|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 How to Estimate A Pad Printing Job Back to Pad Printing Notebook Need more information? Call your Consumables representative at: 630-752-4000 or e-mail us |
 Accurate Estimating Is Key To Profitable Pad Printing THIS is a question that ITW Trans Tech is asked quite often, especially by prospective or new customers. Here are some guidelines to assist you in this matter. There are several factors that determine the costs of a pad printing job. The most prominent among these are listed. Should you need any further assistance for your particular application, please feel free to contact our Sales Department. DEFINITIONS OF TERMS: 1. Equipment Amortization This is the payback period that was used in the initial capital expense justification of the pad printing machine. 2. Departmental Burden This is the overhead cost in running a job in a particular department or area. This would include power and working space consumption. 3. Indirect Material & Labor Cost This is the cost for moving the material from the receiving dock to unpack, repack and move to the shipping dock. This would include the cost of any additional material needed for repacking. 4. Tooling Cost This should be a one-time cost to cover special fixtures or other permanent devices. These will be made or purchased to run this job and are not likely to be used for any others. 5. Set-Up Cost This is the cost of labor (including fringe benefits) to set up and take down the job in the printer. This includes initial machine adjustments, fixture and cliché alignments, ink preparation, removal, clean-up and storage of tooling and accessories. 6. Operation Labor Cost Per Part This will be the hourly labor pay rate of the operator plus fringe and hourly burden rate, divided by the number of parts expected to be produced per hour. 7. Operating Supply Cost This is the portion cost of printing plates, inks and transfer pads per part. Most of us can calculate the costs for the items one thru six using accepted accounting methods, but do not have enough information on the operating supply costs. Thus, let's take a closer look at each of the three supply items involved: cliché, ink and pad. What we have to know about each item is the lifetime and cost. For our example, we will assume that we have to print a one square inch solid area on 500,000 parts. A. Printing Cliché Plate Before we can calculate the cliché cost per part, we have to know which type of plate is being used for the particular job. Is it a steel, hydro-foil or polymer plate? For our example, we are using an etched steel cliché with a 100 x 125mm size. The following formula applies: CLICHÉ COST CLICHÉ COST ——————— = PER PART PLATE LIFETIME OR NO. OF PARTS TO BE PRINTED $ 188.10 ———– = $ 0.00038 500,000 Note that the estimated lifetime of an etched steel cliché is a minimum of one million impressions. B. Ink Trans Tech normally packages inks in one-liter containers. The mileage or coverage for one liter is approximately 95,000 square inches. Which, in our example, would mean that 95,000 parts could be printed. Normally, we recommend that you use about 90,000 square inches, or even somewhat less when two-part epoxy inks are used, because of clean-up and potlife considerations. Therefore, the following formula applies: 90,000 sq. in. NUMBER OF PARTS ————––– = PER INK CONTAINER PRINTING SURFACE 90,000 sq. in. ––––––––––– = 90,000 PARTS 1 sq. inch Since we now know how many parts we can print per container, we can also figure out how much the ink cost will be per print. This is done with the following formula: INK COST PER LITER INK COST ————————––– = PER PART NUMBER OF PARTS $ 70 ºº ——— = $ 0.0007 Each 90,000 Please note that the $70 ºº ink cost also includes the cost of one liter of thinner. C. Transfer Pad The first thing to do here is to determine what pad must be used. For this you can consult our pad catalog or call our Service Department for a recommendation. Once we know the pad cost, we can use the following formula: PAD COST ———————— = PAD COST PER PRINT PAD LIFE OR NO. OF PARTS TO BE PRINTED A typical lifetime of a pad can be about 100,000 impressions. However, we have seen as high as 200,000 or only a few thousand prints, especially on parts with rough surfaces or sharp edges. In our example, we assume that the lifetime of the pad is about 70,000 impressions. $ 40 ºº ———— = $ 0.00057 / PART 70,000 Now we add the cost of A, B and C to give us the total printing cost per part. COST A ...................... $ .00038 COST B ..................... $ .0007 COST C ...................... $ .00057 ———————––––––––––––— COST PER PRINT = $ .00165 This cost is now added to the figures one thru six, giving you the total printing cost per part. For further information about inks, clichés, pads or our full line of other supplies, feel free to call your ITW Trans Tech Consumable Products representative. Back to Pad Print Notebook
|
