Free, no account
What does an hour on that machine really cost you?
Not the power bill, and not the rate you quote the customer. What it costs you, for every hour it actually works: the machine wearing itself out, maintenance, the person standing at it, and its share of the rent and the utilities.
The machine
If you don't know a number, put in something close — you'll see straight away how much it moves.
Out of the hours it's on, how many it really spends making chips. In between there's the setup, waiting on material, inspection, and the weeks with no orders. Almost nobody puts this line in the math, and without it the hourly cost comes out lower than the truth.
The operator cost is what the shop pays out: wages plus payroll taxes, workers' comp and benefits. Not what lands in the paycheck.
Shop overhead
Rent, utilities, the office, the accountant: costs you carry anyway, that belong to no machine in particular and so get spread across all of them. Leave them at zero and the number comes out lower than the truth.
And what do you charge for it today?
Optional. Put it in and instead of just telling you what an hour costs, I'll tell you how far off you are — and what that adds up to over a year.
If the number is higher than the one you had in your head
It's usually one of these three.
- 1
You counted the hours it was on, not the hours it was cutting
A machine on eight hours a day for 229 days is 1,832 hours. If it's really cutting 70% of that, it's 1,282: the same costs divided by a third fewer hours.
- 2
The operator isn't in the math
On a machine that isn't running lights-out it's the biggest line of all, often bigger than depreciation. And what the shop pays out is roughly double the paycheck.
- 3
Nobody ever charged out the rent and the utilities
They belong to no machine, so they land in no hourly cost — and at year end they're missing from every quote you sent all year.