[mroy0404]

Has anyone tried working with this company.They have jobs posted for you to bid if your a $4200.00 a year member.That would be o.k if the jobs came in.Any info on this would be great.

[cadman]

Unfortunately, about 2-3 years ago one of their reps talked me into subscribing. They gave me a break and only charged $2000 because the rates were going up the next week to its current cost and I have my own website, so I didn't need their subdomain.

My experience with MFQuote is:

Very little work was posted around my neck of the woods (Southern California). Most of the work posted was in the mid west. Great if you are in the area.

Lots of tire kickers posting work, their only intention to get prices, not award work. One of these companies turned out to be located 2 miles from my shop. My wife called the engineer who posted on MFQ and asked if they were outsourcing any work. His reply? "We already have shops we deal with". That job they posted? they cancelled it. Another clue about tire kickers - they never award the jobs they post.

Many of the companies posting work are price sensitive.

Most of the machining work is widget/production oriented, not the type of work I do. When I signed up the rep told me there are lots of jobs posted that are exactly what I'm looking for (3-4 axis prototype, molds, models). That turned out not to be the case. I was mislead about the type of work that gets posted.

With 2 months to go before my subscription expired I did finally win one job. I only made $900 so I lost $1100 to MFQ. Anyone paying $4200 better be able to absorb the possiblity of not getting any or very little work.

To be fair there are some shops that claim to have won quite a bit of work through MFQ, but I have some serious doubts about most of those claims. There have been many postings about MFQ on other websites and the majority of those posts are not favorable. I have talked to other shops who tried MFQ and not one of them got any work.

If you do decide to try this or any other similar online quoting service, do your homework and spend some research time talking to as many shops as you can who have used the service.

Good luck.

[DareBee]

I have looked into this as well and never joined.
I know a local shop (Ontario, Canada) who joined MFGQuote's big competition and his result was similar. I believe he went through a case of pencils and got 1 job in the whole year. Even with the $ exchange being quite good at the time, he couldnt get any jobs even when he figured his quotes had high potential of losing him money. There really doesnt seem to be any value-added incentive built into these services. IMHO

[HuFlungDung]

I did try it out. I kissed $4500 goodbye and spent a lot of time reviewing and doing quotes as well.

The whole thing is biased against the shop doing the work: pay to bid, spend your time doing the quote, bid against others who may or may not be bidding to make money at the job, frivilous requests for quotes from tire-kickers.

As well as all that, being north of the 49th did not help me either as buyers were unsure of how much hassle they would have importing across the line. It is simply impossible to respond in the short, unrealistic timeframe that some buyers had requested.

[Klox]

I like the term "tyre kickers"!

Klox

[Deviant]

Prior to looking at purchasing milling equipment, I signed up as a buyer on mfgquote.

I draw my parts up in solidworks, delivered drawings to multiple people.

However the majority of my quotes came back so high, that I could have purchased the machine, learned to do the work and still came out ahead.

The 2 people that came back within the range I expected, either partially returned my calls/messages. Either way, I had money in hand was was ready to order, but I couldn't find a machining company.

I'm sure those guys figured I was a tire kicker, but coming back on a prototype quote for well over 1500 bucks on something that was 2-3 bucks worth of material. (boggles)

The company I tried to go with, was closer to the 150-200 buck mark, which is what I expected.

So I guess it works both ways.

*shrugs*

[HuFlungDung]

Thats a good example of it working one way

[Datum1]

I recently looked into this MFGquote, but luckily I didn't fall for their salemanship. Current rate for SO cali. is over $5000 now, for none 1year contact is $6500...

My only problem with MFGQ is their annoying junk phone calls and Faxes and Emails..

Man, They would not leave me alone!!!

[DareBee]

I can understand Deviant's point of view; but as a tool & die maker and machine shop owner it is very normal to spend a day or 2 machining on a $5 piece of material. At $50 an hour you can figure it out.
People that do not understand the logistics of setups, accurate machining and/or the programming involved are still tire kickers in my books.
I have found that normally that really low quote is either giving poor quality, does his work on a mill in the garage (hobby,with no overhead) or made a mistake while estimating.
I get people in all the time "I want you to machine a new neck bridge for my guitar" I ask what a new 1 costs they they say it is really expensive about $85. I look at the part and it is going to take 3 - 5 hours to make (machining time + 3 setups then debur and polish) I low-ball a number of $200. They think I am nuts.
Go figure.
My 2 cents
Simply a business cant run at a loss for very long

[Deviant]

Don't get me me wrong, I understand about the hourly rate. I even planned for the parts to cost more for the prototype.

However, several of the parts could be made with a hand drill and a file. (grins)

There were 2 parts out of about 12, that were pretty precise. However, serveral of the pieces amounted to nothing more than 20mm across washer 6mm thick with a 10mm hole, and 2mm oring grooves inside and outside.

I had it priced at 1 item, 10, and 100, the price didn't drop much. I'd have to login to verify 100%, but I think they were over 30 bucks a peice.

For something that should take less 15 mins and could be made back to back. All the parts had the same diameter and same oring grooves to lower the number of tools.

Of course, I'm quite aware of a shop needing to make money. It's just a matter of being able to justify that cost as a builder.

[fastolds]

They tried to get me to subscribe. I said no way. I did how ever get into source authority. Haven't done any work through them because it seems like unrealistic timeframes. It use to be free and you paid a comission on the jobs. Now they changed and charge a one time fee. I didn't have to pay since I signed up a long time ago.

[HuFlungDung]

Don't get me me wrong, I understand about the hourly rate. I even planned for the parts to cost more for the prototype.

