Would anybody buy flatwork?

[kevinT]

wait and see what kind of price they come up with. ...I think that is a little high.


I got a price for vintage style base plates. tooling = $700 or $800 (can't exactly remember) and 250 base plates for about $1,800 which ain't too bad IMO.

[DoctorX]

Don't forget....

The $3000.00 price per punch / die combo may seem excessive. BUT....since the tool and die guy made the tooling, he also repairs and maintains the punches and dies when they break or wear out. That has to be figured into the price. You "own" the tooling, but the tool and die shop designed it to specifically run on their presses. Time and materials have a cost and have to be accounted for.

What if you decide to order only 50 baseplates that month? Where does the T&D shop make its money if he charged you very little for the tooling? Even if he has CNC, and can make tooling quickly, expect to pay for setup and programming charges, material charges (tool steel), etc. Someone has to pay for the CNC equipment. Some of that cost is passed on to you.

Going overseas to get your tooling? It may be cheaper, but you *may* run into different issues -- hidden costs, time zone differences, minimum piece order, part design testing and approval issues, shipping, customs, letters of credit, wars, embargoes, shortages, etc, etc.

On the other hand, your next door neighbor could be a retired T&D guy who can knock out some killer tooling for you and not charge you much. You might have that option, too...


Please let us know how much your punches and dies would cost to have made. I mentioned before I was quoted the $3000.00 per figure as a personal favor. I don't want to know who...just what you were quoted.

Thx,

Doctor X

[chevalij]

I don't expect it to be dirt cheap. And if you figure an average shop charging anywhere from $60 - $145 an hour for engineering time, your price isn't out of the question. I have done a number of quotes on jobs (I do a fair amount of project management work) and I know how much labor can cost. Being that I only want to punch a fiber, I dont' think took steel is required. Stainless maybe. The block itself will be cheap, it's the guide pins, sleeves etc. that will be pricey as far as raw material goes. When I get the quote, I'll let you know. I have no problem sharing info.

[chevalij]

Additional note. When I first when to this shop, they took a SWAG (scientific wild assed guess) of a few hundred bucks. I doubled it to get to $600.

[chevalij]

I heard back from the vendor I was attempting to get a set of dies from, they said
"am not getting anything back from my supplier. I am going to have to no quote this job. I apologize for the amount of time it cost you. These two parts are very small and need special tooling to punch."

So, it looks like I'll have to try elsewhere. It can't be that friggin hard to make a punch for such a simple design, can it?

[DoctorX]

I heard back from the vendor I was attempting to get a set of dies from, they said
"am not getting anything back from my supplier. I am going to have to no quote this job. I apologize for the amount of time it cost you. These two parts are very small and need special tooling to punch."

So, it looks like I'll have to try elsewhere. It can't be that friggin hard to make a punch for such a simple design, can it?

The punch and die concept is pretty straight forward. Further, for some tool and die shops, it is as easy as falling off a log.

You are dealing with "little guy" vs "tool and die shop with costs and overhead".

What you have to take into account is how many parts you expect to have made, and how often (i.e. 3000 pcs per month for instance). It won't necessarily pay for you to have tooling made, and have 100 - 500 pairs of flatwork made every so often. You have to be able to purchase large amounts of finished product over time to make it worth the T&D shop's time to mount the die set, set up the punch press and pay someone to punch out material. Towards the end of a particular tool and die shop's existence, the shop assistants didn't take the time to properly setup and / or monitor the punch press, as we found BAGS of rejects never sent to the East Coast Pickup Manufacturer I alluded to in the past (we also found barrels of rejected injection molded parts ready for regrinding and reuse - complete waste of time and energy). This time and energy need to be factored in. The more professional the shop, the more the likelihood they will add the "waste" factor into the price. If you are purchasing 10,000 pcs over 6 months, that's another story -- they will probably fall over themselves helping you out. The punches and dies are made from tool steel, heat treated and ground to the right dimensions to properly punch the forbon to make exactly the right size hole / shape without binding. This is after the die design is completed, tested and run to get approval of the part production, among other things.

Aside from the more common O1, D2,and A2 tool steels, some of the more exotic sintered tool steel goes for 30 dollars a pound -- that's 30 as in 'thirty'. I checked because I was lucky enough to get some bricks of it at a surplus sale. The owner didn't quite know what he had, and I snatched it up. For a forbon punch, A2, O1 or D2 is plenty good, and more available for much cheaper money.

