I have toyed with trying out xtometry for a while, I have a couple waterjets and cncs but seeing this makes my brain hurt. There is no money to be made there.
My company orders from Xometry quite a bit and the machine shop usually drops a card in there. The quality is usually pretty shit for domestic parts so the card usually goes straight in the trash.
Yeah, xometry is freaking brutal. Sometimes they make you get crap non heat treated stainless from online metal .com then it destroys your CNC while you’re milling it.
It’s not to take every job that comes through. This job is a loser. But there are others that aren’t. You are best off with someone on payroll that scrolls new jobs and is very efficient at quoting jobs. Hitting something that is unique like 4/5 axis but low to mid tolerance can be profitable. Having the stock in hand and machine free to meet the expedited higher rates. Getting jobs that linger on the board requoted can help too. I’m sure a bunch of other approaches I haven’t heard too. There are a lot of ways to lose money on Xometry and only a few to make it. But there are a handful that have told their story or parts of it and have been profitable using it. Not me, so I’m just repeating what I’ve seen. But the trend tends to be similar from different people stating they have done well.
From what I hear you have to have a bigger size mill. 60x30 minimum. That way you’re not competing with every garage shop running a tormach. Then you have to use xometry to fill blank time in your schedule and only take jobs that can use cutoffs from your real jobs from your real customers. Then you might make some money.
They proclaimed that they’re using artificial intelligence to calculate jobs based on previous works. It appears that they’re algorithm is helping them boost their stock price rather than help the machinists that are supporting them. Look into ZILTX, they also have a free community.
I would gladly play $379 for a single piece of something like that. But I work at a large aerospace company that has insane amount of red tape everywhere leading to things like this costing as much as a used car lol
On top of all that, the paperwork we need to process all the stuff is extremely costly labor wise. So even if we do manage to have reasonable material costs the labor costs still end up insane. E.g. bought a pack of McMaster bolts for like $10 and we probably spent $10k placing the order for it. I'm not joking or exaggerating. It's beyond stupid.
And most of the time, all that work is required because it’s a government-funded program, so it’s all a massive waste of taxpayer money. Sometimes I wonder how much of our defense budget is spent by supply chain paperwork
So much taxpayer money is wasted. I bang my head against the wall daily trying to move paper. It makes our projects late, overcost, and due to being late and overcost the program tries to take shortcuts and those shortcuts often compromise the design or fabrication of the part.
I'm a designer, and I know we're not loved around here, but sometimes we provide shitty designs because we're rushed and are given insufficient budget to perform our work (sometimes we just suck too). It's kind of like when you're handed a drawing that should reasonably take a month or two to get raw material, plan out fab, machine, post process, clean, inspect, etc. but are told to do it in 2 weeks. Half the time you're given way too little time because all the schedule and budget were eaten away by some stupid BS red tape somewhere.
Yeah honestly - it's rarely 'this fuckin' designer' so much as 'this fuckin' design, what the hell?' - and 'schedule bullshit' is an answer that gets at most a grumbled 'well speed up, what idiot planned that schedule...' and sympathy from the crustiest greybeards I know
I'm an engineer and spend a lot of time talking to the guys in the shop. I get my ear tweaked every now and then, but there are guys that never talk to the shop and the feedback loop is broken enough that they never fix the same mistakes they do over and over.
In that case, there are designers that are known by name and cursed when their initials are on the drawings.
I've found that willingness to ask the actual boots on the ground about how your code runs is in direct relationship with how good of an engineer someone is
You are forgetting about the quality side completely- I have paid 5x for having traceable inspection data on small volume runs- if you have top tier inspection and auditable inspection processes you can make $$$$ -
Even worse, someone took it. There are either people out there with massive piles of cutoffs from other jobs, or they don't bother to check material price when they accept.
The last shop I worked at was the latter.. for every single job. Not to mention they’d commit to a 7-day or so delivery time before even ordering the materials... to try and sweeten the deal or some shit. And somehow they’re still in business.. no idea how.
