[indyeric]

I'm looking for a new shop to produce my parts and potentially future parts as well.
Quantities for quotation:
AMT_SCM_0001: 100 (6061 T-6 Aluminum, bar stock acceptable)
AMT_SCM_0002: 100 (6061 T-6 Aluminum, bar stock acceptable) **Logo shown for representation. DOES NOT NEED TO BE CUT, IT WILL BE LASER ETCHED POST MACHINING**
AMT_SCM_0003: 50 (6061 T-6 Aluminum, bar stock acceptable)
AMT_SCM_0004: 50 (6061 T-6 Aluminum, sheet stock acceptable as is 5052 alum)

-Please include material cost in quote
-looking to have quotes by end of day on Feb. 24, 2011
-looking to have parts delivered by April 15th, 2011 at the latest (please include lead time ARO)
-direct contact: pm for direct contact info
-looking to stay domestic US
-please only quote sustainable pricing (mat'l fluctuations aside). I'm looking for a long-term partner.
-if you have the capability of Type II anodize and/or laser etching, let me know. Those are both required for the end product.
-if prices are favorable, I may double quantity ordered.
-I retain rights to all aspects of this design. Patents pending.
-parasolids available (SW2011 native)
-pricing is the primary factor here. Target total price: $1250 for this quantity
-I'm hopeful to order higher "production" quantities in the future, so we can talk about additional costs for fixturing and design changes to decrease run time
Thanks in advance!!

[FUBAR62172]

What's the O"ALL width on part 3?Thanks

[indyeric]

What's the O"ALL width on part 3?Thanks

1.25 inches. Sorry about that. File is updated now. Thanks!

[Donkey Hotey]

Target total price: $1250

I'm going to help you out here and I want to make it perfectly clear: I am not interested in bidding on this job, nor have I ever done bid work on here.

You want a total of three hundred machined parts (100, 100, 50, 50) for $1250? That's an average part price of $4.17, including the material.

If a tooled CNC machine fell out of the sky and landed in your garage, a lightning bolt struck you with instant knowledge and somebody mistakenly mailed you a copy of Mastercam, YOU couldn't make those parts for $4.17 each.

You will probably need to either go to a country where the daily wage is a bowl of gruel or rethink your marketing strategy (target price, complexity of the parts, etc). I realize some of the parts are smaller than others but, I'll bet that you're looking at at least half of your target price in materials and cutters. There are cost-reasons why certain products never make it to market.

Of course, somebody is going to come along, bid low to get this job, make it out of leftovers in their own inventory, then lose money making the parts.

[indyeric]

I'm going to help you out here and I want to make it perfectly clear: I am not interested in bidding on this job, nor have I ever done bid work on here.

You want a total of three hundred machined parts (100, 100, 50, 50) for $1250? That's an average part price of $4.17, including the material.

If a tooled CNC machine fell out of the sky and landed in your garage, a lightning bolt struck you with instant knowledge and somebody mistakenly mailed you a copy of Mastercam, YOU couldn't make those parts for $4.17 each.

You will probably need to either go to a country where the daily wage is a bowl of gruel or rethink your marketing strategy (target price, complexity of the parts, etc). I realize some of the parts are smaller than others but, I'll bet that you're looking at at least half of your target price in materials and cutters. There are cost-reasons why certain products never make it to market.

Of course, somebody is going to come along, bid low to get this job, make it out of leftovers in their own inventory, then lose money making the parts.

WOW! I'll take your free advice for what it is worth. If you don't have anything constructive, please don't hijack this thread.

I guess I'll ignore anyone who says they can do it for the price I'm after. I'm sorry to tell you, but the world is changing and if those in America aren't able to compete with the world in manufacturing, we are all in trouble. I COULD get it done "cheaper" overseas, but I do believe in American ingenuity and the ability to get things done with less, so that is why I'm posting here.

Sorry if I offended anyone else here!

[Donkey Hotey]

If you don't have anything constructive, please don't hijack this thread.

That was constructive but, you must be too thick to recognize it.

...I do believe in American ingenuity and the ability to get things done with less, so that is why I'm posting here.

Yes, they could steal the material and make the parts on somebody else's machines when nobody is looking. That's the only way it will get done at that price.

I tried to help you but, you're obviously ignoring simple economics of what the basic materials cost, much less the cost of machining the parts. Don't wonder why when you don't get the bids you're after.

