Hi Laurentian:
A lot depends on what kind of work you're quoting.
For example: I build injection molds as a part of my business.
I quote them totally differently from the process I use for production parts which I also make.
I also do prototyping and often don't quote those jobs at all but bill them in chunks until the job is done or the customer gives up on the project.
Sometimes I spend days sorting out designs, sometimes I get a toleranced print with everything on it and those get different quoting strategies too.
I can quote a fairly complex mold in about an hour, but I'm mostly winging it; judging by experience whether it's a hundred hour job, or a hundred fifty hour job, and then just let the chips fall where they will.
I very rarely get my ass handed back to me, but I also very rarely score a windfall.
It averages out, so overall I'm modestly profitable.
Some others will try to break it down in detail, and quote each mold component as if it were a separate jobbing project.
They can spend weeks noodling with it only to screw up the quote just as badly as I occasionally do because something major got overlooked or the job got awarded to someone else while they were picking over the details.
Huge amounts of work you'll never get paid for gets wasted that way, so I decided a long time ago it's cheaper to misjudge and get an ass burning once in a while than to consistently do a ton of work for free and still only score some of the jobs I'd put all that up-front effort into.
By contrast, sometimes a relatively simple high volume production part takes days to quote if I have to define the processes, sort out cycle times and workflow, sort out material costs etc etc etc...we all know the drill.
The thing is, (as we also all know) with volume parts a small error has big cumulative consequences, so you need to be careful in a whole different way if you want to avoid hair tearing money losers.
So the small simple part is deceptively risky in a way that the complicated mold build is not...yes you surely can get your ass handed to you on both kinds of work but a gnarly chunk of mold base alloy you can somehow get through; a gnarly bundle of steel bars you need twice as long to drill and use up twice as many inserts to make 500 parts from, sinks the job in a whole different way, often because the margins are so much smaller and the time commitment is so much tighter, and the misjudgement bites you 500 times instead of just once.
So yeah, different approaches for different stuff, but the overall objective is still to put in the minimum unpaid work until you actually get the gig.
Once you do get the gig, the fun begins and you get to find out if your guesstimates pan out.
Cheers
Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
Vancouver Wire EDM -- Wire EDM Machining