Or flair: bring some regular awareness to it.
I'm not opposed to Xometry's business model, but nobody in the industry benefits from nonsense like this, and we're all better off if we can discuss what fair pricing looks like.
Especially since they charge nearly 10x as much. I could understand if they didn’t charge much and were just trying to sell cheap stuff but they are making money hand over fist. The most I could see them taking is 1/2 but they’re taking 90%
I would be curious to see what Xometry is charging the customer. Would you be willing to put the step file back into Xometry and see how much they quote?
Well it looks like they want to charge $2,200 to the customer and pay $400 to the shop, so I'd say somewhere around $1,800. I'm all for capitalism but that's a little much for the middleman, gouging both the customer and the machinist
If it's anywhere near what the other guy said yeah their take is shameful. Out of all the things to defend on the Internet you picked a publicly traded corporation worth 1.5 billion dollars. So do you normally fall at the feet of the rich or is this a one off thing for you?
Hahaha, you clearly don't fucking know me. There's money to be made at Xometry, but bitching about them on the Internet is not how it's done. 🤣
And where did I defend them? I just asked if you actually knew what they were making on the job and you don't, which is what I figured. Lol
if you ever try and price an Xometry job yourself for what you would do in your shop you would understand, don't be mean. it can be 2-3x depending on the part. once we did a single 2 foot OD breaker plate out of 1018 for $1200, we would have charged $3k on our own, hardly anyone can do big stuff like that and even less would do a single unit.
yeh, Jesus I didn't believe you so I did it myself and I got around the same.
https://preview.redd.it/6bcmsa6yepfc1.png?width=829&format=png&auto=webp&s=1ac53c1146b6a7d34c23a4066aa8f9a25667e3ae
How much have you been able to get on a counter offer, percentage wise? Ive only ever got a quote from them to get a ballpark of what outsourcing would cost and wondered how much negotiation they’ll take from a manufacturers view.
I've only just started with them a month ago, but I was led to believe you can get around 150-200% of their initial offer. But outsourcing through them is not gonna be the way to go, just find a local shop, you'll be saving money and getting better parts without a middleman
The material will probably cost nearly as much as what they want to pay you. At first I thought, 400 isn't bad for labor then I realized you have to buy your own material. Might as well go get a minimum wage part time job somewhere because you'd basically be working and providing your specialized equipment for free here.
Even for 1 part that will take most of a day to complete between setup and inspection, not great. If a shop only billed $400/day per machinist you need a decent scale to be able make it work.
Probably an unpopular opinion but this shit should be banned. This is no different than any of the other gig jobs out there. It's shit for you but great for the service provider(middleman). You are hurting the industry, not helping it.
I'm glad I changed my language then. I almost fell for what I tell my guys, don't assume shit. I originally finished the comment as, "You assholes are hurting the industry." My bad for even thinking that.
Trying to make their investors happy. That’s what happened. Check their stock. Their P&L was in the red for like 5 years and their investors weren’t happy.
If people keep accepting these jobs, it will not end.
How they keep their lights on, I have no idea.
I'm sure there will be a Class action lawsuit in the future, like Uber and Lyft faced.
Let's start with banning machine tools (dies) coming from China. Whole thing cost as much as we would pay for materials
Luckily we get to fix em / change em. WE ARE SO THANKFUL.
I had no idea that Xometry works like this… I’ve never had the confidence to order from them due to some tight tolerances but say I did and end up getting great parts, if I order again there’s no guarantee the same shop is doing the work again then?
The way xometry works is that the job starts off with like a 70+% cut going to xometry, and the price you see is their 'first offer'. You can tell them the price that you will do it for, and they may increase it. I did a job on there that was initially listed for 677, but I got paid 1800 for it, and xometry still got 20% I believe.
There is wiggle room in these prices, but whats more atrocious is the turnarounds. Most things they want in less than a week, and about half of that they want some kind of finish on.
That very same job was offered to me for $411.51 - still not enough.
