CNCROi.com is a different kind of Custom CNC Shop

The first thought in many people’s minds when you mention a custom CNC shop is of a dark, dingy and loud place. CNCROi.com is very different.

Our shop isn’t dirty and dark

Our shop is relatively clean compared to some of the other CNC shops you may have visions of in your mind. The reason is simple, we are as lean as possible. It means that everything has its place in the shop. Sure, things do get messy if we are working through a few different contracts at the same time but we clean-up very good afterwards.

Other than the air compressor, it isn’t a loud environment to work in and ironically, it’s one of the best places to write these blog posts! Unlike a CNC router, there is no contact between our CNC laser and the material it works with. No pushing, pulling etc… just mostly noiseless production. What does make noise through is our extraction system but even that’s isolated in a big box you see next to our machine in the various videos I do.

We are on-demand

We don’t hold any inventory other than our samples we hand out to customers and at trade shows as we are an on-demand custom CNC shop. When we get an order for something, we do it ASAP and ship it out. That’s how we roll here and it allows us to keep the clutter to a minimum between production runs.

A lot of the off cuts from projects find their place in our samples of various shapes and sizes, and when there is no longer anything useable, into the recycling or fire pit bins.

We give updates during production

Something we’ve become known for at CNCROi.com with our clients is taking photos of the work we are doing for clients for production updates. There isn’t the traditional approach of you giving us a project, goes into black box, then you get something in the mail. It’s more like you give us a project, we send you photos before, during and after production and then we ship it out.

This means our customers know exactly how things are coming along as they are in the loop along with us through the production cycle. Any questions or issues, they are dealt with during this time as well.

We are FAST

We aren’t just suppliers to various companies but also customers of other companies far and wide as well. One thing that has always irritated me is production delays (along with lack of updates during production). When I set-up CNCROi.com, I made sure that when a project was finished, it was shipped out, not sitting on a shelf collecting dust.

The thought process behind this is relatively simple, the faster we get a project done (quality being more important than speed by the way), the faster you get the project in your hands and the faster we get paid. If we delay a project by a week, then we are just shooting ourselves in the foot as that means we will have to wait an extra week for you to get the products and us to be paid.

You don’t need to be an engineer or graphic designer

We talk your language, I don’t come from an engineering, graphic design or any other background really, I believe you shouldn’t have to either when dealing with a custom CNC shop. That doesn’t mean it won’t help, it just means that all the complexity involved with custom CNC isn’t something you need to know, that’s what I do. I translate your thoughts and ideas into something tangible.

If you are an engineer, no problem, we can talk your language as with graphic designers and even programmers but I’ve found keeping things as straight forward and simple as possible benefits all parties involved in a transaction. We can also conduct business in French and Mandarin as well, if you are more comfortable with that.

ON TIME, ON BUDGET

You know what I hate have happen? Approving a project and then getting the bill that has a higher value than what you agreed to. This doesn’t happen with us – unless you increase the quantity during production of course – regardless, if there are ANY changes, you know about them ahead of time. I think over the past year, we’ve yet to do a project that went over budget, sure, sometimes we screwed-up and it ate into margins but that was our fault, thus our hit, not our customers.

Related to being on budget is being on-time. Our customers can count on us when we say it will be ready for X date, it will be ready for X date… if there are any changes due to whatever reason, this is conveyed to the customer IMMEDIATELY. Again, over the past year, we have yet to be late on anything… and strive to actually be early when at all possible.

We are passionate about the company and its customers!

Did I have to write over 250 blog posts thus far on CNCROi.com? No. Did I have to make videos, photographs etc… absolutely not. But I think it’s important for customers to understand what we do here, how projects are done and most importantly, educated as to what our shop is capable of. This all takes a tremendous amount of time in addition to running CNCROi.com, doing marketing and so forth… but to me, it’s worth it.

There is always more than one way to get a hold of us, the easiest is by e-mail but we got a phone number too and online chat. I do advise though, it’s easier to send the project details by email first then having a chat on the phone, helps speed things up a lot having the files or ideas to read-up ahead of time so you don’t spend time trying to describe what I will eventually be sent.

We pay attention to details

There is a reason why we often ask for extra material when our customers supply it to us, we use it for testing before and during production. Some projects we color change using our fiber laser tube, a lot of small widgets so we like to spot check that nothing has moved when we use jigs and things of that sort. There is always some fine tuning involved with working on production and besides, having extras means if there is a mistake or we find a flaw with a particular unit, we can easily swap it out.