i have to price a job. It’s stupid simple. About 12 toggle switches and 12 LEDs to go inside a hand held enclosure with 14pin connector out.

Board is probably 3”x4”.

I have no idea how to price what to charge to design. Help.

 

A price is often quoted as to what the market will bear.
IOW, do you have an idea of what your customer might be prepared to pay?
Also work out the time you feel it might take you, and figure out a rate, this will be the minimum.
Max.

 

Seriously this guys doing me a favor. I met him through mutual friends. He likes my prototypes. His main business is industrial robotics. But he’s got incredible machinery for internal prototyping and said I could use his machines at cost. But no clue what to charge because he likes my PCBs and wants me to do them for him. Is $250 too much? It’ll prob take me less than 4 hours.

 

How much assembly are you doing? Are you just drawing up the PC or making them or getting them made?
Are you supplying all items, toggle switches, LED etc?
Anyone supplying the Industrial machinery market should be making a few $$$'s.
Max.

 

Oh he’s rolling in dough. I’m only designing the pcb for him. It’s just an ice breaker.

 

$500.00 minimum, never say how long it will take you.
Max.

 

Is there future work in the offing?
If so, quote him around what I said, and if he winces a little, say OK this time I will do it for $xxx.xx. to get your foot in the door.
Max.

 

Thanks @MaxHeadRoom I'm really struggling to price jobs. Doing more and more contract work but the future is in our designs. He’s got distribution too.

 

The minimum around here for industrial service work was around $300.00 a day, now it is close to $500.00 and in some cases where a tech fly's in, it is closer to $1k.
For industrial design work, at least $1k/Diem.
Max.

 

I suppose it all depends on who’s doing the billing. I’ve heard of $5000-10,000 service calls that take hours to solve.

 

Like I said, depends what the market can bear, most of my clients were operating assembly lines, one machine down can cause the whole line to come to a halt in a very short time.
I would give them very fast service to get them up and running, the guy in charge on the shop floor was not that concerned with cost as a priority.
Max.

 

i have to price a job. It’s stupid simple. About 12 toggle switches and 12 LEDs to go inside a hand held enclosure with 14pin connector out.

Board is probably 3”x4”.

I have no idea how to price what to charge to design. Help.

The most simple way:
Send your Gerb files + BOM to a few producers and ask for a quote for 10 -100-1000.
a: pcb
b: complete product( ready to use)

Picbuster

 

Hi picbuster thanks for your reply... but I wonder if I wasn’t clear about my role.

The guy wants me to create the gerber files and only the gerber files... it’s for a handheld remote and has to fit in the enclosure. I get the enclosure, parts and have AutoCAD files for the enclosure and recommended pcb (.dwg) Basically this would reduce his assembly time from hand soldering and wiring to insert pcb and screw together.

I will get more details but complexity level is really low. It looks like remote controls for industrial machine. 5 buttons, 9 switches and 8 status LEDs.

 

Minimum $60/Hr + parts estimate + 10-15% profit If you were including overhead&insurance the Hr rate would go up significantly.

 

Sam I work on motorcycles on the side and I charge $80/hr for that. I can’t imagine doing PCB design for less than that in fact the smaller shops charge $150/hr for electronic design work. I don’t mind quoting 20% below dedicated businesses but being too low can be very frustrating. There are skills involved and later when I have to work on VFD driver boards and power supplies there will be additional complication. This one is a simple way to break the ice. I could easily justify $1k but like going in lower to build good will.

 

Without overhead (rent/insurance/tools/cleaning/utilities/depreciation/etc) you're making a killing! Local shop time around here for mechanics is $80-100/hr w/ overhead! And that is at "book rate" which a good mechanic can do in 1/3 of the book time. I'm out of date but tech support was ~$90-120/Hr + portal to portal expenses (Travel/Meals/Lodging). YMMV And I did say MINIMUM!

 

The guy wants me to create the gerber files and only the gerber files... it’s for a handheld remote and has to fit in the enclosure. I get the enclosure, parts and have AutoCAD files for the enclosure and recommended pcb (.dwg) Basically this would reduce his assembly time from hand soldering and wiring to insert pcb and screw together.
I will get more details but complexity level is really low. It looks like remote controls for industrial machine. 5 buttons, 9 switches and 8 status LEDs.

So he is getting the boards made and populating them?
Max.

 

He will get them made, I didn’t see a pick and place at his shop, wave solder or IR ovens . Only thing he’s missing. He has CNC routers, 5 axis CNC mill, laser engraver, welders and more goodies but didn’t see PCB assembly equipment. I believe they only do the prototyping and outsource the actual production.

 

How many in each batch at a time likely to be manuf.?
Max.

 

Didn’t get that far, from a meeting last week he’s told me he’s presold his units to the STEM education market. I will ask for more detail while we talk on Tuesday when he has all the stuff ready to hand over to me.

In fact he’s asked me for product ideas/design to expand his product category in the future