We are looking for 160 parts of the attached drawing. Material can be aluminum or brass, any alloy. Round or hex bar acceptable.

Parts are required by approximately April 11th. Or we would be willing to accept a partial of 32 by April 11th and take the remainder by the end of April. Shipping to zip code 55987 (Winona, MN). Can be shipped UPS collect on our account.

We will select a vendor as soon as we see one with an acceptable unit price.

Attached Files

tallStandoff.PDF (30.0 KB, 105 views)

What type of finish on the .375 diameter? Can it be left with the off the shelf
extruded look, dull with nicks and dings, if made out of aluminum? Unturned brass would
look better but much more expensive.

Natural / mill finish is acceptable. These are spacers that hold circuit boards off a panel. Hopefully nobody will ever see them. Whatever is easiest. Thanks for letting me clarify.

Pmed you a quote based on extruded aluminum, thank you,........Bob

Thanks to all five shops that quoted the job. Pricing ranged from $2.48 to $11.00. Our expected price was $3. We went with the $2.48 per part shop because they are in the next state over (1 day UPS) and they had a nice low price. Apparently they will be making the parts by hand on a manual lathe. I'm guessing that the other places would be done on CNC's.

This was our first time using RFQWork.com. I was pleased with the prompt quotes and the painless process. I've already told some other companies about the site. It was especially nice to clarify the part finish once, rather than taking 20 calls from 20 different vendors.

Now a question to all those that looked at the RFQ. I didn't have a firm award by date. Did that turn you off? Would you like to have seen a target price? What can we do to improve our RFQ's? We have a couple of turned stainless pieces come up that I'll be posting in a few days.

Thanks,

-James Jarvis
APRS World, LLC
www.aprsworld.com
+1-507-454-2727

It was just fine. You gave the info needed. I also would like to thank you for letting us know you had awarded the job and what it went for. Please note. I know I quoted it as a rush job. Cost would have greatly reduced if I could have had a longer lead time.


Jeff

Thanks for the feedback, I did not price for a rush job. What shocks me is
someone will do these by hand for $2.48. I realize the state of the economy
will not currently support $100 an hour CNC machine rates, which I was getting
a few years ago, but,.......I am pretty good at estimating these simple jobs time
wise, if you include all time, programming, set-up, etc you are looking
at 12 hours, start to finish, cost out material, and to hit that $2.48 price you
would have to sell CNC time at $28.90 an hour. I am pretty sure the guy doing them by hand will be way slower, did he make a mistake or is he selling his time
for $10.00 an hour? Do I drop my hourly rate more? I am getting closer on these
quotes but still missing, I have got one customer out of probably almost 50 now,
but if it takes giving away CNC time for less than $30 an hour, I GIVE UP!

Hi Dualkit,

If you don't mind me sharing, your price was $3.35, each. I'd consider that a fair price and wouldn't have minded paying it. If we did it in house and I had a $9 an hour high school kid running my lathe I was figuring about $3 each would be what they cost us. But that's on a manual engine lathe with tapping completely by hand. And figuring in the kid breaking some taps and making some out of spec parts. But there isn't really any machine cost or profit built in to that, since the machine is just sitting out there doing nothing. Obviously a job shop has to charge for the equipment MRO, run time, overhead, etc.

If I had to guess, the low bidder is going to knock the blacks off on a chop saw. With a carefully set stop on my dry cut saw I can hold 0.005" tolerance all day long. So there is perhaps 10 minutes of cutting blanks and handling the long material. Then he is probably going to bore an emergency collet so it will hold the spacers at the same depth and take only a few seconds to change parts. Drilling time is dominated by the part change time. I have no idea how he is going to tap the aluminum a decent rate, but there must be some way of doing that. But if he can do it in a minute a piece then there is only three hours in the project and $25 in material, perhaps it comes out okay. Even if it takes a full day he is still making ~$50 an hour. Low overhead and working a weekend getting $50 an hour isn't so bad, I guess. But I bet the guy wouldn't be willing to take a 1k or 10k piece order. It's just his niche, I guess.

I think this rfqwork.com is an interesting place with the variability in suppliers. I hope to have enough work that everyone can get a good niche project that fits well with what they have. I have some bored stainless housings coming up that the engine lathe guy probably won't be able to touch. I've made them by hand and there's over an hour each part just boring the through hole. But y'all with your fancy CNC machines will make that in 5 minutes and can still charge the same or more than the hour that the guy on the engine lathe would need.

Just some thoughts,

-James Jarvis
APRS World, LLC

As an additional follow-up. We received a few more quotes. One from a vendor not on the board for $2.02 each. The shop usually does aerospace work and would definitely be using CNC. And the big surprise was a typo from the $11 vendor. He meant to have it be $2.11.

So the real question is, how do these places that are cheaper than the manual lathe guy manage to do it? Quick setups? Low overheads? Machines already paid for?

The lesson for me is that I should wait more than 1 day before accepting a bid.

Thanks,

-James Jarvis
APRS World, LLC

Well if you figure at the most a one hour setup. Under a minute cycle time for a complete part and material cost. I would have quote this right at about $2.00 also. Thats at about 70 an hour for shop time.

shappmachining@yahoo.com