I don't know what swiss rates are these days, been alot of years since I been around any in the shop. But I know for a 200 piece order, they are going to want to sure as hell make more than $7 per part!
Either that, or they have a machine open with no work booked, and have some aluminum bar stock sitting around that is "free material". Not to mention, wouldn't 3/4" (not round!) aluminum bar stock be a pain in the ass for a swiss with the bushings and all that?
For the record, I just sent the fellow a quote. While I will not say on here what I quoted, I did come close on the price he was saying was competitive. And no, we do not have material on the rack. I just can't deliver in the time allotted.
As to running aluminum in a swiss, it is not a PITA if you buy the right material. In fact, it's downright easy. And if you have a "convertible" swiss, as we do, it completely takes bar stock tolerances out of the equation if you need something like this to be close tolerance. From what I saw on the print, there isn't anything on there close tolerance enough for me to mess with the changeover. We could run this with cold finished stock.
It was also mentioned above that the chamfers are an impossible feature to make. If you look at the 2D print, it explains the transition for what they need, which is not as pictured in the solid model. Unfortunately, 3D modeling is not perfect, unless you want to spend lots of extra time to make it exact. For most parts, it is not worth it.
Finally, the cost to produce a part vs. buying the finished product will always be very different. When you take into account that distributors and retailers typically want a margin equal to the value of what they are paying or more. Given this extremely generalized approximation but for conversation sake, if you are buying from the retailer at $100, you can generally bet that they are paying approximately $50 for it. The distributor that they bought it from likely paid around $25 for it. And the company selling it as their branded part, bought it from someone like me in the $7-10 range. They then added their warehousing, repackaging and/or assembly process, original design/prototyping, marketing, and liability insurance costs, plus some profit margin that pushed up the price from the $7-10 range to the $25 that they sold it to the distributor for. Again, this is an over-generalization, but rest assured, when you go to Walmart and you see something being sold at 50-60% off on clearance, they are still making money on it. They just want the quick sale. Typical retail markups in a grocery store are 200-500%. That means you are paying 2 to 5 times what the retailer paid for it.
Please do not burn me at the stake for the above, as I know every situation is different, and I 100% realize that my numbers are not accurate. All I am saying is when you think about the retail price of something and compare it to the manufacturing cost, they are going to be different. Just remember that everyone that touches that object gets some piece of the pie and the more layers, the more the price goes up.