[Tormachmaster]

Sorry I did give it a try to see if I could do this for you and just break even but there just is no way. Yeah I know that you are looking to get this done cheap I really dout it is going to happen i tried everything in crunching numbers but fell more into the range of $5000.00 and even this amount would not get these parts priority for our shop sorry

[nofx]

The price my shop pays for alum is 70cents a cubic inch for 6061 bar stock. Lets do the math on price on alum per part based just finished part size.
First part is 2 by 2 by half which is 1.40 per part in raw material with out clean up on the half inch faces.
Second part is 4 by 1.25 by half is 1.70 per part
Third part is 2 by 1.5 by quarter is .78 per part
Fourth part is 3.75 by 1.25 by half is 1.64 per part
This is assuming you can machine without walking arround the parts which is unlikely because of the angles your asking for. your into 430 dollars just for raw materials
so a machinist makes 18 dollars an hour. you have 40 hours to machine 200 parts without endmills

[DareBee]

+ markup on material
+ electricity
+ heat
+ coolant
+ VMC
+ computers
+ software
+ administration
+ programming
+ fixtures/set-up
++++

[nofx]

oh I thought the machining center flung out of the sky and landed and was powered by gnomish magic. Blood of the orcs as lubericant. eld in place by tears of poor third world childern working in the sweatshops were suppose to be competeing against. Programmed by elfs on computers made by dwarfs. Heated by unicorn farts and administered by angry peasents.
(sorry nothing against you darebee, I couldn't help myself)

[Donkey Hotey]

My intent wasn't to get people on here flinging mud at the guy. He's got a 'tude but if nobody helps him, he'll never be able to get what he wants.

You obviously know how a CNC machine works. Every time your part has to come out of a vise and be repositioned it costs you money.

• Camera arm: the most logical way to make that part is to 1/4 endmill the profile out of precision 0.5" plate (precision plate to avoid cosmetic finishing ops on both sides). The problem is that you have two sharp inside corners with no radius. No way to cut those with an endmill. Yes, the part needs to be repositioned for the #6 tap holes but, trying to clean out that square corner in that operation is begging for problems. The aluminum will move around after machining (internal stresses) when the inside profile it cut out. All the machining forces against that face during the second op will push down against that pocketed cavity with the 0.125 wall. It's going to chatter like heck...and I'm sure this is a cosmetic part and you don't want that.
• Camera pad: pretty straightforward part. You caught the 0.13 inside radius so that CAN be cut easily with a 0.250 endmill. Those could be nested and made pretty easily.
• Extension bar: the biggest problem on this one is the cost of the logo. It's the only operation on that side of the part and it would be done after the profile of the part has already been done; same vibration and finish issues as the second op on the camera arm. The other one is that single chamfer on the backside of the 5/8 clamping area. Think about it: that has to be yet another setup, for just that single operation. The 5/8 clamping feature can be done with a ballmill but, that chamfer requires flipping the part just to do that single feature with a chamfer mill. And since this is a cosmetic part, that feature could be a chamfer or you you could just put a full radius on it. If you're going to pay for the extra setup, you could bull-nose all those sharp edges. I like 0.125" radius. I keep one in each of my machines just so I can add that little detail to my designs.
• Seatpost Clamp: Man, this looks deceptively simple but the angled shape and features on both sides pretty much drive you to special workholding. Whoever takes this job will have to invest in soft-jaw tooling to hold the parts in reasonable quantities. Every toolchange the machine makes costs YOU money. If the shop invests in $300-500 worth of soft jaws, the cost of the parts will come down. A toolchange on a fast machine costs you 10 seconds. I see five tool changes on this simple part; six if I take the time to machine-deburr the edges. That's a full minute of toolchanging. If only one part gets made at a time, that's a minute of toolchanges, plus 3-5 minutes of machining, plus time for the operator to reload...suddenly, a simple part costs $20. If five parts are made at the same time, that toolchange time gets shared between all five. You can see how costs come down but, it's at the expense of an investment in tooling up-front.

Anyway, that's my free consulting. Who did the machining on your parts up to this point? Maybe if you work with them to invest in some tooling and make some small design changes, you can get your costs down.

I don't know what the rest of your hardware is costing you but based on your retail pricing, I'd try to get the cost of one set of completed, anodized parts at about $50.

If that doesn't leave enough profit for you, your only choice is to buy your own machine. That puts the profit that would otherwise go to a machine shop, in your own pocket. That puts the quality and schedule back in your pocket but, requires a sizable investment up-front.

