How to Quote Jobshop Work - How Much to Charge?

Quoting work quickly and correctly as a job shop machine shp an be tough!. Luckily, there are strategies to make the process easier and more reliable!
Let's take an in-depth look at three different parts and how the number of operations, workholding, geometry, and quantity affect the outcome and quoted price.
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Links for this video
Download CAM Templates | bit.ly/2KLa8Z8
Tips & Tricks: Buying Raw Material | bit.ly/2AzV3am
Free Screen Share & Recording Software | bit.ly/2luU8PZ
Xometry: A Tool for Manufacturing Entrepreneurship
bit.ly/2yQrItP
NYC CNC Manufacturing Entrepreneurship Resources
bit.ly/2N8MqYV
Alro | bit.ly/2Qlb1u5
Xometry | bit.ly/2F8AwxE
McMaster Carr | bit.ly/2VCuU3E
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CNC Resources: www.nyccnc.com 5 Reasons to Use a Fixture Plate on Your CNC Machine: bit.ly/3sNA4uH

[@whiskeythrottle9369]

This was quite educational for me as a costumer. I know I'm not the intended audience, but seeing that subjectively complex parts can be turned out at a reasonable cost is motivating. I have previously ditched the idea of making custom bits for motorcycles, but that's back on the table now.

[@thebluebutterflygirl]

This is 100% solid advice. It takes time to get to this level of understanding. Watch this 5 times if you're new to the game. Thanks!

[@Adrian-hx6dq]

NYC CNC I gotta say this: You rock! I want to become a cnc programmer as a side hustle ´cause I really enjoy manufacturing but I am thinking to much about because I dont know if it could be a good business for me cause also I got a 9-5 job. But you are literally giving me hope to push a bit harder to master my abilities and put my work to the service of others. Infinite thanks! This channel is amazing, your work it is too!

[@MrSidiox]

Always great to see how open you are with this information. I don't run a machine shop, but it is still insightful to see how shops get to their prices.

[@homeworld1031tx]

It's really incredibly generous that you guys put videos like this out. Thanks for doing it.

[@prodesign8189]

Wow. Missed this vid and I appreciate it. It actually gave credence to what I've made/charged in the past few years. I came out with $25/ a part for the 3 wing flange one. I do design consultation and solid model work these days and that helps me and the customer and it makes it worth doing work for them going forward! Love your work John. I'm up late, dreaming about my new shop coming soon, lol.

[@livium2002]

Wow ! As a business owner I really feel you ! Really appreciate your transparency in the price making. Cool video !

[@BoxOfGod]

I get about 200 - 300 drawings per week to quote. Quantity 1 - 5, milling, turning, mill-turning, conventional lathe, lapping. I have to quote them all while running a shop. I have to estimate time on the fly by feel, no Excel or CAM, CAD. What I noticed you can develop a feeling if you track what you quoted and what was real time spent. When I started doing that I was all over the place now I'm within 10%. Second thing that helps I also program, setup and run the parts. What bothers me it's when I estimate precise times for drawings and give a realistic quote and then I get feedback from customer, "We went with another shop which was 50% cheaper". On a 20K quote they were about 10K cheaper. After some investigation I found out they misquoted drawings and lost money on that job. Where did such a misquote came from? Guys who quote those jobs don't work on the machines anymore and they forgot how long it takes to do anything. I just heard somebody claiming it takes 2 minutes to setup an endmill in ER. In reality it's closer to 10 minutes.

[@garrettp.5018]

Where are you finding 200-400 drawings a week with qty 1-5?

[@AnvilDragon]

A good first pass. I do like to add a bit for first article inspection (in-house), final cleaning/inspection, and packaging. Nice to clean up the bid if you win it and also tract the real hours both as a scorecard for bidding but also where you're starting to get thin on hours, programming, machine time, setup, inspection, or packaging.

[@daffyf6829]

Great video, i was just looking into how to streamline the quoting process. On the last part, i think xometry beat your price because the bottom fillet doesnt need to be 3d'ed. In other words, use a bigger bull nose radius.

[@xTJx93]

This is what I was looking for! FINALLY! Thank you!

[@toolbox-gua]

This has been one of the best time spent watching KZbin. Thank You JS.

[@aydenhanlon1674]

For the small job id say screw mcmaster alot of metal yards have cutofs for sale at a lower price. So defenetly a good place too keep an eye out

[@rlsimpso]

I buy most of my material from Alro and have found if you call a specific location that usually will be able to tell you if they have the material in remnants as well as prime stock. Buying remnants can save a lot, especially if you only need a small quantity.

[@HernandoGMunoz]

Thank you for this awesome video. I watched a while back. I think this is a valuable lesson. Well done and keep up the good work.

