Series
Costing and quoting
A cost price in the order you build it: rate, material, blank, setups, batch size, finishing, actuals and the tool you estimate in.
You build a machining cost price in a fixed order, even if nobody ever wrote that order down. First the rate of the machine the part runs on, then the material and the price you pay for it, then the blank that comes off the bar or the plate. Next the setups, because every setup costs setting up and checking, and the batch size, which decides over how many parts you spread that one-off time.
Then the finishing you send out, the actuals that show whether your estimate held, and finally the tool you estimate in, from spreadsheet to estimating software. This series walks that order step by step, with one decision per part and the lines that belong to it. The examples use round numbers, so you see the method and not a customer.
Read the series from start to finish and you have a cost price any colleague can follow: line by line, with time, rate and quantity, and an open line where a price is still missing instead of a silent zero. That is your shop's knowledge, recorded where it touches the price.
All parts
- Part 1
How do you calculate a machine hour rate?
A machine hour rate belongs to one machine, with the operator beside it as a rate of its own.
- Part 2
Own purchase price or market price in the estimate?
The material line costs what your supplier charges for this block, with source and price date.
- Part 3
Sizing the blank: allowance, clamping and stock
Material is costed on the sawn piece, not on the model's bounding box.
- Part 4
Count the setups before you name a price
Every setup adds setup time, programming time and one more clamping of every part, so count them by machining direction before the quantity breaks are fixed.
- Part 5
Why does a small batch cost so much per part?
Ten parts cost more each because setup and programming happen once per batch, and that fixed time belongs on its own line in the estimate.
- Part 6
Finishing without a price: leave the line open
A 6082 housing, 25 pieces, black anodised, and the anodiser's price has not come back yet. That line belongs visibly open.
- Part 7
Estimate versus actuals: compare per operation
Job costing on the order total adjusts the wrong standards: an 11 per cent overrun hides a milling operation that ran nearly half over.
- Part 8
Excel estimating: where it works, where it strains
A price can be defended only when a colleague can check every estimate line, with its time, rate and quantity beside it.
- Part 9
Estimating software for machining: what to check
Test estimating software on a drawing you have already quoted, priced with your own machines and rates, in lines you can check.
Your cost price. In every line.
Blake lays out the requirements from drawing and model as proposals and builds the cost per operation, with your own machines and rates. Your team decides.