What would you charge for these?

lbhsbz · Feb 9, 2016

I sent it out to a guy who supposedly had a suitable turning center collecting dust, and the price was a bit alarming. Looking for ballpark numbers per piece in quantities of 1000, 3000, 10000. This is not an RFQ. I just wanna know how far off base I am, because at the price quoted, I can make big money running these on my manual conventional lathe. Finish is not important, tolerances are loose, these go between a bolt and a stamped steel plate. Ideally, they'd be zinc plated, but we can handle that on my end. 1018 or whatever scrap happens to be lying around is fine.

ImageUploadedByTapatalk1454999213.190228.jpg

1/2" clearance hole ID, 1" mill dimension OD, 82 degree included angle taper. No burrs. Excessive tool marks are OK....

Mike1974 · Feb 9, 2016

Assuming you could drill the hole, turn the taper and OD, then part off (without an op to clean up/size the parted face), I would think a couple bucks each....

<not a shop owner>

McMaster sells something similar (but only up to 3/8" bolt size) for about 25cents each... but they are probably made in the millions, not 1000, 3000, etc...

edit: Not to beat you up, but your quotes probably reflect shops trying to make money on the job. On something like this, anyone (and I mean anyone!) could make these. I expect your quotes to have quite the range... the small shop will do them for nothing (hoping you come back for something else) and the big shop says "meh, not much money here, so I will charge a premium to try and make a buck off this...". Also, a cnc lathe (or swiss type machine) will eat these all day, while the guy with a manual lathe will have to swap out tools and such, making the job "harder"...

just my two cents

Comatose · Feb 9, 2016

That looks like a bar fed 45 seconds to me. Simple 2 axis part. A buck each including materials seems about right for 10k. $1.50 for 3k. If you can find someone who wants to do it. (Not me)

tdmidget · Feb 9, 2016

Comatose said:
That looks like a bar fed 45 seconds to me. Simple 2 axis part. A buck each including materials seems about right for 10k. $1.50 for 3k. If you can find someone who wants to do it. (Not me)

Agreed. I would make decent money at those prices.

NodecoMachine · Feb 9, 2016

tdmidget said:
Agreed. I would make decent money at those prices.

I'll 3rd that.

Joe Miranda · Feb 9, 2016

When somebody sends me a part like this to quote I always assume the lowest quantity and price it to make money at that number accordingly. At 1,000 parts I would want $3 a piece for this job or it's not worth handling them. For 3,000 I would want $2.75 and for 10,000 I would want $1.80.

To say there is "big money" on this is a relative thing. Have you ever run 1,000 parts of anything? Let alone 3 or 10?

Red James · Feb 9, 2016

Joe Miranda said:
When somebody sends me a part like this to quote I always assume the lowest quantity and price it to make money at that number accordingly. At 1,000 parts I would want $3 a piece for this job or it's not worth handling them. For 3,000 I would want $2.75 and for 10,000 I would want $1.80.

To say there is "big money" on this is a relative thing. Have you ever run 1,000 parts of anything? Let alone 3 or 10?

+1 on this. I like to make parts ... but after the first few it becomes work.

Limy Sami · Feb 9, 2016

You can try this ball park method your self material cost x 2.5

Like this in case ya don't know

Take the material cost per part, = part length + cut off + 10%

Multiply that by your various qty's to get material price. ........qty affects amount of material therefore price !

Multiply that material price by 2.5, and divide that answer by qty = cost / part.

P.S. I'd seriously consider running those in a free cutting leaded steel - it's easier to m/c and much faster.

Dupa3872 · Feb 9, 2016

I would not touch it for under $3.00each simple job but time consuming. I can put much higher margin parts in the machine and make more money over the same period of time. But if you have the extra capacity it's a nice job to keep the spindle turning in the $2.00 range.

Good luck with it you should be able to find a shop that will knock them out at your price.

Make Chips Boys !

Ron

alonzo83 · Feb 9, 2016

at a thousand I would do 2$ a piece.

If you order another batch before I reset the screw machine I could cut you a deal probably around 50 cents per part plus material. and shipping.

Milland · Feb 9, 2016

Just a minor comment, but it's poor practice to design a part to a sharp edge as you've shown. If nothing else, it can lead to handling issues as you can wind up with a "razor" edge that can cut bare hands, and it also makes measuring (when it matters) irregular. The edge can fold over too, potentially interfering with whatever goes in the hole. Since you've called out no burrs, you're making life difficult for the machinist.

