Price Quote for a job

[Abdul Baseer Hai]

Hello All

I have to give a price quote to a high tech company for a control panel plate with the following specifications. Please help:

• IPI plastic, Lasethins, 1/32" material
• Size: 7x 17 and 7x 19 inches
• 10 round quarter inch holes to be vectored
• about 45 letters to be engraved
• quantity, 20 of each
• adhesive on all

Can anyone please guide me on what price to give them.

Price of a quarter sheet of the material is about $18 Canadian for me.

Thanks in advance

Abdul

[Nick Adams]

http://sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=26389

[Joe Pelonio]

As a rule anything I do that's being used in a manufacturing process I can get a better price than normal, if it were not for our lasers they would have to have dies or molds and we're saving them thousands of dollars.
Never had a complaint yet at even double my normal prices.

[Abdul Baseer Hai]

Joe

Thanks for the insight.

I have already done a job for this company. I quoted them a price of $6 for a .75 inch x 3.75 inch plate with raster and vector, which they happily accepted. I also charged them $35 setup.

Based on this, what do you think i should charge them for

• 7 17inch plate
• 7 x 19inch plate

Thanks
abdul

[Lee DeRaud]

I have already done a job for this company. I quoted them a price of $6 for a .75 inch x 3.75 inch plate with raster and vector, which they happily accepted. I also charged them $35 setup.

Based on this, what do you think i should charge them for

• 7 17inch plate
• 7 x 19inch plate

Well, based on that, the new job should be 2X$35 for setup. For the actual plates, you can either:
1. scale it by area (about 90X$6) or
2. scale it by engraving time, asuming you know how long the first job took, and then add in the cost of the extra raw material.

#2 will probably be less (a lot less?) than #1.

For what it's worth, one of the online laser services I researched charged about $35/hour for "people time" (CAD, setup, whatever) plus $35/hour of "machine time" (the actual run-time of the laser job). (That assumed customer-provided materials.)

[Joe Pelonio]

Lee had good suggestions. The actual dollar amount/hour varies by where you are, around here I go $60, some guys I know in CA are more than that, and as Lee said some are as low as $35. Sort of the same as auto repair hourly charges, here they are $80-90, but a friend in Utah tells me it's $60-70 there.

One other thing, if it's a big job and I want accurate laser time for the quote as part of the setup I'll run one ghost sample with the lid lifted to avoid using the tube or material then multiply that out by the quantity
plus a few seconds or minutes each for changing material. That will vary by how many pieces are cut per sheet. It can take a long time to pick up
a 12x24 sheet full of 34" tall cut letters from 1/16" acrylic plus the centers of the a's and e's etc. and with laserthins even longer

[Abdul Baseer Hai]

Hi

My material cost for the plates is going to be $13 plus 2 minutes of laser time. If the laser time is $60/hour what do you suggest i should be charging them. (Should the quote be a multiple of material cost plus laser time?)

Abdul

[Lee DeRaud]

My material cost for the plates is going to be $13 plus 2 minutes of laser time. If the laser time is $60/hour what do you suggest i should be charging them. (Should the quote be a multiple of material cost plus laser time?)

Yes, plus the setup fee for each of the two jobs. (If it's that DWG file in your other thread, you're gonna earn it.) Multiplier for material is, I dunno, maybe 3. Works out to a total of $111...sounds dirt-cheap for some sort of engineering prototype.