Hi all.
Have a question for you all. Recently our company was contacted with a request for us to quote some parts that need to be machined. While this is not our core business, we assessed our current availability and found this could be an interesting opportunity for us, to work as subcontractors and machine parts for others on our CNC machines. The trouble is we have no experience with this. While we do a lot of CNC work (lathe and mill) we have never worked for anyone outside the company and as such never estimated any jobs. Soon, we figured out that our lack of experience was a problem and that we were having a rough time estimating a cost per part. We know our internal costs, both fixed and variable. What we need is to estimate the time it'll take to machine the part. So our Work Preparation engineer set out to estimate the time. The way he is doing it is he's looking at, for example, how many holes in the part, how long it should take to drill each hole considering the tool used, cutting speeds, etc... then moving on to the next operation and doing the same (how much to mill off, how many passes the mill does until desired thickness is removed, etc...). This takes forever!!!
So my question is: how do you guys do it? How do you estimate the time it'll take you to machine a part and how much it'll cost you?
I'd greatly appreciate all input I can get. I know there are some tools out there, but they all seem to be done by "guessing" the time, and that isn't what we wanted. We wanted something a bit more "precise" for lack of a better word. I don't mean down to the second, but it'd be nice to have something that can estimate in the rough ballpark area.
Thanks in advance.