Commercial Pricing / Quantity Question

[Tom Sieczkarek]

I have a commercial job quote for metal marking of anodized aluminum parts.
Quantity of 1000 parts per month.(about 16,000 total)
Each piece needs to be marked on 3 sides.(33 seconds each side)
How much would you discount for this type of quanity?? My problem is how low do you go to fill in the time, when your machine is not busy? Or do you stick to your guns and don't drop your rates?
I was told he had someone doing these for 85 cents each and that just seem way to low.
Suggestions are appreciated.

[Martin Boekers]

Well, if it takes say 2 minutes a piece to position and engrave 3 sides, You will be making $25.50 an hour.
This doesn't count cleaning and packaging. So you have about 33 hours of engraving time. Sooo. if you
have more than one laser might be feasable if you have someone at minimum wage doing it, while you make
bucks on the other laser. You lose use of one laser for a week a month. Tough call for minimum profit.

[Mark Sipes]

Can you do more than one at a time?? special jig/jigs? that will cut your time down. if cleaning and packaging is part of the deal.. that is outside the "laser" time cost. Charge a set-up fee (new customer...records keeping..computer time..etc) Set up time costs per monthly run order.

try to put yourself in their shop doing the work. What would It cost them to do it in house. Operator costs $15-20 per hour, overhead to run machine (power, maintenance, computer time, floor space rent) x 2 profit .. even at $65.oo an hour that is $2.16 each for three sides...... and what do you do when a $45.00 5 min job comes in. tear down the $2.00 job and run the other and take another 10 minutes to set up the $2.00 job.... but then if you only plan on doing 50 -100 per day for a 20 day work month you could take the $1.00 job to fill the time.......hey you're self employed. what is your time worth.

Must be reason they are asking for quotes..... and a cheaper price is always in the cards but quality and delivery times are bigger factors.

[Chuck Stone]

I would also make plans for only doing 1000. Even a signed contract isn't
any guarantee. But if you price according to 16,000 and someone beats
your price next month, did you give it away?

[Mike Null]

My price would probably be just shy of $2.00. If you're not happy with a price don't quote it.

[Gary Hair]

If you're not happy with a price don't quote it.

Mike hit the nail on the head! You need to determine your price by how you feel when you say "here they come again". If it's an unhappy "here they come again" then you are priced it too low. If it's a happy "here they come again" then you have the price right. Personally, I wouldn't work 27 hours for $850, that's barely an 8 hour day worth of pay for me. But... It really depends on what you have more of, free time or paying customers.

Gary

[matthew knott]

Bare in mind the guy doing them for $.85 might only be taking 10 seconds a side or something, so he might be very happy with the job. If thats the case it would be hard to compete with your laser and if you dont get a fair price for your time then its just not worth it. Just installed a laser for someone who owns a trotec speedy, a job that was taking him 43 seconds, he now does it in just under 9 seconds, and the speedy is, well, speedy! Can you give us a idea of whats involved without giving away sensitive info?

[Scott Shepherd]

Can you give us some details on the size? Mark's thinking is the same as mine. I have a job I do that I quoted .10 cents on. Couldn't be much more than that, the part only costs a little more than that, finished. However, I made fixtures and I can do about 30 in a row, and a fixture holds several hundreds of them. I can literally do 300 of them in 3 minutes. That's $10 a minute, run time. Of course I don't make that when it's all said and done, but it's a good job for us. We've done probably 100,000 of them.

While one might take 33 seconds, you might be able to put 20 in a row, and have several rows of them, meaning you can do 20 of them in 50 seconds, instead of one in 33 seconds.

[Tom Sieczkarek]

I was in the $1.75 each (and feel comfortable) per thousand. I can layout 80 units per run. Not much sensitive info to give:3 lines on 2 sides and 3 graphics on the other,on anodized aluminum. I do have to make three fixtures and delivery is 15 minutes from my business. That 85 cent each threw me for a loop and I have that quote on my desk. If I get it fine if not oh well. The profit margin on the 85 cents is terrible and if something happens to the machine, that would go out the door.

[Mark Sipes]

So bid a $1.00 and get the other guy to do them for .75 and you deliver them for pure profit...........

[Ross Moshinsky]

I'd tell the customer you'll commit yourself to do 1000 at $X and after that, you'll decide if you want to continue to do the job in the future at that price. You might find the job really easy money. You also might find the job is a waste of time.

[Tom Sieczkarek]

So explain to me how doing 20 in a row will change the engraving time. I just ran test of two rows with 27 pieces and the time was 9:42. Maybe not on an epilog?? So by doing the same layout on a Trotec, you can save time by nesting?

[Scott Shepherd]

So explain to me how doing 20 in a row will change the engraving time. I just ran test of two rows with 27 pieces and the time was 9:42. Maybe not on an epilog?? So by doing the same layout on a Trotec, you can save time by nesting?

Sure thing Tom, when raster engraving, the slow part of it is the Y-Axis movement. If you have 1/2" of movement in the Y-Axis to do one part, you still have 1/2" of Y-Axis movement to do 10 parts in a row. Your X-Axis has to travel further, no question, but those speeds are often quite fast, so the time to travel 2" on the X-Axis isn't much less than the time to travel 20".

Just to be clear, the spacing would be like this :

X----X----X----X----X----X----X

to get the benefit.

If you did this :

X
X
X
X
X
X

You wouldn't see any better times.

If you did this :

X-----X------X-------X
----X----X-------X

Your time would be better, but not optimal.

In my example I mentioned earlier, for the 10 cent job. I don't recall the exact numbers of the top of my head, but to engrave 1, it takes 10 seconds. To engrave 30 of them in a row, it takes 15 seconds.

There was a video clip I posted on another thread somewhere where someone was talking about the speed of a galvo laser and I made a video of doing exactly what I described. The time to engrave was really close to the galvo time by using this method.

This kind of work is easy money. I'll take it all day long and I'll make good money doing it. It's not uncommon to make $300-400 per hour doing this type of work.

[Martin Boekers]

graphics on the other,on anodized aluminum. I do have to make three fixtures and delivery is 15 minutes from my business. That 85 cent each The profit margin on the 85 cents is terrible and if something happens to the machine, that would go out the door.

Sometimes the best way to make money is to turn a job down. ;)

[Ross Moshinsky]

You should absolutely see a huge difference in time by lining the items up along the long axis. You will also quickly realize how much time loading and unloading can take. It might not be the worst idea in the world to make trays that you can pick up and pull out of the machine. That way you can do your rotating and lining up while the machine is running.

[Tom Sieczkarek]

You should absolutely see a huge difference in time by lining the items up along the long axis. You will also quickly realize how much time loading and unloading can take. It might not be the worst idea in the world to make trays that you can pick up and pull out of the machine. That way you can do your rotating and lining up while the machine is running.

That was exactly the plan, as I was going to have two trays for the sides so I could flip them into each other.