[indyeric]

ok, thanks for the actual advice. A few points:
-Extension bar: I didn't intend for the logo to be machined. That is for representation only and is a post-machining/post-anodizing laser etching. I've clarified that, but thought it was assumed since it didn't have dimensions
-camera arm: one sharp corner stays, the other can be softened with a small radius. This is about the 6th round of producing these parts and I've made concessions like that along the way when a machinist asks for an easier way.
-regarding past machining: I've worked exclusively through mfg.com for every run of my parts thus far. I just thought I'd try this out. Since I didn't receive heat for my pricing goals there, I didn't expect that here. I'm just looking for someone that will be consistent. I worked with a very reputable shop to begin with, but they missed a big deadline and caused delayed shipments. Then other shops would either flake out on communication or take the liberty to water jet cut parts without my approval. Right now, I'm just looking for a dependable quality shop. I don't care if it is a startup that purchased second-hand machinery and is working out of his garage or if it is a sprinkler manufacturer just wanting to keep their machines going.
-Lastly, I found this site because I know my pricing requirements leave low margins and I am looking at purchasing my own equipment or building my own CNC machine. I would just rather leave the machining to the pros if it can work.

[Matt@RFR]

I've worked exclusively through mfg.com for every run of my parts thus far. I just thought I'd try this out. Since I didn't receive heat for my pricing goals there, I didn't expect that here. I'm just looking for someone that will be consistent. I worked with a very reputable shop to begin with, but they missed a big deadline and caused delayed shipments. Then other shops would either flake out on communication or take the liberty to water jet cut parts without my approval.

That speaks volumes. Do a search here and at practicalmachinist.com for mfg.com and you'll see what the collective has to say about it, and will explain a lot of your problems and low pricing.

Even before you wrote the above, it was obvious you were looking for a different shop for some reason. If you need your part quality, communication, delivery dates, etc. to get better, you need to understand that good shops charge good money.

[Dualkit]

MFG.com is full of third world country manufacturers and people that outsource there, that is why no one squeals at your price. Not that you can't get good parts from China, but they won't be that cheap either, like 50-60% of the USA dollar. High quality Chinese shops aren't bidding there either. You do have an attitude, it is like you are trying to shame someone in to doing your parts cheap. There is someone on here who will, but you will get trash. If someone here matches your price I suggest searching their name, someone recently matched a low target price and the customer posted pictures of their work, worst garbage I have ever seen. Donkey nicely took his time to explain the situation to you, you seem to ignore all the time involved. Your price per unit is doable but it would take considerable investment in tooling and fixturing, and of course you would have to divide the fixturing by a lot of units to get the per unit cost down. The only way you hit the target paying for skilled USA labor is to have a large machining center with a pallet changer. With that the down time to change out parts is next to non-existent. New tombstones are loaded with parts while the machine is running. Of course each tombstone holds multiple fixtures to hold your parts.
You might even need an automated pallet racking system to get the price down further so the machine can run unattended for days at a time.
Morale of the story, your unit price is doable, but not at your quantities.

P.S. You cannot leave unfinished sides as your print states to save money and time. Mill finished aluminum can easily have .020 bowing across 2 inches, you cannot properly hold it in a vice or fixture, you will end up with out of tolerance parts.

[Donkey Hotey]

ok, thanks for the actual advice.

It was ALL 'actual' advice. You still don't get it. (chair)

[indyeric]

I guess I should say that I'm glad this thread has generated such passionate responses. Based on my work with quotes in the past, I thought I was close to a leveling off in price. And the quality of the parts was fine, I was just unhappy with some of the service and communication. I do not intend for this to be the standard order size. I am trying to grow my company as I'm sure most of you are. For this project, that is the goal price. Maybe it requires palletizing some of the machining. I'm hopeful that instead of telling me the error in my wishes, I could maybe get some advice or a recommendation on a shop that would be capable of "production" methods that would get me closer to where I want to be. If I have to invest in tooling/fixturing, fine. As I said, I had looked at purchasing a CNC machine for myself. It would be great for prototyping small parts, but maybe if my goals are achievable with some investment, that is the direction I may elect to go.

I am getting offers to produce parts at my goal or at least close to it as it is. Of course I'll carry through with my due diligence to make sure it all looks right.

[LEINC]

Indyeric, I sure hope nobody thinks you are me. My name is Eric, and Im in Indy! I would be fired in an instant for coming up with some of that.

As for what you want, all I can say is UNBELIEVABLE!!

I honestly think it would even be tough for you to find a shop in China or India to do it for that price.

[Dualkit]

I hope if you get parts close to your target price at those quantities you give feedback on the quality of the work. There are some very skilled guys on this board and a large group of hacks. I know all about the hacks as one has been outright exposed by his customer here and I have picked up a few customers who received trash quality here on very simple parts. Your parts aren't in the simple category, good luck hitting an average of $4 each and getting quality.