Why do you think the big guys aren't worried about the little pickup makers? When good parts become as plentiful, and available to everyone, then folks will become a little more concerned, both big and not so big. The problem for them becomes not when there is 10 or 20 small pickup makers, it's when there are 100 - 300 or more smaller pickup makers making similar products.

Take a look at Harmony Central and count up how many pickup makers are listed. Go ahead. The last time I looked a couple of years ago, there were about 168. That included BIG, not-so-big, medium, small and microscopic.

Keep digging, you may luck out and find a retired guy, or some shop who will take the job. You should deal with the tool and die shops directly, and not through a vendor. It could very well be that he won't make much money from your work as a middleman, so instead of shopping it around, he knows it isn't worth his time so he just says no. Remember he wants to get his cut, too.

I don't know where you are, but look in the Business to Business yellow pages, if your town has one. You will also have to take time off work (if you have a day job) to talk to the tool and die shop to agree on the finished result before production begins.

Doctor X

[chevalij]

I really didn't think this would be that complicated. For one, I'm not punching steel base plates etc. so I thought a steel rule die would work. They're used for cutting cardboard, foam etc. But that was only one vendor so far. It's easy to send emails and I already have the CAD layout done. I'll keep plugging away until someone give in, or I do. To make matters worse, the stupid Stew Mac catalog showed up in the mail today.....

[DoctorX]

I really didn't think this would be that complicated. For one, I'm not punching steel base plates etc. so I thought a steel rule die would work. They're used for cutting cardboard, foam etc. But that was only one vendor so far. It's easy to send emails and I already have the CAD layout done. I'll keep plugging away until someone give in, or I do. To make matters worse, the stupid Stew Mac catalog showed up in the mail today.....

Forbon is very tough in some respects, soft in others. A Whitney 91 ten ton bench punch press will cut through the thicker forbon very easily. I have done it. The problem there is making or getting the punches made to do the job. This is where learning about punches and dies comes in. The reason you pay big money to a tool and die shop is beacuse you are paying for their expertise, so you don't have to figure out all of the small details yourself. There are plenty: material tensile strength, material shear strength, punch and die clearances, material thickness, material composition, tonnage required to cut material, alloy types, progressive dies, slug removal, die design, finger stops, part yield / sheet of forbon, cost per unit / unit of time, etc. etc, blah blah blah.

In the end, you would be getting a bargain anyway if you farm out the work to a shop, because of the time you would save.

Doctor X

[chevalij]

Well DoctorX, you seem to know a hell of a lot about tool and die! Care to quote on a punch set for flatwork? And what really pisses me off, is my brother used to own a tool and die shop in Windsor Ont. before he moved to China. Actually, it was a fixture and gauge shop, but close enough.

[DoctorX]

Well DoctorX, you seem to know a hell of a lot about tool and die! Care to quote on a punch set for flatwork? And what really pisses me off, is my brother used to own a tool and die shop in Windsor Ont. before he moved to China. Actually, it was a fixture and gauge shop, but close enough.

You might want to contact him. If he still does this kind of work, maybe he can make the tooling for you. At the very least, he can advise you further. If he has contacts in Ontario, maybe he can hook you up with a T&D shop that will do the work for a big discount. Is Windsor near Detroit? Should be lots of T&D shops there....

Doctor X

[NightWinder]

Thats abserd?! Never heard that type of pricing for cookie cutters~ This guy is obviously very experienced...and values his time. Furthermore....How many will it pop out in one hit? Reading your post, One at a time? Thats not logical/.

[NightWinder]

Yes, Windsor is right across the bridge. You did however forget to mention the fact that the guy milling is reaching anywhere between $28-40 maybe 50 per hour. But for simply punching forbon.....Buy a book, or a handy pair of shears....this shits not that hard. Baseplates and the almighty nightmare of punching covers is another story. Detroit? Thats all thats here is shops and stamping plants....

[chevalij]

I could cut them by hand, they're not a complicated shape. It's just that I thought if I could get a set of dies made and could cut 100 an hour, life would be easier. I also figured there are probalby quite a few people doing it by hand. If I got a set of dies made and sold some flatwork, it would offset the cost of the dies. I'm not giving up on this, just might take some time to find a small shop that won't want the moon for something so simple.

[myfoot]

It'd be nice if they had an apprentice they could give it to. Wouldn't be to hard and he'd get some experience and you may get a break. I used to work in a large factory that had it's own machine shop and there is a hell of a difference between how fast one can go and how fast the other can.

[chevalij]

Got a quote back on a Steel rule die. Now, this will only cut the outer shape of both top and bottom at once, not punch all the holes. But, how does $132 grab ya? I think it's dirt cheap and will probably go for it.