Cost Clarification to Customer
Die Casting Mold (Tooling) Cost
It’s a common sense that we must have die casting mold(or tooling) before die casing production. This is why we will have to quote tooling cost for our clients. But different type of die casting mold might cost completely different. Here I would like to share how the die casting tooling cost, as you might know, the tooling cost includes two main parts – the die set and the machining of the cavities. The cost of the die set is primarily controlled by the size of the part’s envelope. A larger part requires a larger, more expensive, die set. The cost of machining the cavities is affected by nearly every aspect of the part’s geometry. The primary cost driver is the size of the cavity that must be machined, measured by the projected area of the cavity (equal to the projected area of the part and projected holes) and its depth. Any other elements that will require additional machining time will add to the cost, including the feature count, parting surface, side-cores, tolerance, and surface roughness.
The quantity of parts and material used will affect the tooling life and therefore impact the cost. Materials with high casting temperatures, such as copper, will cause a short tooling life. Zinc, which can be cast at lower temperatures, allows for a much longer tooling life. This effect becomes more cost prohibitive with higher production quantities.
The last consideration is the number of side-action directions, which can indirectly affect the cost. The additional cost for side-cores is determined by how many are used. However, the number of directions can restrict the number of cavities that can be included in the die. For example, the die for a part which requires 3 side-core directions can only contain 2 cavities. There is no direct cost added, but it is possible that the use of more cavities could provide further savings.
Material Cost
When we calculate for the die casting manufacturing cost, material is an essential consideration. Normally the material cost is determined by the weight of material that is required and the unit price of that material. That is why we need customer to provide us part weight when quotation stage, meanwhile the weight of material is clearly a result of the part volume and material density.
However, the part’s maximum wall thickness can also play a role. The weight of material that is required includes the material that fills the channels of the die. A part with thinner walls will require a larger system of channels to ensure that the entire part fills quickly and evenly, and therefore will increase the amount of required material. However, this additional material is typically less than the amount of material saved from the reduction in part volume, a result of thinner walls. Therefore, despite the larger channels, using thinner walls will typically lower the material cost. This is what we consider for material cost for our manufacturing cost.
Production Cost
The production cost is another important count point when we calculate our cost, which includes labor, electricity, factory renting fee, machine running oil, and other hiding expense. Everybody knows the manufacturing cost in China is going much higher than before, however our manufacturing profit keeps decreased, this make most of our die casting companies in China can hardly survive.
On other hand, we take manufacturing cycle time is a critical parameter when quoting. You know the cycle time and hourly rate will directly affect our daily output. This is our manufacturing engineering have been trying any possibility to improve our manufacturing process so as to obtain a better cycle time. The cycle time can be broken down into the injection time, cooling time, and resetting time. By reducing any of these times, the production cost will be lowered. The injection time can be decreased by reducing the maximum wall thickness of the part, so it is important to understand how the part design affects our casting cycle time.
Meanwhile the tonnage of die casting machining will also affect our cost, it’s commonly understood that the bigger parts will be injected with a bigger machine, a larger part will require a larger clamping force, and hence a more expensive machine, A larger part will require larger motions from the machine to open, close, and eject the part, and a larger machine requires more time to perform these operations. so as different material would required different machine, such as aluminum, will require cold chamber machines which are typically more expensive.
The above all is our detail introduction how our quotation should be, where they are from. And how they are affected during our quotation, We set this up to make our cost transparent and let clients better understand the die casting manufacturing cost. Since this is a reference material, and you should refer to our instant quotation detail when we come to a deal, and we sincerely looking forward to working with your project and prove how our Eco Die Casting Program benefits for you. Thank you!