How to use my shark to generate $$

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albers
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Joined: Sat Jun 10, 2017 10:39 am

How to use my shark to generate $$

Post by albers »

If you use your machine commercially, what is the best set of guidelines to use when quoting programming and/or machine time???

Rando
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Location: Boise, ID
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Re: How to use my shark to generate $$

Post by Rando »

That is one HUGE question.

For example, what constitutes "commercial" varies widely: from full-on sign shops doing work-for-hire and standard products, all the way to what I do, make small matal parts for a niche market, to people who get paid for creating keepsake items like retirement plaques, even clocks and such. There are variations in business model, in whether it's one-off custom versus designed product production-runs.

I am one of those semi-commercial users, but I make and sell products of my own design, not those brought in by customers. That is, I want to work from idea all the way through order fulfillment. Not everyone wants that. My design flow requires the designs and prototypes to go through a set of "gates" before they can be approved for production and sales. But, those values and metrics are just rough ones I've created, somewhat arbitrarily. They are in no way reflective of a "real" business, and would even seem laughable by them. Some of those gates include:
  • The raw material cost must yield at least 10x revenue
    Material stock availability must not cause unpredictable delays in production
    Machining time has to net $60/hour minimum
    Post-CNC processing for secondary-machining (tapping holes, deburring, etc.) must be less than 10% of the CNC time.
    Finishing (sanding, painting, etc.) must be less than 5% of the cost and time
    Fixtures and part registration accuracy must be feasible and reasonable
    The part can be reliably made without damaging/wearing the machine or tooling unduly
    No toxic chemicals are allowed in the production process.
    Packaging and shipping costs must be well understood
    Product configurations and options must be defined, stable, and manageble.
    Government regulations do not unduly impact either time-to-market or ability to compete.
    The market has to be SMALL enough that I can produce enough parts for it without incurring excessive customer delays.
    The market has to be LARGE enough that it will have sufficient volume to support the engineering time and not constantly require CNC machine reconfiguration from a standard setup. More plainly, it has to be able to made in production lots, or batches.
    The market has to be made up of people who traditionally enjoy highly-crafted pieces, and is not averse to spending more than a little for something cool.
None of the above list is in any way special. We each have to choose our own ways to measure whether something is viable to be made for a profit that makes sense. Others will have different levels of profit expectations. Likewise, none of the above really deals with whether the product will be successful in that market.

As I said, your question is very nebulous and unclear what would be an "answer" that would give you what you're after. Thus, it's entirely likely that the above criteria, used for aluminum parts produced on a Shark CNC router, will not make even one bit of sense for what YOU are trying to do.

As an example, machine shops use a figure of merit called "Material Removal Rate", or essentially how quickly the useless bits of metal are removed from the stock to make $$$ parts. Higher is better, but beyond that it gets complicated fast.

Hope that helps, even to get a conversation started.

Thom
=====================================================
ThomR.com Creative tools and photographic art
A proud member of the Pacific Northwest CNC Club (now on Facebook)

Rando
Posts: 757
Joined: Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:24 pm
Location: Boise, ID
Contact:

Re: How to use my shark to generate $$

Post by Rando »

albers wrote:If you use your machine commercially, what is the best set of guidelines to use when quoting programming and/or machine time???
The quick answer, or course, is "as much as you can convince them to pay!"

;-) Teehee....
=====================================================
ThomR.com Creative tools and photographic art
A proud member of the Pacific Northwest CNC Club (now on Facebook)

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