Quote sent,
Thank you
Lonnie

Email sent with quote.
I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you
Lonnie

Do you mind sharing if this job has been awarded yet and for what price?

I have just recently awarded this job. Thank you to everyone who has offered a quote. I will attempt to contact everyone who quoted individually to inform them.

The awarded price was more than 75% lower than the average quote.
I received quotes for this job ranging from less than $2.00 up to more than $17.
Using these numbers you should be able to derive a ballpark for what the awarded price was.

Again, I thank everyone for their offers. I have future jobs just around the corner; perhaps I will get a change to do business with some of you.

~Skylar Gray
~Equinox Systems

What gives here? I am new to this forum. I have difficulty seeing how anyone could bid less than $2.00 for a part like this. In fact, it seems many of the quotes in the forum I looked at over the weekend are pitifully low. I'm guessing if this would go into production the actuators would be cast or maybe molded from plastic.

Is this really what machine rates are in this economy?

Are people virtually giving away time hoping to charge regular rates for future work? Or do they really work for minimum wage as a standard practice?

I think people play the give away game to hope to get future work at regular rates, those people are fools. On small quantity jobs where material is a big part of the cost, those jobs go to "moonlighters" that are stealing the material
and tooling from their day job. I remember one job in particular that would have
required $50 of aluminum even at $2.50 a pound (most people pay more than that) the job went on another form to a USA shop, FOR $50!!!! I have known
people to use their employers machines for outside work, easy to compete with
ZERO overhead. Also there are some machine owners that are flat out desperate
and will fire up a CNC Mill or Lathe for $10-$15 an hour if you include all their
time, I have seen people claiming "free programming and set-up". What amazes
me is I have seen large shops (20,000 sq ft looking at website or terraserver pictures) bidding on $100-$200 jobs. There are desperate people and thieves
out there right now. I have won a total of 2 jobs and I have probably bid on
50-100. I only bid when my machines and skills are a perfect fit so I can crank the parts out faster than the next guy, I don't do $10 an hour machine
time,............Bob

Bob,

Wow- only about a 2% bid award. How much time do you spend quoting 100 projects to get those 2 jobs? Surely that has to be accounted in your profit margin for those jobs. If you only averaged 15 minutes per quote, you'd spend 25 hours bidding to get 2 successful jobs. It's looking discouraging to participate here. Are most awards going to low bidder, or do clients realize something must be amiss in such a low quote?

Probably 10-15 minutes on each quote, but wait! UPDATE I just got job #3
this week. I think almost everyone goes with low quote unless it is from out
of the country. I am an insomniac so I usually throw quotes aside and do them
in the middle of the night, so it is not like I am wasting quality time doing them.
Also 1 of the 3 I won turned into a repeat customer who gives the work
straight to me now, I make enough off him to make the car payment. I only
bid on jobs where I feel I have an edge, you should probably do the same.
Personally I don't bid on simple manual mill work, too many moonlighters with
Bridgeports in their garage who just want to make enough $$ to buy pizza & beer on Sundays. Complicated manual mill work the average Joe can't
do is worth a bid. Have to also stay away from anything the will consume tooling
if quantities are high, too many noobs will think 304 is the same as 303 just
because the numbers are close. For simple manual lathe work see my reasons for staying away from simple manual mill work. Medium quantity CNC Lathe or
Mill work in my opinion is the only thing you can win and earn a decent rate.
It has to be something that your skills and equipment are well suited for so
you can charge a decent rate and still come out with a low per unit cost.
A lot of stuff on the 3 free bid places I go to go for $10 an hour. I know
because I do ask for and get feedback, and on lots of these parts I know
the lowest possible run time because I push the limits myself, anyway
good luck and happy bidding.

To: skylargray,

Quote: small AL6061 part(button actuator)
1) 10 of these parts with mill finish: US$120.-
2) 10 with clear anodize: US$80.-
3) 20 with mill finish: US$120.-
4) 20 with clear anodize: US$180.-
Above prices quoted based on FOB Shenzhen
Company name: MTS Mold & Precision Engineering Co., Ltd.
E-mail: salemold.li@gmail.com

Qianli Li, why are you quoting me? Also why are you bidding on a closed job?
How come you list your location as Texas? Don't like coming back to these threads for useless posts like yours.