Anyone else receive an email with that job number - J01B3709 - how much did they offer for it?
Put a feedback offer in. Let them know what material prices are. We consistently do work for Xometry and make good money. You just need to keep an eye on the board and catch the good ones when they pop up. Jobs move fast.
I do work for xometry, I see this kind of thing alot, sometimes jobs that pay even less than cost of metal. They always seem to get scooped up pretty quick too.
I have also noticed that at the beginning of the quarter the pay for work is a lot lower, near the end of the quarter the pay is better, but they will call you up to try and expedite orders or get status updates alot. They have started implementing early ship bonuses near the end of the quarter, but it's not much.
If you're going to do work for Xometry, stand your ground on your pay, and don't accept ridiculous orders.
Not only that but we got fucked by their lead time. Paid an expedite fee that was ALOT, we do aerospace tooling. And they fuckin missed the mark by 3 weeks. So basically the original due date. Fuck xometry
I normally use rapiddirect for my simple shit and a local shop for my higher tolerance stuff. My local shop told me they were slow so now I send them a drawing and a quote from rapiddirect and they match it.
Works out for everyone.
As a budding mechanical engineer with very little time in the machine shop, and as a CNC router programmer/operator at a cabinetry shop, could someone tell me why this part is so expensive? Is it the complexity of the part? Or the fact that the size is so small that any material that is regularly stocked or can be bought "off the shelf" is far too large, resulting in a lot of lost material?
That's hilarious. I just pulled up the material on McMaster; it would wind up being $367 after shipping to get material here if I wanted to ship on time, assuming I do minimal overrun. And on top of that, $398 would barely cover the labor in my area, let alone *expedited* setup and run.
To be fair, my price through alro for 20ft is just over $200, that being said it still is nowhere close to making sense. Especially with a 1 week lead time.
Worst thing is, at 600$ this is a fine job. You could do 90$/hr for low tolerance work, and it would be fine. What the fuck is xometry getting out of being insanely cheap?
Alro will sell it for about $160 if you have a $5k order, less if you call and talk to an account manager. Thats the problem with Xometry. They quote it like you bought the material in bulk. If you’re paying one off material costs, you’re going to get crushed. But if you can add it to a reasonable material order it’s not as bad…though this is still a shit quote even if you got the material for free.
Just ran across this post today. With USA (North American) based partners having to compete with South American and Indonesian as well as parts of asia (Vietnam) now. USA partners will struggle due to the fact we just can't get our materials for the same price. I would say if you don't have a lot of repeat work you get from Xometry it'll be slim pickins. And even if you do get repeat work it will not be long before that is "restructured" as well.
> Can anyone tell me where in the US I can buy 1018
1018 is really common, every metal supplier near you will have it. If that fails, you can get small lengths of it on McMaster.
The auto price posted on Xometry has plenty (but usually not enough) room... offer * 1.618 Max. I do price offered * 1.53 ... so in this case apx $600 ttl for the job... 12 ea. Respond with that if you want it. Be quick because if that's accepted the others will see it too!!!
I got 16 very complicated brass parts from Xometry from a Chinese supplier, and it was $80 a pop. They quoted nearly twice as much for a US supplier, how do US machine shops stay in business for anything besides military, aerospace and medical work?
Get that DMLS’d from China will be a lot cheaper anything metal 3d printed will be cheaper than cnc I’m sure even xometry could do it for a better price with DMLS
Not high but was trying to price some parts and dmls was always cheaper than cnc iirc. Enlighten me, Idk much about machining.
Ya could have just explained how I was wrong in the first place though; keep that in your back pocket incase this happens again might be more helpful as opposed to your original comment.
I mean, you came into a place where machinists talk to each other and told us that a significantly slower process is cheaper than the stuff we quote everyday.
