Help on job pricing

[Tom Majewski]

I need help on pricing a job.

8 signs. Each one is 27" by 36" by 3/4" walnut veneer plywood, edge banded, varnished, and waxed.
The middle 80% or so of sign would be a lasered 3 sentance mission statment something like " Our goal is to provide our customers with outstanding service...bla, bla, bla" with 1.5" letters, and the company logo at the bottom.

I do all the woodwork and lasering. The customer is national and has deep pockets. I don't want to underprice like I usually do for small jobs and I don't want to chase the job away as it could lead to more of same.

I can use tha pass-thru doors on my Pinnacle, the only trick is indexing because I'll have to do two laser passes and hope they line up in the center.

Material cost is roughly $70 per sign. I could cut that in half IF the customer would go a little smaller and then I could cut 4 signs out of a piece of plywood. ($112/sheet, horizontal grain)

Thanks,
Tom

[Mike Null]

I would not be lower than $600 each. I have a feeling you're going to have to color fill these as well.

[Tom Majewski]

.......boy did I underbid on my phone estimate.

[Scott Shepherd]

I'd be more in the $350-400 range.

[Jack Harper]

I specialize in large format lazing and do B to B only. Since there are fewer people that can handle the large jobs, I charge the greater of $65sf or $125 per laser hour "plus materials". Additional finishing requirements are usually extra.

[Joe Pelonio]

I would not be lower than $600 each. I have a feeling you're going to have to color fill these as well.

Based on my prices for sandblasted wood signs, and the additional amount of work on these, I have to agree with Mike.

[Richard Rumancik]

. . . .I can use tha pass-thru doors on my Pinnacle, the only trick is indexing because I'll have to do two laser passes and hope they line up in the center.

You didn't ask a question about this point - but I'll answer anyway! Since you don't want to lose money by having a reject, you need a really good strategy as to how you will do the indexing. I am assuming that the "sentence text" is parallel to the 36" long axis so you would be rastering in the 27" direction in order to fit the laser bed.

I would not recommend that you "slice" the drawing through any letters and then try to match up the partial letters. Can be done, but risky. Instead, you should probably create a stepped cutting path so all letters are rastered whole. (Hopefully you don't need to slice through a graphic.) Using this method, a slight mismatch won't show.

You will probably need to remove the x-ruler so you have the y-ruler to slide against. I would consider a clamp or two.

Also, I suggest you make at least one piece of hardboard the same size as your sign to do a setup/dry run (no need to raster the whole sign of course, but it is useful to have to plan out and practice the indexing step).

If you already know how you are going to do it just ignore this . . . but if you want any elaboration let me know.

[Tom Majewski]

Thanks everyone. I have to re-think my pricing. I was happy with 2x material price plus a nice per hour rate, but I don't know now.

Thanks for the tip Richard. I have aluminum angle drilled and tapped to go on the laser bed from when I lasered designs on kitchen cabinet doors.
They slid in on the angle, but I didn't have to splice the design since it was one central graphic.

I do have a stack of mdf and ply to do dry runs.