grampa dan
New Member
I get quite a number of emails each week. One of the frequent questions concerns pricing work done on a CNC router. I got an email yesterday morning which asked those same questions. I thought it worth posting here. I have posted my answers under his questions and would love to see a discussion here of other views...
You asked so I'll answer. Keep in mind these are my opinions based on my way of doing business. Most of the industry thinks differently.
I believe many in the sign industry are damaging the business severely with their pricing of the work done on the high tech tools they buy. I have found that my CNC router can do in mere hours what previously took me days to accomplish. It can do it all much more accurately too! My question to anyone who asks me is... does that make it worth less if you can do it faster and better? I would argue not.
Pricing sandblasted sign work used to commonly be done by the square foot. Twenty years ago the selling price was well over a $100 per square foot in our neck of the woods. Now with the advent of the CNC routers we can achieve these same woodgrain patterns in HDU with a machine. It can be done automatically while we do something else. But the question to ask is WHY CHARGE LESS??? The process certainly got easier and faster but the sign is NOT worth less. With the precision the machine is capable of I would argue the sign is worth MORE!
In our shop I like to do more with our router than just do signs similar to what I could do with a blaster in the old days. I like to add prismatic lettering, dome the face of the sign and add a subtle textured background in keeping with the theme of the sign... hopefully things that my 'competition' is not doing and doesn't want to take the time to learn. These features I can build into my signs give them extra value while not adding to the cost to produce.
We only do dimensional work in our shop. Our prices START at $200 per square foot although I don't price them by the square foot publicly but rather quote a finished total price to the customer. As you can imagine our prices scare away a bunch of people. But I'd much rather do work for customers who appreciate the value of what we produce than simply buy from us because we are the cheapest. I don't want to do all the signs in town - only the best ones.
To answer your questions...
Is it normally priced by how much time the router takes to complete the sign - someone once told me $60/hr
You just spent many 10's of thousands of dollars buying and installing a CNC router. Add in software and the many hours you will spend learning to operate the machine effectively. Hopefully you are proficient and skillful. Keep in mind the machine can do things up to FIVE TIMES FASTER than you could do them before by hand. If you CNC hourly rate is $60 you then are valuing your personal time at about $12 per hour in my view.
The router takes up a fair amount of square feet on the floor too which needs to be covered - never mind the electricity it uses plus consumables like bits and general wear and tear on the machine. You'll want to upgrade that software every few years too.
Is it normally priced by the size of the routered sign - read somewhere $40/sq ft.
See my writing above... We used to get well over $100 per square foot for our sandblasted signs. I think we should be well over that now. I had less than $10,000 invested in a complete sandblasting rig... I have a LOT more than that into my CNC.
How do you factor in these variables?
Routering a 2D sign takes a certain amount of time
You used to do everything with a jigsaw or bandsaw. Now you use a CNC to do it flawlessly and much faster. Does that make it worth less?? I think not.
Is it normally priced by how much time the router takes to complete the sign - someone once told me $60/hr
Considering the speed and precision you can now do the work I believe that you can charge much more per hour if you wish to price using this formula.
Is it normally priced by the size of the routered sign - read somewhere $40/sq ft.
This seems extremely low in my mind.
Routering a 3D sign with 75% stepover takes more time Routering a 3D sign with 90% step over takes a lot more time
How you build the sign and the detail you intend to incorporate into the finished sign should be figured into the ultimate cost. The way you intend to fabricate the sign effect the price.
The sign industry and most other industries around us have gotten downright silly in their pricing. As computer programs and machines have come online the ob has gotten easier and faster without a doubt. Modern materials have done the same. But with these improvements have also come huge increases in the COST of doing business. A job that used to take five hours is now possible in one. The trouble is that most shops now only charge for one hour without taking into consideration the increased costs. While I would argue that the value of the product we sell has in fact gone up most shops instead CUT the value based on the time to produce alone.
One friend of mine likes to do everything by hand. He designs and hand carves a sign. It takes him six hours to carve. Another friend of mine has a small router which can’t work nearly as fast as mine. His has stepper motors - mine has servos. Therefore let’s for the sake of this discussion say a routered three dimensional sign takes his machine two hours to make. On my router I can do that same sign in only an hour. Another sign maker friend buys the latest and greatest router on the market and is able to do this same sign in only forty minutes.
If we price by the hour and we have the same shop rate the price of this sign is constantly going down - even though each successive sign maker has more money invested in tools and software than the last.
It should not be that way for the sign is the same in each case and should be worth the same.
Low pricing has ruined much of the sign industry making it very hard to generate profits except by sheer volume alone... not a business model I want to follow.