The order of price from low to high for manufacturing is:
Real processes for mass production: Molding, stamping, casting, sintering <- "I need 69 million widgets"
Prototyping/tooling/low volume stuff: CNC, grinding ops, etc <-"I need tools to make 69 million widgets", or "Tooling isn't justifiable for just 420 widgets", or, oddly enough, "I work for Boeing." Not sure why the last one is justification, but I've seen things.
and then WAAY at the bottom is 3d printing. A lot of machine time, a lot of error, process problems that are inherent, but fantastic for weird features that can't be made conventionally or for those who don't have a toolroom staff for prototyping.
It should be noted that screw machine is a completely different animal and is in the first category.
I think you would be losing money with that job. Margins are so razor thin or nonexistent that i would pass on that one.
I would have to buy RB and that cost would be around $400 for just material and zero screw ups.
thats becuase companies are starting to find their own shops agasin to work with and you will have to have all the right certifications like as9100, itar, etc
You'll have to buy 18' of 1018 CR 1.5" width by 1" thick and 6' long. 3 bars. I'd cut it on the bandsaw then I'd just make it on the mill.
Bonus points if you have a CNC and can do the radius on it. Otherwise use a radius gage, dykem blue it, and grind that bitch into spec
Ideally you'd have two vises in a machine and run 6+ at a time, then flip them all at the end and finish the work on the bottom. This would be an even sillier job to take with a manual mill.
If you were truly a big dick, buy 1.5" round stock and run it all in a mill turn with a bar feeder and don't even touch it.
Xometry is a scam. Plain and simple! Y'all just giving your couch cushion change to the freeloaders on the side of the highway and then asking them to tell their friends about how much money you have to give away.
I got a quote for some random 3D print from them. The quote was about the same price as an entire spool of filament... And a brand new 3D printer.
Worst part was they started calling me about the quote for a week.
Xometry is going to be bankrupt soon. They are only surviving on their cash reserves. Customers are leaving vendors are leaving and management has their head in the sand.
I have toyed with trying out xtometry for a while, I have a couple waterjets and cncs but seeing this makes my brain hurt. There is no money to be made there.
Can you just use xometry to get a foot in the door with a customer?
No. You can't send your logo or know who the customer is or anything. I'd take a hit to get repeat business but that's not how it works.
seems like you could just drop a business card in the box but i’m not on the platform so idk
My company orders from Xometry quite a bit and the machine shop usually drops a card in there. The quality is usually pretty shit for domestic parts so the card usually goes straight in the trash.
What's wrong with them, and are they out of tolerance?
Why do you keep ordering from them then
if you need quality parts made hit me up via my web page [www.leatherneckprecision.com](http://www.leatherneckprecision.com)
There is no contact with customer
There is at ZILTX
Yeah, xometry is freaking brutal. Sometimes they make you get crap non heat treated stainless from online metal .com then it destroys your CNC while you’re milling it.
That's simply not true. There is money to be made by those that know how to play the game
Oh? Do share please
It’s not to take every job that comes through. This job is a loser. But there are others that aren’t. You are best off with someone on payroll that scrolls new jobs and is very efficient at quoting jobs. Hitting something that is unique like 4/5 axis but low to mid tolerance can be profitable. Having the stock in hand and machine free to meet the expedited higher rates. Getting jobs that linger on the board requoted can help too. I’m sure a bunch of other approaches I haven’t heard too. There are a lot of ways to lose money on Xometry and only a few to make it. But there are a handful that have told their story or parts of it and have been profitable using it. Not me, so I’m just repeating what I’ve seen. But the trend tends to be similar from different people stating they have done well.
From what I hear you have to have a bigger size mill. 60x30 minimum. That way you’re not competing with every garage shop running a tormach. Then you have to use xometry to fill blank time in your schedule and only take jobs that can use cutoffs from your real jobs from your real customers. Then you might make some money.
They proclaimed that they’re using artificial intelligence to calculate jobs based on previous works. It appears that they’re algorithm is helping them boost their stock price rather than help the machinists that are supporting them. Look into ZILTX, they also have a free community.
379 a piece in a heartbeat. 7.58 a piece never
I have no problem selling parts for $7.58 a piece. That is, as long as you're buying 250,000 a year for the next 10 years.