Just make the part a little shorter, allowing a ~1/32" flat rather than the sharp edge. If this is a fastener support washer, to go into an existing countersunk hole, you'll see zero change in load capacity, and machining and handling would be much cleaner.

Finegrain · Feb 9, 2016

Limy Sami said:
P.S. I'd seriously consider running those in a free cutting leaded steel - it's easier to m/c and much faster.

Definitely! I'd charge more for these in 1018 than in 12L14 even though 12L14 material would cost more. In 12L14 they would be popping off way quicker than in 1018, and my tooling would last longer.

Regards.

Mike

Limy Sami · Feb 9, 2016

I can't read the drawing (unclear!) - how long are they - OAL ?

Jay Fleming · Feb 9, 2016

Limy Sami said:
I can't read the drawing (unclear!) - how long are they - OAL ?

I can barely make out the flange thickness but maybe it's .125", so the OAL is .506" given a .500" bore.

lbhsbz · Feb 9, 2016

Thanks for the replies.

To answer some of the questions...

Yes, I have made quantities of 1000 widgets before on my manual machines. The first run sucked and took a few days, but I was able to refine the process over the next few runs to get my times down to where I could run through 1000 pieces in about 4 hours and then have a beer while my vibratory bowl did the deburring. For example, a simple thing like dropping a spring in the pocket of my soft jaws to eject the part as soon as the vise was opened cut the time on that op in less than half. Apply a few little changes and the job went from a pain in the ass to fairly profitable...it was work and I was beat by the end of the run, but was worth it...for that 4 hours, I got paid about 3 times more per hour than I ever had in my life. I did those once every 2 months for about 2 years.

I didn't make the print, it was given to me with a verbal explanation of the part's purpose, nothing is critical and the tolerances are fairly wide open. It needs to fit about as good as a home depot 1/2" flat washer fits a home depot 1/2" bolt, it can look like shit so long as zinc still sticks to it, and it needs to be sorta cone shaped. Those are the requirements.

Based on the replies, I guess my quote was pretty good...on the bottom end of the numbers posted here...

Thanks again.

WILLEO6709 · Feb 9, 2016

the correct answer of course is " as much as I thought I could get..."

I have not seen it yet. The goal of a working machine shop is to make a profit,,, sometimes that gets lost in the race to the bottom. Just because you can run them on a 400k subspindle lathe with barfeeder in 69 seconds does not mean you have to sell them for $0.21 each..... If you had the volume thats 6 spindle acme gridley work....maybe a davenport.

Make sure you factor in replacing the machines in time..... not just steel and labor. I am not saying you have to butt-rape every customer - but you can have the cheap ones.

John Welden · Feb 9, 2016

c

lbhsbz said:
Thanks for the replies.

To answer some of the questions...

Yes, I have made quantities of 1000 widgets before on my manual machines. The first run sucked and took a few days, but I was able to refine the process over the next few runs to get my times down to where I could run through 1000 pieces in about 4 hours and then have a beer while my vibratory bowl did the deburring. For example, a simple thing like dropping a spring in the pocket of my soft jaws to eject the part as soon as the vise was opened cut the time on that op in less than half. Apply a few little changes and the job went from a pain in the ass to fairly profitable...it was work and I was beat by the end of the run, but was worth it...for that 4 hours, I got paid about 3 times more per hour than I ever had in my life. I did those once every 2 months for about 2 years.

Thanks again.

Give me a break. 1000 parts in four hours on the manual? That's 4.1 seconds per part. Even if they took your 8 hours, you're still full of shit.

Limy Sami · Feb 9, 2016

John Welden said:
c

Give me a break. 1000 parts in four hours on the manual? That's 4.1 seconds per part. Even if they took your 8 hours, you're still full of shit.

I did ask myself a similar question, - extra 0 slipped in a typo? ............. 100 parts in 4 hrs? - yes, .......or have you an unusual manual machine?

janvanruth · Feb 9, 2016

John Welden said:
c

Give me a break. 1000 parts in four hours on the manual? That's 4.1 seconds per part. Even if they took your 8 hours, you're still full of shit.

1000 in 4.hours
250 per hour
3600 seconds per hour
4.1 seconds a piece?

Jay Fleming · Feb 9, 2016

John Welden said:
c

Give me a break. 1000 parts in four hours on the manual? That's 4.1 seconds per part. Even if they took your 8 hours, you're still full of shit.

Technically 14.4s per part but who's counting.

Edit: Didn't see janvanruth's post.

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