How much to charge for rate?

i just got the xcarve and i am planning on using it for my personal business purposes… usually when someone has work done with something like this they usually charge a rate on how much time the machine would take to make whatever is ordered so it would up the price the more intricate that it got. so my question is does anyone on here do this and if so then how much are you charging???

A - How much do you want to earn on a day (7hrs)
B - How many items can you make pr 7 hrs

(A / B) = hourly rate + materials and payment of tools.

Done :stuck_out_tongue:

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What I charge is between $35-$150 and up. Like lower price is for just simple cut outs to 2d milling and then when something is 3d or complex it’s much higher. It all depends on the area you live in and also what people will pay. Some will say that the x carve is just a tool for helping out your work and vice versa. I also factor in the tools like endmills and extra belting if need for larger jobs so you dont get stuck with out something if that happens. Mostly my formula is milling time+labor time+tools and supplies +shipping cost.

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thanks guys i appreciate the help!!!

Kyle, I know this is an older thread. I am a little curious as to what you came up with here and how it compares to my numbers.

Where I am starting at is $18.75 an hour for machine time, $35 an hour for my time and the cost of materials.

The way I came up with that price is based on a couple of factors. First I looked at a local maker space and determined how much they were charging. My local maker space was charging $50 a month for membership and $5 per hour for machine time. The maker space has basically figured out what their maintenance and running costs are per hour on their machine, that’s the $5 per hour. I figure the maker space will have a problem if I start booking all of the time available on their CNC. So I anticipate them only letting me use it about 10 hours a month. This price did not include training, orientation/certification costs or the costs of end mills.

So I took the cost of training and orientation out and what that left me with was $10 per hour for machine time plus the cost of end mills. Because of the fact that alot of the stuff I get requests for require small endmills, 1/16 and 1/32, I put the cost of the end mills into the cost of the carving. For me right now that means that I put the cost of half an endmill per hour. This averages out ok in the long run. I have had some pieces where I have broken 5 endmills and I have had long runs where I haven’t broken any.

At this point I am sitting at $15 an hour for machine time. This is what I think it costs me to run the machine. I want to put a profit margin on that so I can buy more equipment and have spare parts in the future. I put a 25% profit margin on that. That puts me at $18.75.

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I don’t know if it makes any difference to you or not, but what you calculated is a simple markup and not a margin.
25% margin on $15.00 = $20.00