Metal plating cost calculation

A. ELECTROPLATING DATA BASED ON 100% CURRENT EFFICIENCY IS AVAILABLE ON ANY ELECTROPLATING BOOK.
EXAMPLE WT. PER SQUARE FOOT OF 0.001 INCHES OF DEPOSIT IN GRAMS FOR ZINC IS 16.6 GMS
COST OF CHEMICALS,ELECTRICITY, LABOR COST, ETC., HAS TO BE WORKED OUT.
THANKS AND REGARDS,

A. First things first, measure the area of your current products. You can use Autocad, and model the products in 3D, then the software can calculate the area.
Then start to measure production, how much are you spending for each dm2 worked and for each micron of metal deposited (remember that whe you cover a metal, not only is the area you cover but the thickness of the deposit, which will require energy and time of your equipment).

Saludos

A. No one can even make a guess until you get some basic information together. Start here:

1. What was the total cost of operating your business last year, including labor, supplies, taxes, insurance, utilities, building, vehicles, and everything else?

2. How many hours of billable work were performed last year?

2. B Divide #1 by #2 = your cost per man hour hour of productive work.

3. What percentage profit do you intend to make?

4. Multiply the answer from #2B X 1 + #3.

5. How many man-hrs will the job require?

6. Multiply the answer from #4 X #5. That is your price for the job. Divide that by the number of pieces to find the charge per piece.

The answer from #6 is good enough for a start. Later on you can adjust for differences in your cost for each type of work.

A. Hi Aaron,
With Passivation, your chemical usage is more "what do we have to dispose of when it gets dirty and how often" than "how much stuff is consumed by sticking to each square inch of part". So insofar as 'dirty' relates to iron coming off each square inch of part, relative to the iron content in the part to begin with, the chemicals are pretty cheap and you could instead, for chemical usage estimating purposes, go with a flat rate based on how often your workload requires tank changes, and then divide that by loads per period and have a starting place to add the rest of the cost on top of. Don't forget to include disposal costs, including labor to actually do the tank dumps.
Operator labor is going to be a huge factor here, and part geometry is important. Parts with threads, deep pockets, blind holes, etc. require more labor for blowing off and inspecting, and many parts require inspection under a microscope, which is a big investment. Parts that can't be processed in a barrel, so that they have to be set up in baskets with separation between them so they don't touch, will have to have additional racking time added.
Then there's Time In Tank. Processes requiring long immersion rather than a 10 minute dip get billed more of course, just for taking up real estate.
Post process testing is another charge. copper sulphate ⇦ this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] vs water immersion is a major time difference for the operator, and an equipment commitment if it is water immersion testing. Those are easily handled as flat-rate, per-lot up to X number of pieces, surcharge.
You can build yourself a quoting tool that takes all these factors into account; my suggestion is to gather the following information:
-history of purchases of all chemicals consumed on the passivation line for a year
-a representative period (like 3 months) of run reports, broken down by process spec
-all your specs, and for the ones that offer 2 options for immersion time, ask the operator which is being used
-history of hazmat disposal charges for passivation stuff specifically, including contaminated DI resin beads
-rental/exchange/resin/membrane fees or whatever applies to your DI or RO system
-maintenance records and equipment purchases/repairs
-software licensing fees, if automated
-government fees for operating various hazmat/water related stuff
-outside testing expenses for compliance and/or contamination monitoring
-your observations from timing how long it takes the operator to do prep, racking, processing, drying, testing, and inspection for different part configurations- each step individually timed; there are wide variations from job to job as to what % of the time is spent on what task.
Look at how this all breaks out. What is fixed and what is directly related to workload. Once the bills are paid, and the operator has his compensation package covered, how much profit do you want to see on each job? The answer should pop out at you once you've got it all laid out in front of you in a spreadsheet.
A bonus of building this spreadsheet is that if suddenly the cost of one item goes way up, you know exactly where to adjust your pricing.