How Do You Charge!

[Pure-Powder]

Was wondering how everyone charges out there cutting time? Do you charge by the inch, hour, by the job?
I know there are lot of variables.. Lets say John comes in and wants A bracket for his Widget, He has a picture in his hand, on a napkin! The pictures has all dimensions... He wants a bracket 8" x 8" with 3 holes in it, all cut out of 1/4" plate... What would you charge him?

[cam1]

Normally there is a fixed setup charge (say 15 min), to get the plate on the machine and to program the toolpath. Then there is the cost of the material. Customer pays the fraction of the price that the whole plate was purchased for, based on the area he uses.
The cost of the job is the running time of the program (total perimeter cut/feedrate).
Then there is the cost of the consumeables (you'll know after a while how many inches you can cut). Then theres heat, rent, electricity, and last of all your profit.
I'd start by billing out the machine at $75/hr, and see where that leads with your example....

regards

[patriot customs]

I can help you figure out an hourly rate for your machine, Ihave created some charts to calculate an accurate hourly rate. I use the cost of the machine, the hourly rate you pay your employee, your demographics, utilization hours, sales per square foot, overhead and finally desired profit.
I will try an attach some samples for a machine costing 12,000.00 to give you an idea. If you want to contact me privately with some of your numbers I can send you correct calculations for your shop. I will attach the sample calculations tomorrow as they are at my shop.

[Pure-Powder]

So cam1 do you charge by the inch for the perimeter... And how much! Thanks Dennis

[bekx]

hey, i have the same question...

i think you need 2 prices , one for one time jobs,like the braket, it must be calculated lenght/thickness/(material optional) +a flat charge of the design.

then u want to have a good price per hour for companies/big work.

@patriot , u have an excell sheet to calculate the price or u just did an algorythm

[cam1]

I charge by the amount of time it takes to cut the profile [inch divided by feedrate (inches/min)] this equation gives you time in minutes. You then take the hourly rate that you bill out at, and detemine the cost.
You can also just time the process (look at the clock) , my CAM software gives me an estimate.

e.g.
TOTAL inches cut = 300
Feedrate= 25 inches/min
Time = 300/25 = 12 min
12 min x 1 hr/60 min = 1/5 hr
1/5 hr x $75/hr = $15 just for the cut.

So setup = $15
Material = you figure out
Cutting cost = $15
Profit = you fill in

regards

[Torchhead]

You can never make money cutting a single bracket drawn in pencil by the customer. At least they won't pay what you need to get. It's almost easier to hand cut and fab a simple one-off part.

You will spend a lot of time quoting jobs working with a dozen variables. We do primarily decorative cutting from canned patterns (but with personalization). Other times we do variations on the patterns or get requests for custom stuff. The secret to making money on every job is to be able to quickly get through the art to part stream.

We found that being able to quickly quote jobs (virtually off the top of our heads) got us more work. It also kept me from wasting time with tire-kickers. Sometimes the best business is the job you don't get! I setup a simple cost per square foot for finished (powdercoated) and unfinished work that was wasy to calculate in my head. It derived the numbers from monitoring a few different type of jobs. I round up on the size to nearest even foot (of material).

A job shop needs to be more precise since it's assumed you are bidding against established shops. Unless the quantity of parts is enough to make a profit (typically at least a 4 x 4 sheet in size) we just politely turned down the job. There is just to much non-cutting time involved on a few parts to make it work.

Walk into a waterjet shop sometime and ask what 6 brackets would cost and how long it would take to get the order. You will discover why a lot of shops are buying their own plasma tables!

TOM CAUDLE
www.CandCNC.com

[patriot customs]

bekx, I dont have it in excel. I am attaching a jpeg with the basic calculation and an example. I purchased a book with this information a few years ago and have been using this formula for all my equipment and it has proved to be verry accurate. It was designed for the printing industry but I think it would be a good starting point for any type of manufacturing equipment.
if you want to purchase a copy of this guide, it does come with an excel template now. the link is www.quickcomponents.com/bhguide.html