Newb from

[dtdetail]

Hello all,
I'm from a small-ish city right near toronto, ontario, and picked up a used tracker 4x8 Protable with a powermax65 a couple weeks ago.
Went to school for Manufacturing Eng.-Welding & Robotics and learned the ins/outs of plasma as well as most other processes from some great minds (hoping to remember a little of it).
Been working in a big automotive welding plant the past few years since school and just switched to nightshift to get more time with the table and better support customers schedules. This forum is packed with some awesome content, been reading here for a while now.
Tracker Tech. support has been good to deal with, as I took home some wrong cabling from the seller that put my mind in a blender.
Machine is cutting already in my garage and i've already gotten a couple contracts from word of mouth. Haven't got the THC and PHC working yet but I haven't done much troubleshooting so cant complain about it too much.
A newb question I have;
What kind of criteria have the experienced guys/gals here found to be effective and profitable in the long term when it comes to pricing out batch jobs for bigger shops? I have some decent connections with small-medium and even a couple big plants that have mentioned they'd keep me in mind when it comes to rush items they don't have the manpower or time for (I.E things that were forgotten about until last minute). Should I price my work lower for ease of communication (talking to someone who knows what they're talking about), in hopes of more business, or because of a part quantity/volume?
Happy to be here and can't wait contribute!

[acourtjester]

Welcome aboard
You seem to have a good start to starting what you want to do. SheetCam has a job report built in to its software and it will help you to understand some of the things needed for pricing. Next is your time and material, many times it is not a cookie cutter solution due to the area you are in. Selling yourself cheap is not helpful as you can get trapped into a place you don't want to be. You seem to have the connections already so that may not be needed, which is better in the long run. Rush jobs should be paid a little more as you are pushing yourself and they may always use you that way afterwards. Sourcing material is another thing to consider with a ruch job, can you get it in time. Avoid any contract with a time penalty, one man shop can only do so much.

[adbuch]

I agree with Tom on this one. Don't get stuck where you are working too cheap! Also - some of these companies want terms such as 2%-10, Net 30. This means they get a 2% discount if they pay within 10 days of delivery, or they pay the full price but have 30 days to pay you. And some even try to push off payment for 90 days (or more). I have had personal exposure to these sorts of situations back when I was doing cnc machine work for IBM and some of the other local companies. I also had situations where I submitted my bid, had their purchase order in hand, had already ordered the material and started the job, and then their purchasing department called me to cancel the order. About the best I could do here was to request payment for my materials and write off my labor time already spend on their job. So you really have to be careful when dealing with these sorts of situations.

Another problem is that bidding a job does not necessarily mean you will get it. It takes time to figure out the in-house costs for a job quote.
Materials cost, job setup, engineering/design/programming time, post processing, actual cut time, tooling costs (consumables), labor cost, etc.

I finally got sick of all of this and decided to manufacture and sell my own products. These are not plasma cut, but sometimes cnc laser cut (I farm that work out) plus cnc machining, welding, etc. which I do "in-house".

But you do "what you have to do" to get started, and maybe your experience will be different than mine was.

You also asked: "Should I price my work lower for ease of communication (talking to someone who knows what they're talking about), in hopes of more business, or because of a part quantity/volume?"

Yes - your pricing should reflect the quantity of parts you are quoting for a single job. For example - regardless of the number of parts you are making, some of your costs such as job setup and engineering/design/programming time will remain constant. Your other costs such as materials cost, post processing, actual cut time, tooling costs (consumables), and labor cost will increase as the number of parts increases. So to a certain extent, the price per part will come down as the number of parts increases. You may need to go thru this several times (or more) before you finally get your price quoting ability "dialed in".

My current products are geared towards the metal working community, mainly used for shaping sheet metal using machines like English Wheels, Pullmax machines, Power Hammers, Planishing Hammers, etc. You can see some of the stuff I make by clicking on the links below.

Good Luck!
David

https://desert-hybrids.com/id63.html

https://www.ebay.com/str/deserthybridsp ... md=2&rt=nc