Now to get to the high pricing of kits or what is involved in making these parts.
Cost of a complete machine setup with all tooling ready to make parts - $ 200000 +
Qty plays a very big role in the cost of manufacturing.
The tooling cost gets divided into large qty orders and the cost per unit goes down.
When buying material the price goes down when you buy in bulk.
Tooling would include Cutter tips/inserts $23 each, drills( x 3) $ 15 - $76, Er16 & ER20 collets( 6 ) $18, Threading tools ID & OD ( 2 )$ $32, Main spindle Collet $110, Sub spindle Pick off collet $ 110, Guide Bushing collet $ 280.00
Then there is the type of material you are using to make the parts from Brass, 303, 316, 17-4, 304 .... Stainless or other metals. Now these materials that we use in a screw machine has to be within a certain tolerance to be able to hold a certain tolerance. Material that is used is either ground to a specific dimension and tolerance or you get what is called screw machine quality stock. The higher the tolerance the higher the price.
Then you have the programming of the parts that is time or you can use software that cost ( Partmaker or alike $ 15000.00).
Setup of a new part( have not been run on the machine) to make sure you get the part to match the print and sometimes you need to make changes to the parts. This can take 20 min to couple of hours.
When making pens all the parts have to work together to make a good looking pen and the problem with this type of manufacturing is that the customer would like to see a complete sample before they want to cut you loose and run the required qty normally a minimum of 250 parts or more.
Most companies will run the parts as per drawing/ print and I can tell you that the complete pen might not turn out the way you want it to be. I would love to just make parts but it does not work that way with pen kits. ( At least until a complete pen is made)
The surface finish is also very important. The better the finish on the part the longer it takes to run and that add cost to the part. You better have a good finish on stainless or you will have a very hard time making it shine.
There is a setup time between different parts, These 7 or 8 axis machines have up to 36 or may be more and different tools, collets and pickoff collets are used for the different parts, also the bar feeder needs to be changed over when a different diameter rod is used. Time to change between parts can be as Little;e as 25 minutes to 4 hours, it all depend what needs to be done.
The typical pen parts made from stainless steel would run from 45 sec to 2.35 minutes per part.
The parts then needs to be cleaned - ultrasonic cleaned ,tumbled (3 cycles) hand polished and then plated if brass is used.
Now for the packaging, refill, spring, mechanism.
All of these things adds up very quickly and when you sell wholesale the price gets doubled. Everyone needs to make there little bit of profit.
That is how a price gets out of have very quickly. At the end I have to look back and see is it all worth the effort and time to just make a $1 or $2 per kit and the answer is no it is not always worth it.