. “They are shipping it in. That’s not us. We do everything here, and it was important for us to team up with someone else who was building things here, too. And that was Haas.”

Impeccable Pedals

As cycling enthusiasts and industry insiders know, the past decade has proved to be an exciting, but sometimes rocky, ride for Switzerland’s most famous bicycle manufacturer, BMC. Originally founded by an ex-pat Englishman making bikes for the British brand Raleigh, the company was bought in 2001 by Swiss businessman Andy Rihs, who built an impressive new factory in Grenchen, near Bern, with the simple, unequivocal aim of creating a bike and a team capable of winning the Tour de France.

Victory eventually came in 2011 with Australian rider Cadel Evans, and since then, BMC’s reputation as a maker of the most desirable, technologically advanced bicycles has careered ahead. Now, as well as the team machines, the factory makes custom-designed and hand-finished carbon-framed bikes for pro and amateur racers and wealthy dilettantes.

At the other end of the price spectrum, BMC’s mainstream production frames are made in China and Taiwan, where permanently stationed, company-sanctioned engineers scrutinise quality before allowing bikes to be shipped back to Europe.

“When they arrive here, the bikes are 80 percent ready to ride,” says Martin K?nzig, BMC’s COO based in Grenchen. “We simply add the wheels and forks. It’s only the really high-end bikes – the ones with the options – that we make here in the impec factory from start to finish.”

And if the custom bikes themselves aren’t impressive enough, visitors to Grenchen can marvel at the multi-million-Euro, three-stage, carbon-tube manufacturing process, which dominates the impec factory and, claims Mr. K?nzig, is the only one of its kind in the world. At present, around 4 kilometres of carbon goes towards making every BMC impec frame.

“The seamless carbon tubes are the critical and distinctive components of a BMC impec bike. Our process starts with braiding, where each tube is robot loaded, then spun with four layers of carbon fibres over a silicon body.”

The robot reads what type of tube it is, loads the appropriate programme, and starts the process to apply the carbon fibre, taking around 7 minutes to complete operations, depending on tube length and complexity. The second process is resin injection, where the tube is moulded to shape and, as the name suggests, is injected with resin and set hard. Finally, the tubes are trimmed to size by a six-axis robot and a diamond saw. “We currently produce around 1300 bikes a year using this setup,” Mr. K?nzig says, “but we have capacity for more than 2500.”

Smaller and less obtrusive than the tube-making machines, but just as important in the manufacturing process, is the company’s single BMC VF-4SS Super Speed CNC machining centre, which arrived in 2010.

“The BMC is used to create jigs and fixtures, plastic components, and R&D or prototype parts for new bikes,” Mr. K?nzig explains. “In terms of the latter, we design components using 3D CAD, and then machine them on the BMC; we find it quicker and easier than using other technology, such as 3D printing. Plus, you get a part with true mechanical qualities that’s fit for testing in real-life situations.”

The BMC at BMC is also earmarked for future production duties, adds Mr. K?nzig. “For the next generation of product, one idea is to use the VF-4SS to mill frame tubes, to allow them to be located closer together. To implement this strategy in the most effective manner, we’re thinking we’ll need a second VF-4SS. Ultimately, the plan is to make a completely new bike using less parts than on the existing one.”

BMC rarely produces tubes with a conventional round cross section. “We don’t do this for reasons of technical advantage,” says Mr. K?nzig, “it’s more a design feature that reflects our brand. But, by doing so, we’ve made it hard to make the necessary tooling.” Which was the reason the company bought the BMC in the first place.

When the current production model was being developed in 2010, the engineers at BMC were under pressure to finish the prototyping and testing, and start manufacturing.

“One of our bottlenecks always seemed to be getting jig and tooling parts, on budget and on time, from external suppliers,” explains Mr. K?nzig. “We decided that the system was too expensive and too time consuming. One of our engineers had previously worked for a company who made mechanical parts. He was already experienced with BMC machines and was a big fan of them, so the decision to invest in the VF-4SS was easy. As well as using it for the fixtures and tooling, we also use it for a few of the smaller parts found on some models. We have also begun to mill plastic parts – the tube joints. After we made some technical design improvements, we changed the shapes a little. Instead of destroying and remaking our injection moulds, which would have been very expensive, we decided it was better to machine the parts using the BMC mill.”

The company’s high-specification race machines used in the Tour de France and other major events are also custom-built and finished in the Grenchen factory. The colour of the frame, for example, is changed to reflect the position of the rider: green for points leader (most consistent finisher), white with red polka dots for “King of the Mountains,” or yellow for overall race leader. Putting a value on bikes tailored for individual riders and customised for different events is nigh on impossible.

“Customers who buy the top-end bikes want something very special. For production bikes, our biggest market is Switzerland,” says Mr. K?nzig, “although we’ve made good gains recently in Germany and France, and sales are now picking up in Italy. The USA is also one of our growth markets, as is the UK. In all, we make around 45,000 production bikes a year. It’s not possible to compare BMC with a manufacturer such as Giant, for example; they make a couple of million bikes a year. But, if you look at the average price of their bikes, they’re addressing a different market. For the impec bikes, our customers can have race fit or performance fit (higher, safer, and looks better), while we have spread the use of Shimano Di2 electronic shifters across all our products. In fact, over all road bikes, we are now one of the biggest purchasers worldwide of the Di2 group sets.”

The growing global demand for bikes is important to BMC; but clearly, it’s the high-end, custom-built models that are turning what once was a small-time, relative unknown into one of the world’s most desirable cycling brands. Having flexible tools and manufacturing processes allows the company to experiment with product designs and innovations, and just as importantly, make the jigs and fixtures it needs for its new frames and components.

“The BMC VF-4SS has already proved itself to be a very important part of our operations,” concludes Martin K?nzig. “We’re currently only using it 70 to 80 percent of the time, and every day we find new things to do with it. It’s very easy to programme and operate, and it’s very reliable.”

Building race-winning teams and bicycles is largely about eliminating problems before they occur, which is undoubtedly what Andy Rihs had in mind when he created his “impeccable” factory. It’s no coincidence that for the factory’s only CNC machine tool, he chose a BMC.