Manufacturing Quote.com

[mroy0404]

Has anyone tried working with this company.They have jobs posted for you to bid if your a $4200.00 a year member.That would be o.k if the jobs came in.Any info on this would be great.

[cadman]

Unfortunately, about 2-3 years ago one of their reps talked me into subscribing. They gave me a break and only charged $2000 because the rates were going up the next week to its current cost and I have my own website, so I didn't need their subdomain.

My experience with MFQuote is:

Very little work was posted around my neck of the woods (Southern California). Most of the work posted was in the mid west. Great if you are in the area.

Lots of tire kickers posting work, their only intention to get prices, not award work. One of these companies turned out to be located 2 miles from my shop. My wife called the engineer who posted on MFQ and asked if they were outsourcing any work. His reply? "We already have shops we deal with". That job they posted? they cancelled it. Another clue about tire kickers - they never award the jobs they post.

Many of the companies posting work are price sensitive.

Most of the machining work is widget/production oriented, not the type of work I do. When I signed up the rep told me there are lots of jobs posted that are exactly what I'm looking for (3-4 axis prototype, molds, models). That turned out not to be the case. I was mislead about the type of work that gets posted.

With 2 months to go before my subscription expired I did finally win one job. I only made $900 so I lost $1100 to MFQ. Anyone paying $4200 better be able to absorb the possiblity of not getting any or very little work.

To be fair there are some shops that claim to have won quite a bit of work through MFQ, but I have some serious doubts about most of those claims. There have been many postings about MFQ on other websites and the majority of those posts are not favorable. I have talked to other shops who tried MFQ and not one of them got any work.

If you do decide to try this or any other similar online quoting service, do your homework and spend some research time talking to as many shops as you can who have used the service.

Good luck.

[DareBee]

I have looked into this as well and never joined.
I know a local shop (Ontario, Canada) who joined MFGQuote's big competition and his result was similar. I believe he went through a case of pencils and got 1 job in the whole year. Even with the $ exchange being quite good at the time, he couldnt get any jobs even when he figured his quotes had high potential of losing him money. There really doesnt seem to be any value-added incentive built into these services. IMHO

[HuFlungDung]

I did try it out. I kissed $4500 goodbye and spent a lot of time reviewing and doing quotes as well.

The whole thing is biased against the shop doing the work: pay to bid, spend your time doing the quote, bid against others who may or may not be bidding to make money at the job, frivilous requests for quotes from tire-kickers.

As well as all that, being north of the 49th did not help me either as buyers were unsure of how much hassle they would have importing across the line. It is simply impossible to respond in the short, unrealistic timeframe that some buyers had requested.

[Klox]

I like the term "tyre kickers"!

Klox

[Deviant]

Prior to looking at purchasing milling equipment, I signed up as a buyer on mfgquote.

I draw my parts up in solidworks, delivered drawings to multiple people.

However the majority of my quotes came back so high, that I could have purchased the machine, learned to do the work and still came out ahead.

The 2 people that came back within the range I expected, either partially returned my calls/messages. Either way, I had money in hand was was ready to order, but I couldn't find a machining company.

I'm sure those guys figured I was a tire kicker, but coming back on a prototype quote for well over 1500 bucks on something that was 2-3 bucks worth of material. (boggles)

The company I tried to go with, was closer to the 150-200 buck mark, which is what I expected.

So I guess it works both ways.

*shrugs*

[HuFlungDung]

Thats a good example of it working one way

[Datum1]

I recently looked into this MFGquote, but luckily I didn't fall for their salemanship. Current rate for SO cali. is over $5000 now, for none 1year contact is $6500...

My only problem with MFGQ is their annoying junk phone calls and Faxes and Emails..

Man, They would not leave me alone!!!

[DareBee]

I can understand Deviant's point of view; but as a tool & die maker and machine shop owner it is very normal to spend a day or 2 machining on a $5 piece of material. At $50 an hour you can figure it out.
People that do not understand the logistics of setups, accurate machining and/or the programming involved are still tire kickers in my books.
I have found that normally that really low quote is either giving poor quality, does his work on a mill in the garage (hobby,with no overhead) or made a mistake while estimating.
I get people in all the time "I want you to machine a new neck bridge for my guitar" I ask what a new 1 costs they they say it is really expensive about $85. I look at the part and it is going to take 3 - 5 hours to make (machining time + 3 setups then debur and polish) I low-ball a number of $200. They think I am nuts.
Go figure.
My 2 cents
Simply a business cant run at a loss for very long

[Deviant]

Don't get me me wrong, I understand about the hourly rate. I even planned for the parts to cost more for the prototype.

However, several of the parts could be made with a hand drill and a file. (grins)

There were 2 parts out of about 12, that were pretty precise. However, serveral of the pieces amounted to nothing more than 20mm across washer 6mm thick with a 10mm hole, and 2mm oring grooves inside and outside.

I had it priced at 1 item, 10, and 100, the price didn't drop much. I'd have to login to verify 100%, but I think they were over 30 bucks a peice.

For something that should take less 15 mins and could be made back to back. All the parts had the same diameter and same oring grooves to lower the number of tools.

Of course, I'm quite aware of a shop needing to make money. It's just a matter of being able to justify that cost as a builder.

[fastolds]

They tried to get me to subscribe. I said no way. I did how ever get into source authority. Haven't done any work through them because it seems like unrealistic timeframes. It use to be free and you paid a comission on the jobs. Now they changed and charge a one time fee. I didn't have to pay since I signed up a long time ago.

[HuFlungDung]

Originally Posted by Deviant Don't get me me wrong, I understand about the hourly rate. I even planned for the parts to cost more for the prototype. However, several of the parts could be made with a hand drill and a file. (grins) There were 2 parts out of about 12, that were pretty precise. However, serveral of the pieces amounted to nothing more than 20mm across washer 6mm thick with a 10mm hole, and 2mm oring grooves inside and outside. I had it priced at 1 item, 10, and 100, the price didn't drop much. I'd have to login to verify 100%, but I think they were over 30 bucks a peice. For something that should take less 15 mins and could be made back to back. All the parts had the same diameter and same oring grooves to lower the number of tools. Of course, I'm quite aware of a shop needing to make money. It's just a matter of being able to justify that cost as a builder.

Your reply brings up one other vital issue, and that is one of part tolerances.

Now you, as a buyer, may know what's important and what isn't, but how effectively is that information transmitted to the machinist? Because the machinist is always afraid that he's not taking enough care, he will be machining to the drawing tolerances. In many cases, these tolerances are simply the result of a "dumb output" of a cad system. It may be set to output 4 decimal places indiscriminantly, no matter what is really required in real life.

This can easily result in whole number multiples of increase in quoted costs.

So, if you want a part cheap, you must go through the drawing and tolerance it properly. Then, you must go through it again, and check for bad tolerance "stacking", which means the sum of all linear tolerances must be checked to not fall outside of certain gross limits.