Huge increase in JLCPCB CNC prices

[j_omega]

Has anyone else noticed that the new automatic quoting system for JLCPCB CNC services has lead to a huge increase in prices? The most significant was my most recent quote. The same part which was manually quoted for $219 for 50 pieces in April is now automatically quoted for $385 for 20 pieces in June. I guess I'm taking this work back to my local machine shop...

[rx8pilot]

I have been machining for about 20 years. From simple to very complex.

The high price is still VERY low. I wouldn't even return your email if you sent that model and asked for 50pcs for that price. I am particularly quick and efficient relative to most of the industry which allows me to be rather aggressive on pricing. Still, I won't even bother to compete on price with Chinese shops.

I can be faster. I can be more accurate. I can even help you optimize your design for manufacturing. I just can't with the hilarious Chinese pricing.

[j_omega]

So it appears that if you order a quantity greater than 25, this will trigger a manual review which brings back the old pricing. I would guess that either
1) The automatic quoting tool isn't doing a good job, or
2) JLC is looking to increase its margins on lower-volume orders.

Either way, that solves the problem for me.

[loki42]

Pcbway has been good on prices too.  I just got some titanium and stainless 3d printed and some tool steel machined.  Turn time on the titanium is a little slower than initially quoted but they had a few questions for me about where they could put supports.

[newto]

I have been machining for about 20 years. From simple to very complex.

The high price is still VERY low. I wouldn't even return your email if you sent that model and asked for 50pcs for that price. I am particularly quick and efficient relative to most of the industry which allows me to be rather aggressive on pricing. Still, I won't even bother to compete on price with Chinese shops.

I can be faster. I can be more accurate. I can even help you optimize your design for manufacturing. I just can't with the hilarious Chinese pricing.

I've told the company president that if he's looking to buy another small company (they've bought two or three the last few years?), try to find one that has a machine shop. I dread the day when our local guy either closes up or decides that we aren't worth the time. We used to have more options, but they've either shut down or decided "20x disk with two small ANSI threaded holes and tube with two large UN threaded ends" isn't worth the setup time. We're definitely in his "I'll get to it when I get to it" stack, 5-6 week target is a mild suggestion, but we just factor that into our quotes.

Maybe we should get a lathe...

[ajb]

I wouldn't be surprised if they had to increase prices to cover rework (or, hopefully, improved process/QA).  We have machining capability in house, but their prices really are absurd -- finished parts for less than the material would cost us in some cases -- and we're not set up for sheet metal, so we've tried JLC and PCBway for a couple of projects.  The quality is generally good, but with occasional stupid problems, like missing holes a relatively large sheet metal panel that was bent the wrong way around.  They replaced the bad parts, to their credit, but the shipping cost alone on the sheet metal part would've cost them money on that job. 

[rx8pilot]

I have been machining for about 20 years. From simple to very complex.

The high price is still VERY low. I wouldn't even return your email if you sent that model and asked for 50pcs for that price. I am particularly quick and efficient relative to most of the industry which allows me to be rather aggressive on pricing. Still, I won't even bother to compete on price with Chinese shops.

I can be faster. I can be more accurate. I can even help you optimize your design for manufacturing. I just can't with the hilarious Chinese pricing.

I've told the company president that if he's looking to buy another small company (they've bought two or three the last few years?), try to find one that has a machine shop. I dread the day when our local guy either closes up or decides that we aren't worth the time. We used to have more options, but they've either shut down or decided "20x disk with two small ANSI threaded holes and tube with two large UN threaded ends" isn't worth the setup time. We're definitely in his "I'll get to it when I get to it" stack, 5-6 week target is a mild suggestion, but we just factor that into our quotes.

Maybe we should get a lathe...

This is what got me into machining. My primary endeavor is engineering and product design, not machining. The local shops made it clear that my prototypes and small batches were not very interesting. I get it.

Sooooo.....I purchased a CNC mill and started learning. While the learning curve is fairly steep, it has been TOTALLY worth it. Some years ago I attempted to downsize and start outsourcing machine work. Nope. Fail. I got right back into it and will never sell my CNC capability.

[MR]

I have been machining for about 20 years. From simple to very complex.

The high price is still VERY low. I wouldn't even return your email if you sent that model and asked for 50pcs for that price. I am particularly quick and efficient relative to most of the industry which allows me to be rather aggressive on pricing. Still, I won't even bother to compete on price with Chinese shops.

I can be faster. I can be more accurate. I can even help you optimize your design for manufacturing. I just can't with the hilarious Chinese pricing.

I've told the company president that if he's looking to buy another small company (they've bought two or three the last few years?), try to find one that has a machine shop. I dread the day when our local guy either closes up or decides that we aren't worth the time. We used to have more options, but they've either shut down or decided "20x disk with two small ANSI threaded holes and tube with two large UN threaded ends" isn't worth the setup time. We're definitely in his "I'll get to it when I get to it" stack, 5-6 week target is a mild suggestion, but we just factor that into our quotes.

Maybe we should get a lathe...

This is what got me into machining. My primary endeavor is engineering and product design, not machining. The local shops made it clear that my prototypes and small batches were not very interesting. I get it.

Sooooo.....I purchased a CNC mill and started learning. While the learning curve is fairly steep, it has been TOTALLY worth it. Some years ago I attempted to downsize and start outsourcing machine work. Nope. Fail. I got right back into it and will never sell my CNC capability.

Same here, but I suspended working on my own CNC mill since a better opportunity came up.
There's a machining shop nearby and they have a CNC I never saw anyone using it, so I started to talk with the owner he said we can do whatever we want with that machine and he hopes we could make some parts for him.
I had to recover the machine from the dead (many small issues, the classic one it lost all the parameters due to empty battery, and no backups nor documentation about the machine itself, the manufacturer outsourced the PLC back then) it cost me 500$ so far to replace some electronic parts and brittle sealings and the machine is now in a working condition. The biggest part of it was studying the public documentation about the controller and tracing the PLC for figuring out which commands need to be used for enabling the toolchanger (they even tried to copy protect it...)...
However I'm working on replacing the controller to add more features to the machine and to improve the speed.
It's so nice to have a heavy machine >5tons with 1.1m x 0.65m X/Y travel.

The interesting part was to see how that machine was implemented, almost every bit and piece seems to be professional (the only design flaw was to use the battery to store the configuration as it was done with most CNC machines back then). For a machine that is older than 20 years it's very impressive.
Another machine I dissected during the last years was the Mechatronika pick and place machine from Poland, they used some interesting Delta parts but the way thy implemented everything was rubbish not conforming to any standard back then - Mitsubishi on the other side is just crazy detailed and they applied all standards back then.

[JLCPCB Official]

Hello,

Thank you for your feedback. The issue is due to a problem with our quote system update. The displayed price is not accurate. When you proceed to payment, the actual price should be lower than $385. I checked  your recent CNC order merchandise total around  around  $233 for 50 pieces. I suggest trying to proceed with "submitting the order" to see the adjusted fee.

If the price remains the same, please contact our support team.

[j_omega]

Is the web team going to fix the automatic quoting problem for future orders?

[Smokey]

I'm surprised the price difference between 20 piece and 50 pieces isn't bigger.  Machine setup time and tooling and fixturing and all that stuff that doesn't really change based on how many you make is a killer at these low quantities.