[@rickfinsta2951]

John I'm not sure if you've got laser or waterjet shops in your area but I'd get that first part cut from plate and do nothing but the counterbores. It'd make your material cheaper (plate in a non-custom size) and remove all the warpage potential during machining. You also have to consider that if you don't want the work, sometimes you should no-quote. Some places would see your "hey I'll take it if I can get it at this price" quotes and then never talk to you again if you're way off base. Always ask for target pricing when dealing with new customer quote packages. I'm going through learning this all right now and I HATE it! I'd rather mop the floors than quote.

[@kazlx]

I think this is probably and underutilized method. Just asking what their budget is or what they think they plan on spending. If it's way off, you can tell them and not even have to bother running a quote. It at least gets you close and lets you know if you are on the same page.

[@thomashenderson3901]

@@kazlx Precisely. I'm not always hot on this but it can be a very useful strategy.

[@TurboV8boi]

I'm not a machinist, but this is incredible information. Thank you!

[@BerndFelsche]

When making multiple parts from the same material, "nest" the parts into larger pieces of stock; not too big to fit into the machine for the ops up to separating the parts. It can save on workholding and reduce machine time with tool change optimisation. Programming time goes up, depending on the complexity of the nesting.

[@jwmachining5955]

Thanks for sharing. I downloaded your quote template about a year ago and I'm still using it. Tweaked it a little for my personal needs but it was a very good starting point.

[@RBravo82]

Interesting to see how others do it and always nice to see that experience (getting wrong) eventually leads us down the same route. One thing i have added into my calculator is some setup factors. I add 6 mins per tool (loading and measuring) and 20 mins per vice/jig setup and then 10 mins for any additional setups after

[@thuchuynh8479]

Someday if I luckily become a successful cnc shop owner, your clip contribute a nice portion of that success. I'll find you offline and....you will know about how I am going to say thank you specially!

[@mannycalavera121]

It's one of those things that seems so confusing until you go though it yourself then with time it's second nature.

[@metalworksmachineshop]

Bottom line is, You manipulate the numbers to what your comfortable doing the job for. I'm on the west side of Ohio, and in sales in a fab shop. So sometimes the numbers show you making money. But you know for the labor of setups and other things (overhead) On small quantities , isnt worth doing sometimes.. Alro has a killer cut fee. We buy steel in bulk , so pay by the ton.

[@collinrasmussen5630]

This video made me remember some nightmare material that we had come in, once we had 5/8 square bar stock come in with 1/4 rads on the corners, and the saw guy cut half before he realized it was shit. Customers always want you to sharpen your pencil on the bid. I realized losing money is not worth keeping customers.

[@tttco]

Wow so much knowledge being passed down on this video!!!! I am sucking it up!!! I am going to be using these resources that you have provided for us!! Thank you.

[@FtaBta]

John! You would greatly benefit by getting a tombstone horizontal! You could bang out those parts you designed, in around 3 to 5 minutes a piece (Part number two.) But great content as always! Thank you!

[@JonasWanted]

This video clarify my doubts. Thank you!

[@wernerberry7800]

Another great video Buddy! I would think this is a great value to anyone thinking about making a buck in this business! Teaching is where you shine brightest John! Thanks for sharing! 👌👍

[@nyccnc]

Thanks Werner!

[@Dakakeisalie]

Hey John, great video I had a question about finding job shops. On the customer side of the coin, how do I find job shops to get quotes and work done for myself. In quantities like in the vid (10-100) but not as some large company with procurement etc? Is there some search/quote site many shops use to compete or would I manually have to discover and find shops to do work? Alternatively, as a small business how do "normal" job shops market themselves?

[@nyccnc]

Take a look at www.nyccnc.com/tips-on-how-to-source-cnc-machined-parts/

[@robertschmitt9160]

Google Maps

[@heavymachining7830]

Also practical machinist has a manufacturing resource page for listing your request for quotes from companies around the country

[@tarkka]

Sourcing is, like most other things in business, all about building connections. Outside of MFG.com (not recommended, see other comment thread on this video), I don't think there's a consolidated sourcing platform that has any traction. Try asking around your social circles and you should be able to find somebody pretty quickly. Welders, mechanics, machinists that work for big companies, accountants, engineers... These people have probably all crossed paths with a few small local machine shops at some point and will know who to use (or, equally valuable, who not to use.) Or, if you're not in a rush, most larger cities have a manufacturing expo of some sort that is intended to connect shops to sourcing professionals. The big flashy shops that advertise all over the place are not who you want; they're looking for the corporate customers. You're looking for the shops that don't need to advertise because they've got more work than they can handle. In my experience, it's difficult trying to use the internet to source parts if you're starting out. There are a lot of crooks out there, and if you don't look like you're an established company with some credit references, shops are going to be hesitant to do work for you. Perhaps more than most other businesses, machine shops take a huge risk when they do work for new customers. When you find somebody local, and meet them in person, they're going to be more confident they'll get paid (and more confident they can haul you into court if they don't). Some additional tips (and forgive me if you already know this): 1) Send a complete, proper drawing, and a proper purchase order. Real shops don't want (only) a CAD model. They need to know tolerances, and if you're talking small quantities, they'll probably do some or all of the work on a manual machine where a CAD model doesn't help them. You can make drawings in Fusion 360, so there's no excuse in this day and age. 2) Give them lots of lead time. Good shops are scheduled out 4-6 weeks, and their priority will be their existing customers. They're going to work you in when they have time. 3) Expect to be surprised by the price. If you're a new customer, they're probably building in some overhead to get you set up, and will also assume that they'll have to spend more time on this job because of inexperience or whatever. If the transaction was positive, the prices will come down on the reorder. Perhaps you could mention what state/region you're in? There might be somebody here that knows somebody in your area?

