1/4" aluminum plate x 15 AND 1/4" SS 304 plate x 20

[kb0thn]

Hello RFQWork.com shops!

We are looking for someone to cut us 15 of the attached 1/4" thick aluminum plates. Overall size is 13.0" x 20.5".

We also require the attached stainless plate. 5" x 8", 1/4" thick. 20 quantity.

Holes diameter tolerances are +0.050/-0.005. Locations are +- 0.010. No special finish required. Sharp edges must be broken and deburred if they exist. Typical laser or waterjet finish is acceptable with no further work required. The aluminum part is highly visible and part of an expensive system. Stained / discolored parts and those with deep scratches or pits are not acceptable. The stainless part goes into a weldment and just needs to be free of sharp edges.

We are looking for a job to setup a long term relationship with. We are located in Winona, MN. Preference will be awarded to regional shops and those with the best communications -- but we are open to any US or Canadian shops.

Parts can be shipped on our UPS account. If you are not setup with UPS shipping we can even e-mail you a PDF of a label that you can print out and tape to the box. Payment can be made with credit card, paypal, or company check. We typically pay our bills on the day or receipt of the invoice. We can even pay in advance if need be.

I believe there is about $25 of aluminum in each of the big plates. Target price is ~ $35. There is about $15 of stainless in the small plates. Target prices is ~ $22. But it has been a while since I've priced water jet cutting, so if going rate has changed then we can deal with it. Please quote the two parts individually.

All bids must be received by 2008-05-09 (Thursday) at 8:00 AM CDT. We will award the job immediately. Parts need to be received by 2008-05-22.

If you have any questions please e-mail jj@aprsworld.com or call me @ 507-454-2727.

Thanks,

-James Jarvis
APRS World, LLC
www.aprsworld.com

[kb0thn]

We've only received one quote on this so far. Perhaps my target price is too low. Please quote!

-James Jarvis
APRS World, LLC

[Amark Engineering/Manufac]

I will try and have a quote for you tomorrow.
Thanks.

[jbclean]

Quote has been e-mailed

[Amark Engineering/Manufac]

e-mailed quote.
thanks.

[kb0thn]

Thanks to everyone that quoted. We have awarded the two different parts to two different shops.

The stainless steel plate has been awarded to our local shop. Their price was $20 each for 17 quantity (full bar length).

The aluminum plate was awarded to an RFQwork.com user. Their price was $37.43 each for the requested 15 quantity. Apparently they will be fully machining the part on a 60k RPM spindle router with vacuum table.

We received 6 quotes. Here is the breakdown per quoter:

Company a: $37.43 ea for 15 al plate. No quote on stainless.
Company b: $54.40 ea for 15 al plate. $29.50 ea for 20 stainless.
Company c: $9.00 ea for 15 al plate -- we supply material. $20 ea for 17 stainless.
Company d: $45.00 ea for 15 al plate. $24.75 ea for 20 stainless.
Company e: No quote for al plate. $23.34 ea for stainless.
Company f: $90.75 ea for 28 al plate. $31.60 ea for 48 pcs stainless.

I thought the variety in processes was interesting.
Company a is CNC router. Company b is waterjet. Company c is CNC VMC. Company d is unknown. Company e is manual mill. Company g is unknown, probably VMC.

I was a little surprised on this job on two accounts:

1) My local metal supplier sold me some 1/4" aluminum plate at old prices. His material price went from ~$22 a plate for the old material (purchased Monday for prototypes), to $36.50 per plate (quoted today). A couple of other suppliers quoted down to about $26 per plate.

2) Only one waterjet place quoted on a great waterjet parts. I can understand no laser places - who wants to laser 1/4" thick aluminum. But lack of waterjet representation strikes me as odd. Maybe there aren't many waterjet shops on rfqwork.com? Or is this too thin of part / too small of quantity to be of interest? Or???

The volatile material market makes this interesting. A few of the quotes were valid for 1 day.

-Jim

[Engineered MetalCraft]

Awesome post! Thank you for taking the time to illustrate the finite details of your RFQ process. I agree... the materials market is extremely volatile. Small shops struggle a lot with this because they do not have the volume required to somewhat stabalize the volitility.

Waterjet? What is that? Just kidding. I'd say that there aren't a lot of shops with waterjet technology on RFQwork.com. To be honest, I only know of one shop in my area who has waterjet capability and they are overflowing with work. The machines are extremely expensive and out of reach for a lot of the smaller shops. However, it seems worth the capital expenditure if you can manage to service the right markets.

Anyway, thank you for taking the time to report on the closure of your rfq. It is good to see this in these forums.

Regards,

Joe Senchuk, VP Sales and Engineering
Engineered MetalCraft, LLC
web: www.e-mcusa.com