All machinery costs money to run, from your motor car to the cake mixer in the kitchen. In engineering trades, many companies charge out a machine-time component which should recover or repay the real costs of running those machines. The humble bandsaw down by the steel rack is one of the machines which is a crucial part of any production process, yet it is very likely to be left right out of the costing process.
There are several cost components to running a bandsaw:
1.Capital cost of the machine You need to charge a depreciation component. Depreciation of plant is a REAL cost, whether or not the machine is being used. Example: If the machine originally cost $20K and was expected to last 10 years, that works out to at least $1 per hour of business opening hours without taking any repairs or maintenance into account.
2. Bandsaw blades A good quality bimetal blade should give roughly 100 hours of use when cutting mild & medium tensile steels. The tougher the material, the less blade life you can expect. Then accidents always happen - don't forget to add in an increment for damage. If the saw operator knows his stuff and the machine is in good condition, perhaps 80 actual cutting hours is a realistic figure. Depending on the blade size your cost could be anywhere between $1 to $5 per hour.
3. Coolant Coolant is another real cost. You always get better blade life if you run a rich coolant ratio, and the fact is the coolant tends to migrate towards the floor especially when you cut long pipe or hollow section materials! The cost of coolant will vary considerably from machine to machine, and from business to business.
4. Labour or man time Most machines will run without an operator standing beside it, but it still takes time to load/unload, it takes time to change blades, to keep the coolant topped up and to clean and maintain the machine. All this is chargeable time, often forgotten when a proposed contract is going through the quotation stage.
Finally, the cheapest machine to purchase often doesn't equate to the cheapest cutting! Financial realities might mean you have to start off with a cheap bandsaw, so you want to include a component in your charge-out rate to upgrade next time around...
