My name is Matt W. and I am a Manufacturing Engineer located in South Bend, Indiana. I am
looking for some insight on the best approach to quoting weldments. (best
practices and industry standards). I was hoping there might be a peer to
peer group, or some related articles that I can access, to understand all of
variables that go into quoting weldments. There seems to be a great deal
of information about deposition rates and travel speeds (linear equations) but
not a lot about the additional variables like clamping, part handling,
cleaning, grinding, packaging, etc. This is what I am most interested in
finding more about. Any information you can give me is greatly
appreciated.
Matt
W.
Hi Matt,
I use a program that is simply
an Excel spread sheet developed by a company called Sterling. The screen
shots I’m attaching will give more contact info. For me, this has worked
great.
There are some general rules of
thumb that you need to develop, such as Cycle Time or Arc-On time. Here
are mine:
·
20% arc-on time –
This would be a typical manual work cell that assembles, tacks and finish welds
parts.
·
40% arc-on time –
This would be a typical manual work cell that receives a tacked assembly and
finish welds it.
·
60% arc-on time –
This would be a manual work cell where the welder rarely moves, doesn’t add
parts and is continuously welding. –or- This is a robotic work cell
that welds many short (<4”) welds, lots of arm movement, lots of touch
sensing.
·
80% arc-on time –
This is a robotic/automated work cell that completes continuous or multi-pass
welds, does little touch sensing.
Those are important rules.
Get those wrong and you’ll never make money… and that’s why we’re here, to make
money and keep folks employed.
There are many Weld Calculators
out there. This one works for me.
I had an employer that would
calculate weld cost by simply knowing the inches of weld on a weldment.
They were very accurate, but a system like that would take years to develop…
and theirs did.
My advice, find yourself a Weld
Calculator that you are comfortable with and use that. I’m not big on
re-inventing the wheel.
Good Luck!
PWC
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