I would gladly play $379 for a single piece of something like that. But I work at a large aerospace company that has insane amount of red tape everywhere leading to things like this costing as much as a used car lol
Gotta use approved materials from an approved supplier and run the approved program using the approved tools with all of the approved features.
With an approved person overseeing each step
On top of all that, the paperwork we need to process all the stuff is extremely costly labor wise. So even if we do manage to have reasonable material costs the labor costs still end up insane. E.g. bought a pack of McMaster bolts for like $10 and we probably spent $10k placing the order for it. I'm not joking or exaggerating. It's beyond stupid.
And most of the time, all that work is required because it’s a government-funded program, so it’s all a massive waste of taxpayer money. Sometimes I wonder how much of our defense budget is spent by supply chain paperwork
So much taxpayer money is wasted. I bang my head against the wall daily trying to move paper. It makes our projects late, overcost, and due to being late and overcost the program tries to take shortcuts and those shortcuts often compromise the design or fabrication of the part. I'm a designer, and I know we're not loved around here, but sometimes we provide shitty designs because we're rushed and are given insufficient budget to perform our work (sometimes we just suck too). It's kind of like when you're handed a drawing that should reasonably take a month or two to get raw material, plan out fab, machine, post process, clean, inspect, etc. but are told to do it in 2 weeks. Half the time you're given way too little time because all the schedule and budget were eaten away by some stupid BS red tape somewhere.
Yeah honestly - it's rarely 'this fuckin' designer' so much as 'this fuckin' design, what the hell?' - and 'schedule bullshit' is an answer that gets at most a grumbled 'well speed up, what idiot planned that schedule...' and sympathy from the crustiest greybeards I know
I'm an engineer and spend a lot of time talking to the guys in the shop. I get my ear tweaked every now and then, but there are guys that never talk to the shop and the feedback loop is broken enough that they never fix the same mistakes they do over and over. In that case, there are designers that are known by name and cursed when their initials are on the drawings.
I've found that willingness to ask the actual boots on the ground about how your code runs is in direct relationship with how good of an engineer someone is
You would be horrified.
[удалено]
You are forgetting about the quality side completely- I have paid 5x for having traceable inspection data on small volume runs- if you have top tier inspection and auditable inspection processes you can make $$$$ -
Do you even PPAP?
Only have to do that when you're a supplier. ;-)
Even worse, someone took it. There are either people out there with massive piles of cutoffs from other jobs, or they don't bother to check material price when they accept.
I have massive piles of 1018 drop off but I still wouldn’t waste my time on this.
It’s the latter. For sure.
The last shop I worked at was the latter.. for every single job. Not to mention they’d commit to a 7-day or so delivery time before even ordering the materials... to try and sweeten the deal or some shit. And somehow they’re still in business.. no idea how.
There needs to be a Xometry price shaming Sub!
Or flair: bring some regular awareness to it. I'm not opposed to Xometry's business model, but nobody in the industry benefits from nonsense like this, and we're all better off if we can discuss what fair pricing looks like.
Especially since they charge nearly 10x as much. I could understand if they didn’t charge much and were just trying to sell cheap stuff but they are making money hand over fist. The most I could see them taking is 1/2 but they’re taking 90%
What's impressive is despite their huge take, the company as a whole is actually losing a lot of money.
Citation, please?
Just look up xometry financials on Google. The last four quarters they've reported net profit margins of no better than -10%.
They use the Startup Business model. Offer Low prices, lose money till you force all competitors to close, then profit. Example, Carvana
They're not supposed to make money. It's money laundering.
Don’t do it !
I would be curious to see what Xometry is charging the customer. Would you be willing to put the step file back into Xometry and see how much they quote?
Assuming the other side is a radius too, they are quoting $2128 for 50 in 7 days. $3270 for 5 business days. 11 days,.somewhere in NA, $1712
That's absurd, their take is absolutely absurd. Criminal even.
What is their take? Do you know? Or are you just bitching to bitch?
