What are you charging/paying for plywood parts cutting?

[Gene Davis]

I've a run of five identical pieces to make, and the work involves simple straight-line parts cut from 3/4" and 1/2" cherry-veneer plywood. My parts nest nicely into two sheets of 3/4 and one sheet of 1/2.

My hardwood and panel supplier, Austin Hardwoods of Denver, says they can put me in touch with various shops with CNC machines, and I am wondering in advance, about what to budget for this.

A few years back, a partner and I did a bunch of kitchens, and I used Thermwood's eCabinets software to batch up the jobs, emailing our suppliers the CNC-ready job files for cutting the carcase parts from melamine-faced particleboard. We routinely bought jobs in the size range 25 to 35 sheets. Big kitchen jobs.

It was quite cost-effective, but there was never any CAD or programming time required. The files we sent were the files that went straight to machine.

So what is this going to be like?

[Mike Heidrick]

Gene, not sure how any of your drawings could be sent directly to their machine for cutting. The CAM portion is specific to their tooling and settings and the post processor they use. Loading a CAD file is one thing - that is pretty easy to send and import. After that they are doing the CAM work. Even on the CAD portion their nesting will also have a lot to do with the cutters they use and the spacing they want between the parts. Also there are things like hold downs and tabs and such that need to be accounted for. I would never cut anything someone else generated. I do all my own CAM.

I charge anywhere from $200 to $400 a sheet.

[Gerry Grzadzinski]

We charge $125/ hour for cutting on our Morbidelli, and 3 sheets of simple parts would take about 10-15 minutes, unless they are small parts where hold down is an issue.

Like Mike, I won't use anyone else's programs, so there would be some programming time added to that. We would probably have a $125 minimum, and charge about $175-$200 total, including programming.

If I had a 4x8 machine at home (I'm currently building one), I'd charge about the same amount. Personally, I think $200-$400/sheet is much too high.

[Jim Underwood]

I'm not aware of violating anyone's Terms of Service or offending anyone, in my previous posting here, But if I have, and you deleted my responses, I'd at least like a note from the moderator...

[Keith Outten]

Jim,

I answered the Private Message you sent me.
.