[@brentonparis8927]

Mlnlme1, I currently work for a small job shop that operates in quantities like you are talking about. We specialize in fabrication, prototyping and just got started in Cnc machining about 2 years ago (3 axis only). Would you be interested in emailing me about what you are looking to get done? I do not know where you are located but it never hurts to talk and build relationships/connections.

[@Jeff-yy5fe]

Excellent work John!!!!

[@blackmann5382]

Do you have an online programming class?

[@matthewknopp8514]

Can the spreadsheet be downloaded?

[@chrisbreidenbaugh3697]

No setup time in your quote?

[@joeyscollinsful]

You are always cranking out the good content!! Keep it up. Thanks for sharing!

[@chucka103]

Great vid John Thank you 👍🏻

[@nyccnc]

Thanks!

[@spkrman15]

Very transparent. Excellent video

[@fakerfake1]

Ok my question is why would you do individual pieces of raw stock on the first piece you showed when you could order the stock to the usable length of the machine and cram as many parts in it as possible thus saving material as well as saving time doing multiple in one operation? You would have a much lower cost/part and your bid would be much more competitive, at least with larger quantities.

[@JD2jr.]

I'm guessing they would if these were actual jobs, but they're just examples so he's not putting in as much effort.

[@RandomNumber141]

The first part also has to be held in a vice, so to use the entire bed you’d need to set up a bunch of vices, right?

[@fakerfake1]

Robert Panco you could also use a vacuum table, super glue method, hold downs, or mod vices.

[@fakerfake1]

James Dreger fair point

[@kazlx]

If you already have vises set up on the machine, it's probably more work to remove them, do a completely different setup and change back than it is to just cut them to size and run the program 10 times. You aren't really saving that much material on those parts in that size. It's way easier to just throw the blanks in a vise.

[@ryleegill1013]

Where does one go to find machine shop work? I'm from an area which does not have a local CNC shop and I'm not sure if it's because there is no work or if nobody has thought to start one. I love this type of work and would love to be able to do it close to home. Any tips?

[@cambroe]

I'm not sure how hard you've looked but it's likely that there are more machine shops around than you think. Many little shops won't even show up on Google Maps. Your best bet is to start asking around. If you have a local makerspace that's a good place to start.

[@brentonparis8927]

Rylee Gill I currently work at a small fabrication shop that has a 3 axis Cnc. I don’t know where you are located but we are near Rochester, NY.

[@ryleegill1013]

@@brentonparis8927 I'm North of watertown

[@noraffuan3573]

how do the qoute for CAM only.. ? depend for per hour i do or per hour machining time?

[@davesalzer3220]

Great post

[@maikeydii]

I think that on the last part the Xometry quote will be a butt ugly part with horrific fillets - would be nice to see a real world comparison on with parts you can provide as $25 per part versus their $18 part.

[@rcmaniac10]

he set the surface finish at 125 on the last part, but in his cycle he has it at about 63 so that might be the price difference

[@RoboCNCnl]

Great info John

[@tonerduckpin]

Great Video!

[@nyccnc]

thanks!

[@deviceone]

Who has two thumbs and was horribly undervaluing his work 😎👍👍

[@DrakkarCalethiel]

Can it applied to different trades aswell? I have the feeling that I either charge too less or too much.

[@michaldominikfach2152]

is your quoting sheet for download ?

[@SupraSmart68]

Don't forget, investing in a CNC plasma cutter or presumably better yet, a water jet would allow substantial material savings by tessellating some parts instead of wasting a full square blank for each one and may leave an acceptable finish in many cases, if only on outside or unseen hollowing, (weight saving), features.

[@maikeydii]

Usually the plasma cut finish in aluminium is far from good and water jets are expensive as hell to own and operate. Also in 10-off quantities set up and cam programming for the water jet or plasma cutting usually does not pay off versus the saved material.

