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Machinists. Who owns the chips?

Batesmotel

By Batesmotel
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Batesmotel Crew Member

Batesmotel

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A customer provides a block of metal to a machinist to be milled. After the project is finished, who owns the metal that was milled off?

The customer, because he provided the billet or the machine shop because they did the work? The customer understood he would get the chips back but now they won’t give them back.

This is regarding an extremely expensive alloy. The customer and shop are fighting over the chips. The mill will buy them back.

Thanks. 

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Batesmotel Crew Member

Batesmotel

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1 minute ago, Pima Pants said:

My vote is for the customer. But how did he "understand" that he'd get the chips or shavings back, written or verbal? And is the shop willing to pay a fair price for the shavings? This would make an interesting case for Small Claims Court.

Verbal. The original mill will pay over $1000 for the shavings. Titanium alloy. 

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Eric BGH

Eric

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I’ve worked in machine shops. The waste material was always kept by the shop. If the customer wants it back, that needs to be a conversation beforehand. It isn’t just a matter of handing them their scrap. The machine will need to be cleaned before and after and the scrap material handled differently than it normally would, to keep their scrap segregated from the rest. This would entail a little extra labor time. 

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janice6 Cross Member

janice6

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Let's say you have a block of Gold and go to a person to make something with it.  He delivers the thing you wanted, but it's half the weight of the gold you gave him to start with.

Do you give him the Gold in addition to paying for the processing?

Do you believe he owns the Gold just because he processed it?

Fact:  MY company was a large aerospace military contractor.  We delt in many precious metals that were processed for various applications.  We always took back our raw material if it had value or was a classified alloy etc.  Such as a special Titanium alloy, The base/dielectric material used to make printed circuits on that was a classified composition.

One time a vendor made some special printed circuits out of a classified material, then threw away the remains.  My company had them recover each and every sliver of that material and return it to us.

The reason we didn't claim the remenants of a processing was if the materials had little value or cost too more than it was worth to recover.

The real question here is, who owned the bulk material before processing.  Could they substantiate their ownership.  Did anyone lay claim to the remains of the bulk material during the agreement to process the original material into a final product?

Yes, this may get to be a matter of who has the most money to fight this in court.  Verbal contracts are difficult to verify.

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Fog Bored Member

Fog

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Eric is right.

Shop owns the waste and customers almost never want it back, those that do really don't have much experience with getting parts milled.

Most of the alloys that places will pay top dollar for have to be clean, meaning you can't have any chips from any other material in the bin, and they will check. For a one off part it simply isn't worth cleaning out the machine to the level needed to keep the chips from being contaminated. It can take all day to properly clean a modern CNC mill with a chip handling system.

If you are getting a whole run of parts done it can be worth it and then you get that written into the quote. From what I've seen your parts run is going to need to take about three days worth of machine time before it is really worth paying to have the chips collected clean and seperate. Then you have to provide the bins that fit into their machine, and arrange to have them picked up and hauled to wherever they are going. Less than about $4000 in scrap and it simply isn't worth it. 

Machine shops often factor keeping the scrap into the part quote, but that usually is only a factor if it's a larger order.

I've heard "You guys can mill this for the scrap." Meaning they thought the scrap would pay for the job. LOL

All this varies, even with all the alloys I've seen over the years I'm still surprised by some of the new stuff out there and the applications for it. 

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Fog Bored Member

Fog

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That reminds me. 

I know the owner of a sandblasting company.

He told me about a customer that was getting a bunch of stainless steel blasted for a specific finish and the customer provided several pallets of new clean garnet media for the job.

They blasted the parts and a week later the customer showed up to pick up the parts and wanted his garnet back too. He insisted it could be used "several times".

The garnet media was in the pile out back, mixed with all the other types of blasting media they used. Customer then wanted the job for free because they "stole" his garnets.

My friend got sued. He won and the guy had to pay for the blasting and fees. 

It boiled down to he never said anything about wanting the garnet back and it wasn't on the written quote for the work.

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M&P15T Bored Member

M&P15T

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4 hours ago, Wyzz Kydd said:

Businesses with that attitude don’t last unless they’re AT&T.

 

No. 

This is a weird, isolated incident. Not day-to-day, normal business. The owner of the material should have gotten everything in writing. It's their fault for not doing that.

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Wyzz Kydd Bored Member

Wyzz Kydd

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9 minutes ago, M&P15T said:

 

No. 

This is a weird, isolated incident. Not day-to-day, normal business. The owner of the material should have gotten everything in writing. It's their fault for not doing that.

I agree, it's the customer's fault.  Having said that, they won't see it that way.  They'll view it as the shop promised them something and then didn't deliver.  I don't think it's good business to tell a customer you're going to do something and then after the fact refuse to do it and tell them they should have gotten it in writing.  That's no different than saying 'my word is no good.'   Who wants to do business with someone like that?  Word of mouth advertising, yelp, BBB, tons of places to provide negative feedback.

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M&P15T Bored Member

M&P15T

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20 minutes ago, Wyzz Kydd said:

I agree, it's the customer's fault.  Having said that, they won't see it that way.  They'll view it as the shop promised them something and then didn't deliver.  I don't think it's good business to tell a customer you're going to do something and then after the fact refuse to do it and tell them they should have gotten it in writing.  That's no different than saying 'my word is no good.'   Who wants to do business with someone like that?  Word of mouth advertising, yelp, BBB, tons of places to provide negative feedback.

You're taking the customer's word at face value, without question. I'm assuming they're lying, which is what customers do left and right.

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