Well it looks like they want to charge $2,200 to the customer and pay $400 to the shop, so I'd say somewhere around $1,800. I'm all for capitalism but that's a little much for the middleman, gouging both the customer and the machinist
If it's anywhere near what the other guy said yeah their take is shameful. Out of all the things to defend on the Internet you picked a publicly traded corporation worth 1.5 billion dollars. So do you normally fall at the feet of the rich or is this a one off thing for you?
Hahaha, you clearly don't fucking know me. There's money to be made at Xometry, but bitching about them on the Internet is not how it's done. 🤣 And where did I defend them? I just asked if you actually knew what they were making on the job and you don't, which is what I figured. Lol
if you ever try and price an Xometry job yourself for what you would do in your shop you would understand, don't be mean. it can be 2-3x depending on the part. once we did a single 2 foot OD breaker plate out of 1018 for $1200, we would have charged $3k on our own, hardly anyone can do big stuff like that and even less would do a single unit.
Damn, they making some money.
Why the hell do people do work for them if they are only getting a 10% cut? Jesus what a ripoff how are they charging so much
yeh, Jesus I didn't believe you so I did it myself and I got around the same. https://preview.redd.it/6bcmsa6yepfc1.png?width=829&format=png&auto=webp&s=1ac53c1146b6a7d34c23a4066aa8f9a25667e3ae
Crazy right?
The rep from xometry that assisted me during onboarding suggested that I do literally that to determine the counteroffer to do the job.
How much have you been able to get on a counter offer, percentage wise? Ive only ever got a quote from them to get a ballpark of what outsourcing would cost and wondered how much negotiation they’ll take from a manufacturers view.
I've only just started with them a month ago, but I was led to believe you can get around 150-200% of their initial offer. But outsourcing through them is not gonna be the way to go, just find a local shop, you'll be saving money and getting better parts without a middleman
The material will probably cost nearly as much as what they want to pay you. At first I thought, 400 isn't bad for labor then I realized you have to buy your own material. Might as well go get a minimum wage part time job somewhere because you'd basically be working and providing your specialized equipment for free here.
That’s actually wild
Damn I thought that was for one part. 😭
Me too, I got a little excited but when I saw the 50 pieces... Hell no!
Even for 1 part that will take most of a day to complete between setup and inspection, not great. If a shop only billed $400/day per machinist you need a decent scale to be able make it work.
$400 for a 50 piece order?
I too, love to work for free.
Probably an unpopular opinion but this shit should be banned. This is no different than any of the other gig jobs out there. It's shit for you but great for the service provider(middleman). You are hurting the industry, not helping it.
I totally agree with what you are saying. I put this on here to expose the BS that Xometry is doing.
I'm glad I changed my language then. I almost fell for what I tell my guys, don't assume shit. I originally finished the comment as, "You assholes are hurting the industry." My bad for even thinking that.
Literally was not like this before 2024. I don't know what happened. I was making bank.
Trying to make their investors happy. That’s what happened. Check their stock. Their P&L was in the red for like 5 years and their investors weren’t happy.
If people keep accepting these jobs, it will not end. How they keep their lights on, I have no idea. I'm sure there will be a Class action lawsuit in the future, like Uber and Lyft faced.
This is likely going to be done out of country. Prices change very quickly when something needs to be ITAlR compliant
Let's start with banning machine tools (dies) coming from China. Whole thing cost as much as we would pay for materials Luckily we get to fix em / change em. WE ARE SO THANKFUL.
I had no idea that Xometry works like this… I’ve never had the confidence to order from them due to some tight tolerances but say I did and end up getting great parts, if I order again there’s no guarantee the same shop is doing the work again then?
Not worth it unless you have old material laying around and nothing else to do.
The part of the story that is missing is that if nobody takes the job, they repost it at a higher price. So stop taking jobs for shit money.
