How much would you quote this job?

[Curt Heggemeyer]

Here is what my customer sent me that I will laser engrave into maple.
What these will be used for is drink menus for a new tiki bar so Im thinking 3/8 will be fine, the lasering will be text and a few small designs around the outside and around the outlines of the drinks.

Can anyone give me a ball park idea for what you would charge for this, seems like I am always to low compared to other people.
I would like your proposal toinclude the following:
-Price for individual mock-up
-Price for 50 units cut to11" x 17" and etched per the file. We need different line weights asshown on the file.
-Finished with Watco naturalcolor danish oil, each side.
-Include material = 3/8"- 1/2" thick solid maple - you specify also provide recommendations forother woods that should be considered.
-I can pick-up products fromyou.

Thank
Curt

[Bert Kemp]

what did he send I don't see any thing no file no picture:confused: also it6 would behelpful if you listed your equipment

[Keith Downing]

It's hard to give you advice without knowing the details of your current situation. Laser, tools, wood availability, finishing experience, design experience, etc etc etc.

What I would do, is pick out the wood and make a small sample piece. Don't waste a lot of time on the design, but at least imitate the size of the lettering you'd need to do with the laser to create these. Then consider how much time it took you, consider how long it will take you to apply the finish perfectly, and how high the probability is that some pieces will have to be scrapped for whatever reason and remade.

Then multiply by what your time is worth to you this time of year. Only after you've actually made something similar can you really know what it will cost you in time and materials. It's easy to forget things like it possibly needing to be masked. How hard some finishes are to get perfect. That there may be some inconsistencies across the wood, etc etc etc.

Best of luck with your project.

[Scott Marquez]

I would ask for a sample of the wood they want to use then charge them $60.00 to do a test run. After that you will have a better idea of what it will take, even if the customer makes small changes to the text.
Scott

[Gary Hair]

Here is what my customer sent me that I will laser engrave into maple.
What these will be used for is drink menus for a new tiki bar so Im thinking 3/8 will be fine, the lasering will be text and a few small designs around the outside and around the outlines of the drinks.

Can anyone give me a ball park idea for what you would charge for this, seems like I am always to low compared to other people.
I would like your proposal toinclude the following:
-Price for individual mock-up
-Price for 50 units cut to11" x 17" and etched per the file. We need different line weights asshown on the file.
-Finished with Watco naturalcolor danish oil, each side.
-Include material = 3/8"- 1/2" thick solid maple - you specify also provide recommendations forother woods that should be considered.
-I can pick-up products fromyou.

Thank
Curt


With the info you have given I would say somewhere between $1 and $100. With more specific info I could narrow that down a bit.

[Ross Moshinsky]

Material x Mark up + Time x Labor Rate = Price. Generally speaking, markup is between 2-4x and labor rate is between $60-$120/hr.

Also I see issues with the specs. Getting that size and thickness of wood sounds unrealistic. I'm not a wood worker so maybe I'm wrong, but I very much doubt you're going to find a supplier of 3/8"x11"x17" solid maple. It won't be stable. It's going to cup and warp like crazy. Maple ply is the material I'd recommend.

[Kev Williams]

Ross has the $$ part figgered out...

For a tiki bar, I'd suggest bamboo plywood. It fits, and it even lasers good. And my gawd, 1/4" should be oodles thick enough, they'll need extra serving carts just to carry the drink menus to the tables...

[Curt Heggemeyer]

346762Hello,
My shop rate is $75 hr and I have tons of equipment, new Cam Five 4032 130 watt laser, VP640 printer, SP 540 printer, new Graphtec 36 inch cutter, 4x8 CNC router, CET 6x10 flatbed UV printer and my Amaya 16 head embroidery and than all my support equipment like foot shears, vehicle lifts, laminators etc. I have Corel x7, Flexi 12, Artcam and a ton other software programs. prismsigns.com you can see all the different work we do.

My thought was that maple will be to heavy as well, bamboo ply sounds like a good option, only thing with ply it usually leaves the edges with little splinters over time, bamboo ply different? I plan on using the laser to cut out the shape and engrave which it shouldn't take long with speed of this thing.
Here is the artwork for 1 side, the other side same layout just different drinks of course.

Hope that can give you a better idea of what I need to get done, I will see if I cant track down some bamboo and see what that costs.

So can anyone give me a estimate on what this job would cost if you were doing it?

Thanks a bunch

[Matt McCoy]

346762Hello,
My shop rate is $75 hr and I have tons of equipment, new Cam Five 4032 130 watt laser, VP640 printer, SP 540 printer, new Graphtec 36 inch cutter, 4x8 CNC router, CET 6x10 flatbed UV printer and my Amaya 16 head embroidery and than all my support equipment like foot shears, vehicle lifts, laminators etc. I have Corel x7, Flexi 12, Artcam and a ton other software programs. prismsigns.com you can see all the different work we do.