However, several of the parts could be made with a hand drill and a file. (grins)

There were 2 parts out of about 12, that were pretty precise. However, serveral of the pieces amounted to nothing more than 20mm across washer 6mm thick with a 10mm hole, and 2mm oring grooves inside and outside.

I had it priced at 1 item, 10, and 100, the price didn't drop much. I'd have to login to verify 100%, but I think they were over 30 bucks a peice.

For something that should take less 15 mins and could be made back to back. All the parts had the same diameter and same oring grooves to lower the number of tools.

Of course, I'm quite aware of a shop needing to make money. It's just a matter of being able to justify that cost as a builder.

Your reply brings up one other vital issue, and that is one of part tolerances.

Now you, as a buyer, may know what's important and what isn't, but how effectively is that information transmitted to the machinist? Because the machinist is always afraid that he's not taking enough care, he will be machining to the drawing tolerances. In many cases, these tolerances are simply the result of a "dumb output" of a cad system. It may be set to output 4 decimal places indiscriminantly, no matter what is really required in real life.

This can easily result in whole number multiples of increase in quoted costs.

So, if you want a part cheap, you must go through the drawing and tolerance it properly. Then, you must go through it again, and check for bad tolerance "stacking", which means the sum of all linear tolerances must be checked to not fall outside of certain gross limits.

[noid]

Huflungdung you said it man. I have a small drafting and design company servicing the steel industry. And yes drawing tolerance is key to acurate quotes. Machinists will cover their own butts when tolerance issues are not addressed clearly on the drawings. They will assume that if four decimal places are present these are very precise parts needing very precise means of fabrication and qoute accordingly. This usually adds time to the man hours involved which may not be necessary. Here is my rule of thumb for detailing parts that helps me decide how accurate the parts must be:
for every 0.001" the cost is about 100.00/man hour
for every 0.01" the cost is about 50.00/man hour
for every 1/16" the cost is about 25.00/man hour

For example if I place a dimension of 2.500" thats going to cost me about 100.00 to produce. Because the machinist is going to try to hold that dimension within + -0.005" which takes aproximatley 1 shop hour to maintain.
When the same part with a dimension of 2 1/2" would only cost me about 45.00 to 50.00 because the tolerances can be within +- 1/16" and measured with less shop time.

So what it boils down to is dimension parts according to the precision required. If it can be measured and produced with a tape measure than dimension it in units a tape measure can measure i.e 1/16ths. If it has to be produced with precision, dimension it with dimensions that reflect there accuracy.


Hope this makes sense to everyone (it does to me).

[cncadmin]

Man great post, it's nice to have a idea of cost based on precision.

[Klox]

I usually tells the client that if i have to go "micron hunting" on a part it becomes very expensive. That's when setup times gets longer, double checking of sizes and surface finish all adds up to the total bill.
What amazes me most is that people only want to spend 10 bucks on a 100 bucks job!
I strongly believe to do the best job i can and would surely advise(?) the client when he budgeted too less of some cheaper less accurate alternatives......

Klox

[DareBee]

Another large factor in the machining is combined with the tolerancing tightness and that is multiple setups. Lets say there are 2 diamters with a .001" tolerance and you have to flip the part in the chuck, not only do you need to hit 2 somewhat close measurements but the resetting of the part in the fixture (or chuck in this example) has to be highly accurate. Very very few designers put tolerances on feature concentricities and machinists have to work to the tight end.

I am not trying to blow my own horn but I strongly feel that some of the best mechanical designers started as good Tool & Die makers. I have seen some pretty ridiculous stuff from classroom schooled designers.

This is a continuation of this conversation and my comments are not targeting any individual.

[FranH]

Has anyone tried working with this company.They have jobs posted for you to bid if your a $4200.00 a year member.That would be o.k if the jobs came in.Any info on this would be great.

What needs to be remembered, is, as we all need and appreciate work so we stay out of the poor house, how tantalizing My Quote can be. Last week I tripped into their web site only to see their last month's rfq value was over 6 million dollars. Quite a drawing card!!! And we got burnt a few years ago. REMEMBER just as fast as we can review a blueprint it can also be reviewed in India or elsewhere where labor is $10.00 per WEEK. I have known of no one renewing after a year so in order for My Quote to survive new people are needed daily. I would say if they are not a sham they are very close to it. If they are so assured that you/we can succeed then allow us a 90 day free trial.....let us get some jobs....let us see what is really happening.

[little bubba]

We tried MFGquote a couple of years ago, what a pain. Sometimes they would allow you to see the low, high, average, and median quote after the job was awarded (if awarded at all). We were always just about in the middle, but however did get some nasty e-mails from people *****ing about how dare we bid that high on their parts.

After a while we figured it out and took some of the jobs we had and put them up for quotes, we had some good work done, we had some really crappy work done, we even rejected about 20% of quotes because they were just so ridiculously low, that they wouldn't even cover half of the material.

You really need to prostitute yourself to get a job on there, and then hope you get repeat business, but why would you, the customer goes back on, and gets some other poor sucker to take a loss.

[Deviant]

lol, I wish I had that problem.

All of my quotes were so high that it wasn't even feasible to think about getting the part made. Much less doing it.

Hence the new shop in my back yard and the pile of aluminum shavings where I'm learning to do it myself.

I definately gained a new respect for the process, since I've been making parts myself.

But....

Even after building the shop and buying the equipment. When I'm able to make and peddle off about around 10 completed products it will pay for everything I have invested at the quote prices. *shrugs*

Now if I can only figure out how to make my grass grow back... = P

[MBG]

damn I was all planning on getting a lathe and running a business out of my garage (low overhead) and plan on starting my business by getting quotes from MFGquote.com


but now that I read this I dont know what i'm going to do