Thermal spray powder costing

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One of the most crucial steps in pricing thermal spray jobs is the costing of thermal spray powders. Thermal spray powders can get to be quite expensive, especially since many of the thermal spray powders consist of expensive alloys and alloying elements, plus the fact that they need to meet quite stringent specifications often. An error in the computation of thermal spray powder costs can throw the quotation data quite off the mark and you may end up with a loser contract or end up losing a contract that could have otherwise come to your thermal spray shop rather than that of your competitor. In this post, we will address only the issues dealing with costing of thermal spray powders in the quotation cycle.

In determining thermal spray powders costing, obviously the first step is to determine the volume of thermal spray coating material in the final finished product. This is done using standard formulas for volume of a shape. Then add to it a certain thermal spray over spray allowance on either side of the coating area and add this volume to the initial value. Incorporate a deposit efficiency value to this. This is needed because not all of the thermal spray powder material that goes through the thermal spray gun ends up as coating on the hardware being coated. Hence there is some waste of material and this needs to be accounted for. Additionally, a target efficiency value needs to be incorporated because the amount of material that does not even hit the target to be coated needs to be identified and accounted for. Once the volume of powder has been obtained, using the density of the thermal spray powder, you can determine the weight of the material that is expected to be used on the subject hardware. Then of course, use the price per pounds of material and you end up with the cost of the thermal spray powder to be used on the job.

Most companies add a markup to this raw material cost. That value, however, depends upon the sales and marketing and accounting functions of your company and sometimes how much greed factor gets built into it! Nevertheless adding a small safety factor to take into consideration imminent price hikes in raw materials costs and inventory carrying costs is not a bad idea. Of course, if the quotation that you have submitted to your customer is off only by a very small margin and you can safely bet that the prices will not go up beyond expectations, then you may want to adjust this markup depending upon how desperate you are in winning the contract.