The Hunt is On…
I figured that it should take no longer than a week to find a suitable space for us to construct the prototype. Monday started out by dropping in on a commercial real estate broker and giving him the details of what we were looking for. I’d already spent some time on Sunday driving around looking at places from the outside.
So on Tuesday we were looking at places but most of what we saw were warehouse style condo units that were not really suitable for us. So we kept looking and expanding the search area, price per square foot and total space all while trying to stay within the budget.
Meanwhile we were also running the numbers to see exactly how much we’d be spending with Al to have the plugs milled now that we had a price per square foot from him. It turns out that we could save a lot of money if we had our own CNC machine. So, a few more hours spent researching the web and looking on eBay and just like that we found a 5-axis machine that was in our price range. After some negotiation we closed the purchase on Friday.
So now we are the proud owners of this bad boy.
It’s a machine that was custom built for Lockheed Martin back in 1998. How cool is that?
OK, so we still need to fly out to Colorado to do a final inspection and run some tests on it with a sample part file but provided that all goes as planned we will be trucking it back to Atlanta either late next week or the following week.
There are huge advantages to us having our own machine. It will save us a lot of time, money and potential hassles. As you might well imagine we are super happy.
OK, back to the search for a place to put it. So, on Thursday we had looked at a place that seemed suitable and we were getting ready to sign a lease on Friday before I double checked the vertical space required for our new baby and realized that we were going to be short about 6 inches in the new place. A quick run down there to check and sure enough it just wasn’t going to fit.
So, just like that we were back to square one. Fortunately with a single phone call I got onto a broker that just happened to have a building that sounded great and so we set up a time to meet him after lunch. We got up there and took a look and decided to go for it. We have to wait until Monday before we will know for sure whether we have it so I won’t go into detail until that’s a done deal.
All in all it was a fun and busy week. We didn’t waste too much time other than a trip to one place followed by a 30 minute wait for a guy named Jimmy who never showed up and never called. I guess he had better things to do. The place was really run down so it’s just as well.
Outside of the hunt for a place and purchasing the CNC mill I met with a few people at Cobb County International Airport that were super excited to hear of the Raptor and it’s future possibilities.
Jeff and I also took a ride out to Silver Comet field in Paulding which is west of Atlanta. It’s a beautiful new airport that is just crying out for a company like Raptor to come and set up shop. Who knows, it may become the future home of Raptor. You can check it out at pauldingairport.com.
It was a great week for us and we got a lot organized, not only with space (fingers crossed) and the CNC machine but also sourcing other tools and materials that we will soon need. On top of all that we now have 201 deposits in escrow which is an amazing milestone for us. Onwards and Upwards!
