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Tim Walters
06-19-2012, 11:20 PM
Hi All,
I'd like to get your thoughts on pricing...
I had a vectoring job to do (1,500 3" x 1.5" name badges) with my 60W (Chinese tube) home-built system.
The 1/8" acrylic was supplied to me with a very thin printed laminate on one side. The other side was still covered in the protective paper.
The sheets were about 26" x 40", with 140 badges per sheet. The printed laminate had crop marks showing where to cut.
I had to mark and cut the paper with a razor to expose the cut marks. I then trimmed the edges of the sheets (with the laser) so that the cut marks were close to the edge.
I placed the sheet on my honeycomb, aligning the cut marks with previously-marked lines on a template. Each sheet of 140 badges took about 50 minutes to cut at 14mm/second.
Each badge had to be cut individually because of radiused corners.
I had to generate my artwork from the sheets themselves.
What would you with more experience charge for this job? -or- How would you have done it differently to decrease the time spent?

Thanks much for any advice.
Tim Walters
Atlanta, GA

Ross Moshinsky
06-20-2012, 12:02 AM
You need to figure out a shop hourly rate. That's up to you to figure out. Once you do that, pricing a job out will be easier. I can tell you typical shop rates are anywhere from $60-120 an hour but it's up to you to figure out what you want to charge.

You should charge a setup charge (this will be any artwork and figuring out) + labor/1500. It's important to include the setup charge because if they walk in the door with 500 next time, they know it's going to cost them $100 (just an example) to setup the job + the labor per piece.

Mike Null
06-20-2012, 7:10 AM
1/8" is twice the thickness you need for name tags. If you could use 1/16" you'd save a lot of time.

Tim Walters
06-20-2012, 10:24 AM
Hi Mike & Ross,

Thanks for the replies.

I guess I should have asked what YOU would have charged for that job. I didn't have a choice on the material. I've already completed the job. I seriously underestimated the time it would take. I wanted to make $100 per hour. I charged 40 cents per piece. With the time it took to do the job, I should have charged 75-80 cents each. What I'm wanting to know is, is that too much to charge for a laser-cut nametag? I know that if the customer will pay it, it's not too much. I don't want to be ridiculous about it, however. This will be an ongoing job (maybe once every 2-3 months.) It does take quite a while and puts a lot of wear on the system however.

Bruce Clumpner
06-20-2012, 2:05 PM
Tim,

I charge between $4 and $6 for tags out of 1/16" rowmark with a magnet backer using art I design. I agree with Ross, since they provide materials and require you to lay-out to accommodate their product, you should be billing for set-up, or reconfigure the art to work better with your systems.

-bruce

Ross Moshinsky
06-20-2012, 8:34 PM
Hi Mike & Ross,

Thanks for the replies.

I guess I should have asked what YOU would have charged for that job. I didn't have a choice on the material. I've already completed the job. I seriously underestimated the time it would take. I wanted to make $100 per hour. I charged 40 cents per piece. With the time it took to do the job, I should have charged 75-80 cents each. What I'm wanting to know is, is that too much to charge for a laser-cut nametag? I know that if the customer will pay it, it's not too much. I don't want to be ridiculous about it, however. This will be an ongoing job (maybe once every 2-3 months.) It does take quite a while and puts a lot of wear on the system however.

I will add that the hourly labor debate is not so cut and dry. A 80W machine vs a 30w machine will cut that 1/8" plexi MUCH faster. So if you have an 80W machine, you might be looking at the job taking 1/3 the time it would take on an 30W machine. Some will say you shouldn't reduce the cost because of the higher wattage machine. Others will disagree. There are different points to argue such as machine cost, running costs, ect ect ect.

In the end, I would have estimated the job at about $1-2 a piece. Assuming about 30 seconds per piece. If it was 1/16" material, it would have been half that. I would charge the lower number if they trimmed the piece down so that it was square and ready to cut. I would have charged the higher number if I had to screw around with squaring the material first. Using the red dot it's not that big of a pain to square the piece but it adds an extra 5-10 minutes per sheet and makes the margin of error much higher. I would also charge a $55 setup charge. I should mention we do not do a lot of this kind of work. We're more retail so I'd have to think twice about the job but I figure $1500 for roughly 8 hours of work isn't too bad.

Richard Rumancik
06-21-2012, 9:59 AM
To address the question of "how would you do this differently to decrease time spent?" I would propose the following . . .

I would not go to the trouble of trimming the edges with the laser, as this is not a value-added operation. Without seeing the exact materials, artwork and honeycomb table, I am guessing a bit so bear with me. . . when you say "crop marks" are they just short vertical and horizontal lines at the 4 corners? If so, you should ask them to put on registration marks (like targets with crosshairs) in the future.

You need two targets minimum (say one in upper left, one in lower right). So if you have two targets, figure out some kind of "alignment tool" to align the sheet with the targets without having to trim the edges. I have used two flaps of Mylar to do this (one for each target). The flaps need to be on mounted securely on a 1/8" spacer (substrate thickness) outside the boundary of the sheet. I can't tell you exactly how to mount these, but the honeycomb needs to be fixed securely to the table and the two alignment tools need to be secured to the honeycomb or table frame.

Have the laser draw the two targets on the clear Mylar flaps, then for production slip your sheet under the two flaps, align visually, clamp, and run the cut file.

When you have to do a new setup, discard the old Mylar flaps, install new ones, scribe new targets on them, and you are good to go.

If you want, you can use 3 or 4 targets and visually align with the best compromise.

If you have crop lines instead of targets, you can still use the method but you would have to adjust the flap configuration accordingly to pick up on several short straight lines instead.