[hacker7]

Harryn , I am needing help pricing in general also. That was just one aspect of things that I can do. That's why I posted different pictures in the beginning. Generally speaking I charge:

$60 hr for cnc work
$100 setup fee
$90 hr General walk in work (if I have to stop and do your job right now work)

I price regular work of just building something w/o CNC work based on Degree of difficulty. Really my question is If I came to you , and said can you build this for $300.00 and I supply the material. It's seems to me either YES or NO. If I would have had way more NO's than YES's then there's my answer. Wierd I know. But It gives me a idea where to start. With all the knowledge on this forum if the experienced guy's said NO. Then I better leave it alone. The local help say's price so it's competitive and move on.

Anyway thanks for all you guy's help.

Rich

[txcncman]

Do you best to document every job you do with actual times. Then you can build a history for yourself. If someone walks in and wants a broken bolt drilled out of an engine block, the actual drilling process does not take that much longer than drilling a hole in anything else. The time will be in the set up and moving a heavy engine block around. Most shops kill themselves on under-quoting set up time. They will bid a job thinking 30 minutes of machining time so they charge an hour and then spend 4 hours looking for tools and setting up. Bid your hours as close to actual as possible and then spend a lot of time calculating your actual shop rate and the pricing usually comes out right (right to the customer and fair to you). When I estimate production jobs, I include things like part handling between operations and packaging for shipping. I even develop formulas based on part weight and overall size. If 2 parts weigh the same, but one is 2 x 6 x 12 and the other is 4 x 4 x 48, the 48 part will end up costing more. Not a lot more, but it will be more.

[victorofga]

rich

you dont want to see something..

lets make an example.. no chair some different . a lot more simple thing..

a porch spindle can be purchased from 25-30,,, pending on what length

Colonial Porch Spindle - Detailed item view - Front porch spindles, railing, balusters, wood rail, exterior balustrade
here you can see a 3x26 inch spindle cost 28...

now you price it out, and figure your router can make it 2 hour because you want to make with endmills..
then you get 120 dollar labor...

that post can be turned about 4-6 min... no more... but you can say you want to make with your router.. 2 hour long..

theres not the job what not affordable..

if we accept your logic, then theres no exist job can be made in usa...

imagine, txcnc programming 5 axis machines.. he could break down the job for simple 3 axis machines.. and jigs and all additional thing push the price up 3 times more..
that will not work..


what you missing, no one said chair s not affordable.. to work 10 hour on 3 small board that is not affordable..

in this country many company exist they make this chair.. but you have no equipment, nor experiment for.. you want or dont want, you have to wait for simple jobs you can make affordable..

its not bad.. just you have to see realistic your situation.. what you can make and what you can not..

[harryn]

Victor, you have an interesting point. A person with a mid size DIY machine cannot make parts nearly as fast as a person with a professional system with a 10 - 20 hp spindle.

I am not sure what the going rate for work on a pro machine is, but it likely still is not much more than $ 100 - 150 / hr, can cut perhaps 5 X faster, and is large enough to hold the entire job on the table at once.

It might be that someone with a small / mid size DIY machine needs to price machining time closer to $ 20 - 30 / hr ?

That is an interesting situation to be in.

Harry

[victorofga]

harry

im glad someone seeing my point..
this all question is about technology..

i know companies, utilitizing 8 head cnc carving machines.. i think they makes the 100 dollar per hour and producing merchandise you can afford, you can buy..

imagine they carving out a more complex curved victorian chair leg about an hour.. and since it is eigth head that will make eigth pieces... per hour..

so not all carving comes from abroad.. it also sad to seeing jobs could be made in the country, going abroad..

about price? i cant comment, everyone ask as much as thye want.. one thing is sure, his cnc dfefinetely not like a haas vmc..

[MetalZilla]

$60 per hour is about right. That's what I used to charge in my shop. 20+years

[ger21]

One important factor in this particular case, is the customers expectations.

Victor had several ideas to reduce machining time in order to make the items more cost effective. However, even if it looks 90% of what the original looks like, and it's half the price, if the customer isn't happy with it, then it doesn't matter.

A person with a mid size DIY machine cannot make parts nearly as fast as a person with a professional system with a 10 - 20 hp spindle.

There are a few things to take into consideration.

There aren't many products that come off a CNC router ready to sell. You mentioned making "parts". Most products are assemblies of parts. What higher end machines can do, is make more parts for more people to assemble into finished products. As the price of a machine goes up, it often becomes more specialized. Someone making hardwood furniture or door parts will want a very different machine than someone cutting cabinet parts on a flat bed vacuum table.

As Victor pointed out, specialized machines are often far faster than cnc routers.

Don't necessarily lock yourself into thinking everything needs to be done on the cnc router. very often there are more productive methods using different tools.

It might be that someone with a small / mid size DIY machine needs to price machining time closer to $ 20 - 30 / hr ?

At first I was going to say absolutely not. But I'll amend that to say that if someone is paying you for cnc only services, then yes, you can't charge what someone that is 3 times more efficient can charge.

Now, I believe the original poster is a one man shop. If the job your pricing is not a CNC only job, which these items are not, then I'd go so far as to say that cnc time shouldn't actually be a factor in pricing at all. What I mean, is that if your building a chair like these, you shouldn't be charging $60/hour for the time the cnc is running. Unless, you need to devote more than 50% of your time to standing at the machine.
You price your items based on your standard shop rate. What the cnc does for you, is allow you to do more work in a given amount of time. For example, without a cnc, you may be able to make X amount of products. With a cnc, you might now be able to make 2-3X the amount of products. This either make you more profit per job, or lowers the cost of your products, or both.

Most people would say what's your shop rate and then price it according to that. Well if that's the case, at that rate you would never get a job. My overhead for my small 35x50 shop runs $1000 a month. And the reason I even opened it was because I got laid off about a year ago. And actually been doing pretty good. The real problem is pricing TIME.

The bottom line with pricing requires you to know how long it takes to make something. Experience and knowledge are the key ingredients here. Experience to know how long specific jobs take to complete. And knowledge of how to get tasks done as quickly as possible. This means choosing the right tool for the task, and utilizing it most effectively.

Successful woodworking shops don't take any work that walks through the door. They most often specialize in a specific area, where they know how to be most efficient. Efficiency = competitiveness.