Price Quote Help

[Liesl Dexheimer]

I have a customer who needs (80) 4" x 6" pieces of plastic with two holes drilled on left & right sides. I will be engraving 3 characters on them & the letters must be 2" high. Does $6.50 each sound reasonable?

[Joe Pelonio]

You didn't specify the plastic, nor who is providing it. That would be a great price for you if they provided the plastic, and still pretty good if your
cost for the plastic works out to less than a dollar each.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Sorry, yes I would be buying the plastic stock. Typical 1/16" thick stock, blue/white.

[Mike Null]

I would be closer to $12 each on those.

[Larry Bratton]

I would be closer to $12 each on those.

Would be good work if you could get it. I would be tickled to get them at $6.50 in 1/16" acrylic right now.

[Joe Pelonio]

Would be good work if you could get it. I would be tickled to get them at $6.50 in 1/16" acrylic right now.

I agree, in better times maybe, but now days more than that they will shop around and get a better deal elsewhere. I would charge $12 for a few, but not for that quantity unless I was really busy and didn't really need the work.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Just to verify, it would be Rowmark plastic not acrylic. I will probably be doing a few other sizes as well. I'm pretty sure the customer has contacted other engravers in the area. I would like the job but I also want to get a fair price and not "low-ball it" as the saying goes.

[Larry Bratton]

Just to verify, it would be Rowmark plastic not acrylic. I will probably be doing a few other sizes as well. I'm pretty sure the customer has contacted other engravers in the area. I would like the job but I also want to get a fair price and not "low-ball it" as the saying goes.

Well, if you used something like Laser Max at about .05 a square inch plus freight, your going to have over $1.20 a piece in the material. So, lets say $1.50 each x 80 that's going to be $120.00. At 6.50 each that's $520.00 or $400.00 to cover your labor and overhead. Gosh, I would still do it in my shop because I think I could probably do it in a couple of hours. If my overhead was $50, that's still $175 an hour. Beats flippin burgers for sure. (some of your competition might take it at $60 an hour for the machine time)

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Yeah, I think I will quote the customer that price. Also have to take into account that I have to mask the sheets of plastic too.

[Mike Null]

You are working for $0.25 per square inch. That means you would do a 1 x 3 for $.75 or a 2 x 4 for $2.00. I am getting commercial re-orders at $0.50 per square inch and wholesale to a sign shop at $0.40 per square inch.

My 1 x 3"s, of which there are many, are a minimum of $2.50. I do bevel the edges for that price.

[Albert Nix]

Thats about the same squares as a desk name plate (2 x 10). There are office supply place around here that will do those for $7 or $8 bucks apiece, one at a time for regular customers. So yeah I would do 80 for $6.50 each or maybe a little less if it was going to lead to more. If the detail was not super fine to speed things up I would use a lower resolution and my 2.5 lense for better coverage (less chance of banding with the lower res.). You will have to consider the lay and design. I buy laser max in 12 x 24 sheets which would be 9 peices. If it was all text with a lot of gaps it may not take long, maybe 15 - 20 minutes per sheet for example. If they wanted a border around the text and there was a lot of detail (if you had to use 500 dpi) raster time would go way up to maybe 30 minutes. At 9 sheets it could take 4.5 hrs. Open the door and do a test run. Lay out one row horizonal, which should take longer that a vertical only lay out and see how long it takes.

[Dan Hintz]

No need to do a test run with the door open... the ULS drivers give a pretty darn accurate estimation of run time with the click of a mouse (though you may have to wait a couple of minutes for it to run the simulation).

[Chuck Patterson]

How do you do run a estimated run time with the ULS driver?

[Dan Hintz]

In the design view tab, there are 5 buttons on the right-hand middle side of the screen... one should be labeled "Estimate" or something of that nature. It takes some percentage of actual time to run, like 5% of actual... waiting 30 seconds for it to estimate a 10 minute run is worth it.

[Chuck Patterson]

I must not have it. Can not find it.