-grampa dan
You asked so I'll answer. Keep in mind these are my opinions based on my way of doing business. Most of the industry thinks differently.
I believe many in the sign industry are damaging the business severely with their pricing of the work done on the high tech tools they buy. I have found that my CNC router can do in mere hours what previously took me days to accomplish. It can do it all much more accurately too! My question to anyone who asks me is... does that make it worth less if you can do it faster and better? I would argue not.
Pricing sandblasted sign work used to commonly be done by the square foot. Twenty years ago the selling price was well over a $100 per square foot in our neck of the woods. Now with the advent of the CNC routers we can achieve these same woodgrain patterns in HDU with a machine. It can be done automatically while we do something else. But the question to ask is WHY CHARGE LESS??? The process certainly got easier and faster but the sign is NOT worth less. With the precision the machine is capable of I would argue the sign is worth MORE!
In our shop I like to do more with our router than just do signs similar to what I could do with a blaster in the old days. I like to add prismatic lettering, dome the face of the sign and add a subtle textured background in keeping with the theme of the sign... hopefully things that my 'competition' is not doing and doesn't want to take the time to learn. These features I can build into my signs give them extra value while not adding to the cost to produce.
We only do dimensional work in our shop. Our prices START at $200 per square foot although I don't price them by the square foot publicly but rather quote a finished total price to the customer. As you can imagine our prices scare away a bunch of people. But I'd much rather do work for customers who appreciate the value of what we produce than simply buy from us because we are the cheapest. I don't want to do all the signs in town - only the best ones.
To answer your questions...
Is it normally priced by how much time the router takes to complete the sign - someone once told me $60/hr
You just spent many 10's of thousands of dollars buying and installing a CNC router. Add in software and the many hours you will spend learning to operate the machine effectively. Hopefully you are proficient and skillful. Keep in mind the machine can do things up to FIVE TIMES FASTER than you could do them before by hand. If you CNC hourly rate is $60 you then are valuing your personal time at about $12 per hour in my view.
The router takes up a fair amount of square feet on the floor too which needs to be covered - never mind the electricity it uses plus consumables like bits and general wear and tear on the machine. You'll want to upgrade that software every few years too.
Is it normally priced by the size of the routered sign - read somewhere $40/sq ft.
See my writing above... We used to get well over $100 per square foot for our sandblasted signs. I think we should be well over that now. I had less than $10,000 invested in a complete sandblasting rig... I have a LOT more than that into my CNC.
How do you factor in these variables?
Routering a 2D sign takes a certain amount of time
You used to do everything with a jigsaw or bandsaw. Now you use a CNC to do it flawlessly and much faster. Does that make it worth less?? I think not.
Is it normally priced by how much time the router takes to complete the sign - someone once told me $60/hr
Considering the speed and precision you can now do the work I believe that you can charge much more per hour if you wish to price using this formula.
Is it normally priced by the size of the routered sign - read somewhere $40/sq ft.
This seems extremely low in my mind.
Routering a 3D sign with 75% stepover takes more time Routering a 3D sign with 90% step over takes a lot more time
How you build the sign and the detail you intend to incorporate into the finished sign should be figured into the ultimate cost. The way you intend to fabricate the sign effect the price.
The sign industry and most other industries around us have gotten downright silly in their pricing. As computer programs and machines have come online the ob has gotten easier and faster without a doubt. Modern materials have done the same. But with these improvements have also come huge increases in the COST of doing business. A job that used to take five hours is now possible in one. The trouble is that most shops now only charge for one hour without taking into consideration the increased costs. While I would argue that the value of the product we sell has in fact gone up most shops instead CUT the value based on the time to produce alone.
One friend of mine likes to do everything by hand. He designs and hand carves a sign. It takes him six hours to carve. Another friend of mine has a small router which can’t work nearly as fast as mine. His has stepper motors - mine has servos. Therefore let’s for the sake of this discussion say a routered three dimensional sign takes his machine two hours to make. On my router I can do that same sign in only an hour. Another sign maker friend buys the latest and greatest router on the market and is able to do this same sign in only forty minutes.
If we price by the hour and we have the same shop rate the price of this sign is constantly going down - even though each successive sign maker has more money invested in tools and software than the last.
It should not be that way for the sign is the same in each case and should be worth the same.
Low pricing has ruined much of the sign industry making it very hard to generate profits except by sheer volume alone... not a business model I want to follow.
-grampa dan
Dan - I still try to get $150 psf for sandblasted cedar signs here...usually get talked down to around $125, but still...
