I have been making lots of various custom orders over the past year but always one time projects.
I have someone asking to make 50 mdf cutouts, (about 15 minute cut time each)
The material cost is about $1.50 each. I need to get back to them with a quote.
As an unpainted 12"x12" mdf in the past I have sold for $20
Not sure what a appropriate bulk price would be for this.
Anyone have a similar situation going on?
A little steep.
(Carving time / hr) * time + (cost of raw material + markup) + post-carving-work * shop rate - bulk discount = cost of product
$7 + $5 + $13 - $2 = $23/unit (but this is numbers out of thin air.)
That’s generally how I come up with prices. Haha.
This is an interesting concept. I like where @DamnitJim is going with this. If it takes you 20 minutes for setup and take down, plus the 15 minutes of carving, then 50 cutouts would be around 1,000 minutes, which are two long 8-1/2 hour days. If you only charge $30/hour for skilled labor, then that’s $500, which works out to $10 each with no cost of materials. $35/hour is about $11.67 each, $40/hour is $13.33 each. This could easily bump it up to the $20-$23 each level. I’d price out the materials and figure out what your hourly rate is and go from there.
The good news is that if you get the gig, you’ve paid for two thirds the cost of your machine, which is all any of us want to do…
Some good advice.
Hello I have a calculation excel sheet that also takes a look on economic life of the Mashine, cost for electricity, interest, room rent and so on.
So the set up from my 1000 x-carve ist approx 5 Euro per hour.
Then ad the raw material cost + handling cost for it (3%)
Ad 5% for scrap. The time that I need for preparing with hourly rate. Plus 5% production expenses.
Plus shipping and percentage profit.
Then I have the possibility to set the discount if anyone buys a bulk of products. And I can also see how many bugs goes in my pocket 
Is there a way to calculate the run time before you start cutting the parts? I am using vcarve to generate the tool paths and UGS to send the code to the controller. UGS only starts estimating the time once the code is sent to the controller and I haven’t seen where vcarve gives a runtime estimate. I’ll look again. Or do I just pull the runtime from thin air?
I think everyone should also say where they are located when setting prices. Im in NJ and I can get $5 each just for cutting a large mdf sheet down into 1 sq ft pieces. If i was in a area where people were handier that would not be the case.
ah. I remember overlooking that button just about every time I save a tool path. I guess sometimes you just don’t see what’s in front of you. Thanks.
