How To Estimate a Pad Print Job:

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This is a question that Trans Tech is asked quite often, especially by prospective or new customers. Here are some guidelines to assist you in the matter. There are several factors that determine the costs of a pad print job. The most prominent among these are listed. Should you need any further assistance for your particular application, please contact us.

1. Equipment Amortization:
This is the payback period that was used in the initial capital expense justification of the pad print 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 other.

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 benefits 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 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 steel, hydro-foil or polymer plate? For our example, we are using an etched steel cliché with a 100 x 125 mm size. The following formula applies:

CLICHÉ COST / PLATE LIFETIME OR NO. OF PARTS = CLICHE COST PER PART 

$188.10 / 500,000 = $0.00038

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. In our example, this 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 consideration. Therefore, the following formula applies:

90,000 sq. in. / PRINTING SURFACE = NO. OF PARTS PER INK CONTAINER

90,000 sq. in. / 1 sq. in. = 90,000 PARTS

Since we know how many parts we can print per container, we can also figure out how much the ink cost is per print. This is done with the following formula:

INK COST PER LITER / NUMBER OF PARTS = INK COST PER PART

$70.00 / 90,000 = $0.0007 Each

Please note that the $ 70.00 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 LIFE OR NO. OF PARTS TO BE PRINTED = PAD COST PER PRINT

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.

$40.00 / 70,000 = $0.00057 PER PART

Now we add the cost of A, B and C to give us the following printing cost per part.    
   COST A $0.00038
+ COST B $0.0007
+ COST C $0.00057            
= COST PER PRINT $0.00165

This cost is now added to the figure 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, please contact us.