Truthfully, I didn't lay this part out for time cycle. I knew I could not be competitive for 20 pieces. When the larger numbers are needed, I will get much more serious about the time study, etc. We may be able to go cermet with ground stock, and keep the cycle time way down, but we need to maintain the 1000sf required by the tooling, and we only have 10000 rpm max to play with. If we can get the tool life up, we can run this overnight (for the 1000 piece), and have very little labor in the part.
I know we can never compete with the small shops with hand lathes for the prototype work. BUT, if the customer is smart about what he wants and where his project is going, he would be willing to pay the extra $$ and have the EXACT parts off the exact machines that will be run as production parts.
You and I both know, the parts off a hand lathe at low prices will NEVER compare to the quality and consistancy that can be maintained on ANY CNC Swiss machine. So when the production parts arrive, he may have to spend time making the better parts work in his application.
By the way........(Dualkit knows this I am sure), turning a 1018 part, run with cermet tooling, we will be able to maintain a 16 finish without even trying. Try that on a hand lathe.