[@SupraSmart68]

@@maikeydii ......Maybe until someone clever invents the 'Sonic Breadknife Universal Water Jet System' for the CNC mill.... like a glorified mister nozzle, then it would just be a first op' Fusion 360 process. Does aluminium work harden when plasma cut to make it entirely unsuitable for roughing out blanks where a substantial material saving could otherwise be made? If so, one could simply 'mill part' thin items close to or at finished size if they tessellate well or can be arranged with any number of common edges and surface finish is potentially better when slotting as opposed to edge milling. You could save on workholding setup time also if items are parted off on the mill, if only for the roughing stage. This is all assuming that it's actually cheaper to buy larger sheet or extruded plate material for a particular job. Like John said, it's always worth suggesting strategic design changes if it will allow more efficient production, speed up delivery and save money. People sometimes go to ridiculous lengths to stick to design spec's that often aren't even critical rather than query the design for possible efficiency improvements and you'll often be dealing with more computer tech' savvy but perhaps less 'hands on' CAD operators who may have even misinterpreted a drawing or over complicated the bejesus out of a component, like the air filter retention handle/lock on my Grundig tumble dryer. It looks like a shuttle docking port from a Scifi movie but way more complex.

[@kazlx]

@@SupraSmart68 CNC plasma sucks for aluminum. It's way faster to just machine them. You aren't saving enough material for it to even matter.

[@jaredfaustino7844]

john, is you Excel spreadsheet you use to quote sharable? id like a copy of what you use to do your quoting. thanks!

[@tricktuning1]

It must not be available

[@deth3021]

Surprised you don't factor in machine and tool wear and tear. On top of that, not sure how good it is uploading a customer part info to a 3rd party without their consent.

[@flyincivic]

I really need to step up my quoting game. I’m working too cheap.

[@romanorolex2325]

If you're getting customers i would keep doing what you're doing. In days time cnc machines are cheap and easy to get started in.. low ball the competition, making a profit for ur self, keeping a good relationship with the customer, and making it hard on other machine shops u cant go wrong

[@chiefmachining7972]

One Op on 5 axis or 4 axis- Bracket

[@jamesdavis2027]

Do you guys still do job shop work?

[@thatf_inguy8220]

Do you have any advice or willing to do a vid on finding a machine shop? I have such mixed luck finding shops that will deliver consistent quality and even finding shops (in the US) that will even quote me. It’s very frustrating

[@nyccnc]

www.nyccnc.com/tips-on-how-to-source-cnc-machined-parts/

[@XometryHQ]

Not being able to find a CNC Machine shop must be very frustrating. I would encourage you to upload your part for a quote through Xometry, get.xometry.com/quote. We’d be happy to help you get what you need!

[@bryceleekelsey]

RFQspace.com

[@BaldurNorddahl]

Does 5 axis (3+2) make economic sense simply to get less setups?

[@nyccnc]

Absolutely

[@Dsmiffb]

For all the little shops like me who needs material for low quantities check out yarde metals drop zone. Easy and they don't gouge you as bad as alro or PA steel for little pieces.

[@flyincivic]

David Smith check out www.stockcarsteel.com you can buy by the foot and cheaper than most online places.

[@joshs7809]

If I’m honest I think this is totally inefficient way of quoting, surely you have an hourly rate that your shop charges. Why not put separate columns in for set up time and actually machining time, this your spread sheet can work out the hourly cost of setting a job and adding the cost of machining. For example. If you charge $100 an hour and your quoting for 2 parts, the price will dramatically change if you them quote for 10 parts as the set up times will be spread over 10 parts not 2. Just seems really inaccurate if your guessing you can do 20 parts an hour etc The example is how I quote in my shop and it works a treat

[@joshh6470]

Alros web price is always higher than when you call it in.

[@chiefmachining7972]

Where is the link for excel download? I had like 4 years ago

[@Houcnc]

website search on google nyc cnc quoting go to the website you have to pay $40 for 3 month subscription

[@sarmik13]

Casual 3D contour would do much better for that surface, but thats just my opinion.

[@epeleg]

Wow. Thanks. Do you know of a similar video which talks about quoting for 3d printing?

[@ratdude747]

Interesting. I'm on the other end of table (Equipment engineer who sometimes designs stuff to be machined). Usually very low volume though (one off fixtures/replacment parts, etc.).

[@fmpApps]

Like so many estimates, there's no money to pay the owner. Thinking you'll make it on a general markup percentage often fails for many reasons. You've spent time estimating, designing, testing but you don't get paid for that. Pay yourself an hourly wage....

[@MrTrekFanDan]

...Fidget Spinner 2.0...?

[@micklioune1080]

How much should you charge.... A LOT. Hell, you should overcharge

[@leehodge2415]

And u just priced yourself out of a job.

[@JackFilmTube]

First