There are two types of tooling charges involved with our precision machined products:
A) Perishables: standard drills, turn tools, cut off tools, reamers etc. that are diminished and replaced during production which are included in the piece price.
B) Custom production tooling: form drills, thread gages, pick collets, cams, etc. are quoted separately as a "Non-Recuring Engineering" (NRE) charge.
If first article or pre-production parts are going to be inspected within 24 hours and released for production, the answer is yes. However, if it is known in advance that the design is subject to review and/or subsequent change it would be more efficient to produce first article parts on equipment suited to short runs.
Swiss uses only the highest quality material available with close tolerance for the grind. We prefer to use our own sources to find the best quality materials called for, but we will evaluate a customer's need for us to use theirs.
For any particular job, the set up cost is the variable that will effect the greatest change in the piece price. The set up cost is highest for difficult parts and close tolerances. As volume of parts increase, the set up cost becomes a decreasing percent of the per piece price.
