However, the most important factor would be quality and type of shop. Electricity is and overhead costs play an important role in what a shop is charging.
Manual mills and lathes may be the majority of machines found in a shop like this.Ħ0 to 80 dollars per hour is the average machine shop rate in most parts of the U.S. However, if you need to make parts with wide open tolerances, you can save a lot of money going to a company that is 48 bucks an hour. $40-55/hour is considered cheap in the manufacturing industry, and while you may be able to find a local shop that has a rate that low, their work will probably reflect. So, you want to see some actual dollar amounts for machine shop rates… There’s a few different ranges of numbers, and as a general rule, you get what you pay for. Lets See Some Numbers! Currie Engineering Some characteristics of a well rounded and skilled machinist can be found here. The difficult part is making a fixture that properly holds the part, choosing the right tools for the part (size, length, material), as well as speeds and feeds that will be the most efficient (shorter cycle times are good, but if you’re burning through tools every few parts, you’re spending more on tools and down time because you have to stop running the machine and set a new one up Time = Money). In fact, programming is sometimes one of the easiest part of machining. You can’t just make a program on a CAD/CAM system, load it onto the machine and expect everything to run perfectly.
In order to meet or exceed the customer’s request, there must be at least one machinist in the shop that knows how to do that. A small 3 man shop can be head and shoulders above a 20,000 square foot machining shop as far as quality goes. Just because a shop has bigger and more powerful CNC machines does not mean it is a better shop. The more parts you run, the lower the cost-per-part will be. However, the cost per part can be quite a bit higher because set-up time is expensive. Smaller job shops that do more prototype parts and small batches are usually a little cheaper. However, the orders can be started and finished in a fraction of time. Efficiency is very important, and rates will often be higher. Running production is usually a larger shop with big machines that can run dozens or even hundreds of parts at a time. What Kind of Shop Is It?Ĭomparing hourly rates of job shops and production shops can vary greatly. Shops that can utilize bigger are more powerful machines will generally charge more because the overhead costs are higher, and they can do more than just a small job shop with lesser machines. There are a lot of factors that can determine the hourly rate of a shop. On the flip side, you can charge more because it takes more time and money to run the job.
As a general rule, the more complex the part, the more you’ll have to spend on precision equipment. Fortunately, this doesn’t mean you need to buy the most expensive machine.