I cannot be sure what you guys are paying for CRS but for the lot to do this job from my supplier cost is .78 per piece for material alone and a good machine with live tooling and a good programe, It is not impossible to cycle this part complete in under 4 minutes. Alot of shops including myself give away the programing time in order to get repeat / long running jobs (now-a-days we can programe a part on our laptops watching TV) and even concider giving away the set-up time, and if you are well set-up for this type of work and your machine has 12 -16 tooling stations, all your tools should pretty much be in place already with the exception of possibly having to changing out tooling for the internal work.
Lets break it down....
Good programer...
Programe and vaify with solid varification, post, prove out the post with an NC code anylizer set for their machine. UNDER 2 HOURS. (A good give away while watching Judge Judy.)
A good set-up guy..... (organized tooling and tooled up machine)
Set-up 3 hours max prove out and first piece inspect. (Another painless good give-away while drinking your first 2 cups of Dunkin Dougnut coffee in the morning)
Now a good Machine, not any of these Hobbie machines people have in their basements like those Emco compac 5 CNC's.
I simulated a cycly time of 3.75 minutes each. With a bar feed machine not a bad rate figured at $40.00 per hour unmanned time.
.66 cents per minute x 3.75 minutes allowing .78 cents per piece for material.
Material 18 12' bars @ 72 Lbs. ea. total of 1296 Lbs. @ .60 cent per pound directly from the steel mill. Pleaces like online metals and speedy metals are ok for little pieces of steel so if you are paying about 3.00 a piece for this material you wont be in business for long it's absolutely insane!!! (this is cold rolled steel not Stainless)
This is the real world gentilmen this is what the competition is doing out there you cant make any money sitting watching your machines, One guy keeping two to three machines running like this is not a bad living but you have to be good at what you do, efficiant and organized and your machines cant be toys you have to remove material fast with 10-15 HP spindles and machines moving at 900-1800 inches per min. and set your machines up so you can walk away and not worry. There is a difference bettween a Hobbiest and a Manufacturer so Manufacturers thank you for the quotes.
i mean i am a one man shop and some of these guy's bidding on this stuff has 10 employees plus. is it that bad out there?