Newbie- Got any advice on bidding jobs??

[ttorqueshop]

So I'm kind of new to the whole bidding jobs side of the business and was wondering how some of you guys bid your jobs. How do you determine what it costs to make a part and how much you're going to charge for it? Or do you just charge an hourly rate and leave it at that? My problem is that I have customers who are wanting very low quantities of the parts that they're ordering(As in 10-25 parts that aren't very big). I end up spending more time programming and setting up the machine than I do actually running the parts. It's taking me all kinds of time to get these jobs done and I'm not making much money off of them because of how few parts there are. So what do you guys do in a situation like that? Any advice would be much appreciated!!

ttorqueshop

[Dr Pete]

The easy solution is calculate how much you need to make off your time to make 10-25 parts on these small orders.
From these numbers arrive at a minimum order charge that you have to take on a job in your shop.
We get people all the time that want us to machine a part that should cost $50.00 to make.
But it takes us 3 hours to set up the job @ $65.00 per hour so we loose $ if we charge just the cost of the part.
You need to be able to estimate how much time it's going to take to do the complete job including any programming and setup.
Most of the time running small parts as a job shop you give it your best shot and on some jobs you make more $$ than others, it's the nature of the beast.