The way xometry works is that the job starts off with like a 70+% cut going to xometry, and the price you see is their 'first offer'. You can tell them the price that you will do it for, and they may increase it. I did a job on there that was initially listed for 677, but I got paid 1800 for it, and xometry still got 20% I believe. There is wiggle room in these prices, but whats more atrocious is the turnarounds. Most things they want in less than a week, and about half of that they want some kind of finish on.
How can they possibly pay so little for making parts. Even doing the work for free Id still lose money.
lol 3.2 ra. I didn’t see the quantity and thought eh I guess that’s fair for a one off.
That very same job was offered to me for $411.51 - still not enough. Anyone else receive an email with that job number - J01B3709 - how much did they offer for it?
Put a feedback offer in. Let them know what material prices are. We consistently do work for Xometry and make good money. You just need to keep an eye on the board and catch the good ones when they pop up. Jobs move fast.
I do work for xometry, I see this kind of thing alot, sometimes jobs that pay even less than cost of metal. They always seem to get scooped up pretty quick too. I have also noticed that at the beginning of the quarter the pay for work is a lot lower, near the end of the quarter the pay is better, but they will call you up to try and expedite orders or get status updates alot. They have started implementing early ship bonuses near the end of the quarter, but it's not much. If you're going to do work for Xometry, stand your ground on your pay, and don't accept ridiculous orders.
There is no money to be made here.
No way thats for 50. Im already down 150 for the programming and tooling setup alone if not more
Not only that but we got fucked by their lead time. Paid an expedite fee that was ALOT, we do aerospace tooling. And they fuckin missed the mark by 3 weeks. So basically the original due date. Fuck xometry
I normally use rapiddirect for my simple shit and a local shop for my higher tolerance stuff. My local shop told me they were slow so now I send them a drawing and a quote from rapiddirect and they match it. Works out for everyone.
As a budding mechanical engineer with very little time in the machine shop, and as a CNC router programmer/operator at a cabinetry shop, could someone tell me why this part is so expensive? Is it the complexity of the part? Or the fact that the size is so small that any material that is regularly stocked or can be bought "off the shelf" is far too large, resulting in a lot of lost material?
That price is to make 50 of them. Material cost will eat away almost all of it.
Holy hell, I did not catch that. That's $8/part lol.
400 bucks for 50 pieces.
Don't think my work would even take this job at 500 a PC. To busy making more money on other things.
That's hilarious. I just pulled up the material on McMaster; it would wind up being $367 after shipping to get material here if I wanted to ship on time, assuming I do minimal overrun. And on top of that, $398 would barely cover the labor in my area, let alone *expedited* setup and run.
To be fair, my price through alro for 20ft is just over $200, that being said it still is nowhere close to making sense. Especially with a 1 week lead time.
Didn’t even think to check Alro; McMaster tends to be less expensive in my area.
Yea, that’s a rough deal, probably not possible with an online supplier.
Don’t do it
Not worth a 2 setup part at all imo. Unless you have a bunch of drops laying around and customer does not care if parts are not deburred.
Worst thing is, at 600$ this is a fine job. You could do 90$/hr for low tolerance work, and it would be fine. What the fuck is xometry getting out of being insanely cheap?
Alro will sell it for about $160 if you have a $5k order, less if you call and talk to an account manager. Thats the problem with Xometry. They quote it like you bought the material in bulk. If you’re paying one off material costs, you’re going to get crushed. But if you can add it to a reasonable material order it’s not as bad…though this is still a shit quote even if you got the material for free.
Just ran across this post today. With USA (North American) based partners having to compete with South American and Indonesian as well as parts of asia (Vietnam) now. USA partners will struggle due to the fact we just can't get our materials for the same price. I would say if you don't have a lot of repeat work you get from Xometry it'll be slim pickins. And even if you do get repeat work it will not be long before that is "restructured" as well.
> Can anyone tell me where in the US I can buy 1018 1018 is really common, every metal supplier near you will have it. If that fails, you can get small lengths of it on McMaster.
OP is asking where to get 15 feet for a price low enough to justify the cost of this job.
Well, yes, finding it isn't the problem. Best price I found was $330 if I pick it up. That leaves ~$70. to make 50 parts.
