What's new
What's new

What is your waterjet run cost?

DRobs86

Plastic
Joined
Apr 26, 2019
I'm analyzing just what it cost us to run our waterjet. It's an older Flow Mach 3. When it works right, it's the best tool in the shop. It's near netting stuff for the mills or running big parts we couldn't make otherwise. I'm starting to question the benefits of owning it though. I've had it nearly 3 years and I'd put my cost, less operator labor, at about $40/hr. That's garnet, electricity, repairs, and outside maintenance (which make up maybe $4/hr).

It's an older model so there may be more in repairs there than you'd see in a new model. A shop down the road has one that they will run for $80/hr. I've moved work to theirs whenever ours is down or can't keep up, but after they pay for an operator, insurance, other overheads, etc, I'll be darned if I can see how they are covering the cost of the machine if they are running a similar O&M cost as I am.

What are you seeing on your water jet?

Thanks
 
Waterjet’s are expensive and slow. $35/hr in perishables alone is industry standard. If you have the capacity on the mills maybe consider switching A few parts from near net to a SQ. Saving 10 minutes a part on the WJ might’ve worth 10 min a part on the mills.
 
was never privy to input costs, maintenance was done in house and rarely outside OEM help.so that saves downtime and shop charge out rate, its not hard to change orifices, cylinder seals and valves and seats which are the common things.
Charge out rate was $3 Aud a minute cutting time for WJ. Should hit somewhere around 50 percent duty cycle. ie 50 setup 50 runtime on small jobs. Big nested jobs its even better.
 
I like to bill $5.00/min but like versus being able to get that are two entirely separate items. $40.00/hour sounds fair. The OMAX rep said several years ago that anything under $300.00/hour was a mistake.
 
It's always easy for a customer to tell you you need to buy a machine to do their work. And for a salesman to tell you you need to buy his machine, and it'll make you rich. Completely different matter when you're the one providing the brains and skills to make the machine do what it needs to do and meet all time constraints, deal with mechanical problems, etc. I have parts made at a laser shop and I have no clue how they can work so cheap. I couldn't run and own a cnc plasma for what they charge.
Years ago, a customer was "helping" analyze why my quoted price was "high" on a part. He asked about various operations, and I said there's $2 in the price for band sawing the blanks. He was surprised, said in their plant, they don't even have a charge out for the sawing department......in other words....they saw stock for free. Yea, electricity, blades, and coolant ain't free in MY shop, sorry.
 








 
Back
Top