Quote Originally Posted by irving2008 View Post
ok, simple trial ROI test... I know nothing about your business or your profit margins etc so this is just some crude back of envelope working... but it serves to show that the CNC is a viable profit generator IMHO...

Each letter costs £1, and 100/week so outlay = £100/week

MDF board from B&Q (and its a lot cheaper from ebay bought in bulk) 9mm = £13.78, 12mm = £16.48 and you get at least 98 letters a board (more if you used full sheets) Cutting is £10/sheet (50p/cut)

Therefore the letters for the week cost, worst case £26.48 + collection from supplier, say £35/week

Leaving out electricity costs for running router, there's only your time for collection and set up. Lets say initially you don't cost your time, then the savings to be made are crudely £65/week so a £1000 router will pay for itself in 16 weeks and still have a value of £700 at the end of year 1 (3yr straight depreciation).

Now lets allow for your time, say and hour to collect and 2min per letter to set up = 4.5hours @ £20/hour = £90/week.
If the router cost £1000 to buy, paid off over a year @12% interest (on a CC) then its costing about £100/month, or £25/week.
Therefore the CNC route is now costing £150/week... or £50 more than buying in the letters. Seemingly a negative ROI, but you then have to factor in the opportunity value of what else you could be doing with it.

If you can use it to generate other sources of income, selling blanks or other goods made with it then you only have to clear another £50/week for it to start paying for itself.

To me that sounds perfectly doable...
Thankyou! that makes it alot more clearer, i do think it will be beneficial to my business, now i just need to think what to get, i know the best value for money is to build, but niether of us have any expierience in machinery building, like i say, he works on one, but not a clue how to build one! then it comes down to buying one, and a UK is going ot cost a packet, not 1K like you based your figures on :(