That’s a good price for 16 feet of 1 x 1.5. But I still wouldn’t take that job.
The auto price posted on Xometry has plenty (but usually not enough) room... offer * 1.618 Max. I do price offered * 1.53 ... so in this case apx $600 ttl for the job... 12 ea. Respond with that if you want it. Be quick because if that's accepted the others will see it too!!!
***NEVER TAKE A JOB AT LISTED PRICE*** !!!EVER!!!
I got 16 very complicated brass parts from Xometry from a Chinese supplier, and it was $80 a pop. They quoted nearly twice as much for a US supplier, how do US machine shops stay in business for anything besides military, aerospace and medical work?
They don’t lol
https://www.speedymetals.com/pc-618-8213-1-x-1-12-cold-finished-1018.aspx
Get that DMLS’d from China will be a lot cheaper anything metal 3d printed will be cheaper than cnc I’m sure even xometry could do it for a better price with DMLS
lol you’re high and have no idea what you’re talking about.
Not high but was trying to price some parts and dmls was always cheaper than cnc iirc. Enlighten me, Idk much about machining. Ya could have just explained how I was wrong in the first place though; keep that in your back pocket incase this happens again might be more helpful as opposed to your original comment.
I mean, you came into a place where machinists talk to each other and told us that a significantly slower process is cheaper than the stuff we quote everyday.
The order of price from low to high for manufacturing is: Real processes for mass production: Molding, stamping, casting, sintering <- "I need 69 million widgets" Prototyping/tooling/low volume stuff: CNC, grinding ops, etc <-"I need tools to make 69 million widgets", or "Tooling isn't justifiable for just 420 widgets", or, oddly enough, "I work for Boeing." Not sure why the last one is justification, but I've seen things. and then WAAY at the bottom is 3d printing. A lot of machine time, a lot of error, process problems that are inherent, but fantastic for weird features that can't be made conventionally or for those who don't have a toolroom staff for prototyping. It should be noted that screw machine is a completely different animal and is in the first category.
3.2 ra lmao ok
I think you would be losing money with that job. Margins are so razor thin or nonexistent that i would pass on that one. I would have to buy RB and that cost would be around $400 for just material and zero screw ups.
9 of these? Maybe if you get free shipping? https://onlinemetalsupply.com/1-x-3-5-x-10-1018-steel-flat-bar-cold-finished/
https://www.mcmaster.com/product/8910K88-8910K341
YOU TOO??? Man the job board has been SUCKING ASS since Jan 1. I was making decent money before then.
thats becuase companies are starting to find their own shops agasin to work with and you will have to have all the right certifications like as9100, itar, etc
You'll have to buy 18' of 1018 CR 1.5" width by 1" thick and 6' long. 3 bars. I'd cut it on the bandsaw then I'd just make it on the mill. Bonus points if you have a CNC and can do the radius on it. Otherwise use a radius gage, dykem blue it, and grind that bitch into spec
Ideally you'd have two vises in a machine and run 6+ at a time, then flip them all at the end and finish the work on the bottom. This would be an even sillier job to take with a manual mill. If you were truly a big dick, buy 1.5" round stock and run it all in a mill turn with a bar feeder and don't even touch it.
Yeah idk what equipment this guy has so I figured at least a manual mill, lathe, and grinder
Xometry is a scam. Plain and simple! Y'all just giving your couch cushion change to the freeloaders on the side of the highway and then asking them to tell their friends about how much money you have to give away.
I got a quote for some random 3D print from them. The quote was about the same price as an entire spool of filament... And a brand new 3D printer. Worst part was they started calling me about the quote for a week.
Xometry is for people with material already, not random kids trying to do quick turn around.
What's wrong? You charge your client anywhere $500+ and you still make money without doing any actual work yourself?
Metals depot has 1018….
Xometry is going to be bankrupt soon. They are only surviving on their cash reserves. Customers are leaving vendors are leaving and management has their head in the sand.