My thought was that maple will be to heavy as well, bamboo ply sounds like a good option, only thing with ply it usually leaves the edges with little splinters over time, bamboo ply different? I plan on using the laser to cut out the shape and engrave which it shouldn't take long with speed of this thing.
Here is the artwork for 1 side, the other side same layout just different drinks of course.

Hope that can give you a better idea of what I need to get done, I will see if I cant track down some bamboo and see what that costs.

So can anyone give me a estimate on what this job would cost if you were doing it?

Thanks a bunch

Plug your variables into Ross's formula and you'll have what you need.

Getting a finished piece of 11" maple might be an issue, depending on their budget and what you have access to. It seems like bamboo is the obvious choice, but it looks like they already have some art direction. Never hurts to suggest it, though. Bamboo plywood does splinter, due to the nature of the material, but finishes nicely and is available in a variety of thicknesses.

[Kev Williams]

All I know of bamboo ply is I have a few pieces of this kicking around my nephew dropped off, it's flooring cutoffs. It engraves fantastic- have no clue as to whether it could be had in thinner versions or ply patterns, but bamboo is very popular...
346763

So these things are to engraved BOTH sides...

One thing is very obvious. Either they have the money to pay for these, or they don't. So even if you lowball, the price for 50 will be well into the thou$and$.

These will be require a full laser sweep on both sides. I don't know how fast your laser is but lets do a little math: You can probably get by with 300 lines per inch res, you have 17 inches to engrave, that's 5100 rail sweeps across 11 inches... Lets say a 150 ips machine like a Gravo or Trotec can actually run 6 lines per second, and has enough power to use the speed--5100/6 comes to 850 seconds, a tad over 14 minutes, on a good day. BEST case as I see it is 30 minutes engraving, at your rate of $1.25, that comes to $37.50 each. If your machine can only muster 3 lines per inch, you're already to $75 each just engraving time.

That said, run your machine thru the motions across 11" at full speed, count how many sweeps it'll run in 10 seconds, divide by 10, take that figure and split 5100 with it to give you an accurate time in seconds.

Then factor materials (I have no clue) and labor for finishing and other variables...

Just as a ballpark wild guess, $60 engraving and $60 time/materials, x 50 pieces is $6000 for the job...

If your customer has ANY idea of the cost involved, this price shouldn't shock them much. If it does, $3000 won't sound much better...

[Matt McCoy]

All I know of bamboo ply is I have a few pieces of this kicking around my nephew dropped off, it's flooring cutoffs. It engraves fantastic- have no clue as to whether it could be had in thinner versions or ply patterns, but bamboo is very popular...
346763

So these things are to engraved BOTH sides...

One thing is very obvious. Either they have the money to pay for these, or they don't. So even if you lowball, the price for 50 will be well into the thou$and$.

These will be require a full laser sweep on both sides. I don't know how fast your laser is but lets do a little math: You can probably get by with 300 lines per inch res, you have 17 inches to engrave, that's 5100 rail sweeps across 11 inches... Lets say a 150 ips machine like a Gravo or Trotec can actually run 6 lines per second, and has enough power to use the speed--5100/6 comes to 850 seconds, a tad over 14 minutes, on a good day. BEST case as I see it is 30 minutes engraving, at your rate of $1.25, that comes to $37.50 each. If your machine can only muster 3 lines per inch, you're already to $75 each just engraving time.

That said, run your machine thru the motions across 11" at full speed, count how many sweeps it'll run in 10 seconds, divide by 10, take that figure and split 5100 with it to give you an accurate time in seconds.

Then factor materials (I have no clue) and labor for finishing and other variables...

Just as a ballpark wild guess, $60 engraving and $60 time/materials, x 50 pieces is $6000 for the job...

If your customer has ANY idea of the cost involved, this price shouldn't shock them much. If it does, $3000 won't sound much better...

Good post Kev.

Bamboo ply is available in most common thicknesses. I use 1/8" 5-ply up to 3/4" 3-ply.

[Curt Heggemeyer]

Thanks for the feed back about the bamboo ply and the cost, I guess my figures were not out of line with what you have figured up. I was using my old Rabbit 65 watt machine for the quote and this new Cam Five machine is a lot faster at 40 inches / sec. So we will see if they want to move forward, if they do than I will post pics.

Thanks for your time
Curt

[Bert Kemp]

I bought a couple cheap bamboo cutting board from WM .They engrave great. Think they were like 4 bucks each346796

[Keith Downing]

You may not have any choice if they are dead set on the design, but from my experience (others may have more!) adding the border all the way around pushes the engrave time for a piece to the absolute max. Because there is absolutely no possibility that any line (pass) will be anything other than the max width all the way left to right. And you must do a pass on every possible vertical line.

Also, if they want those light grey patterns in the background, I would probably suggest doing them separately as a very low power, high speed "cut" and see if you can get them light enough. Unless you are really creative with the design implementation, I would be concerned that rastering them with the rest of the design would result in some spots around some of the smaller letters being unreadable because the background pattern is too dark.

Again, a test run will probably tell you a lot.