How Small Can an Order Be? MOQ, Setup Cost and What Drives the Price

We do not set a minimum order quantity. One piece for a prototype is fine. But "no minimum" is not the same as "one piece costs the same per unit as a hundred", and it is worth understanding why before you decide on a batch size.

Where the cost actually sits

Every machined part carries two kinds of cost. There is the cost that happens once per order, and the cost that happens once per part.

Once per order: reading the drawing, programming the toolpaths, choosing and setting up tooling, making a fixture if the part needs one, first-article inspection. On a simple turned part this might be an hour of work. On a milled housing with two setups it can be several hours.

Once per part: material, machining time, deburring, inspection. This is the part that scales with quantity, and it is usually the smaller of the two on small orders.

What that looks like on a real part

Take a turned stainless spacer, 40 mm long, three diameters, one thread, general tolerance. Rough numbers for illustration: setup and programming might be worth 90 minutes of shop time. Each part might take four minutes to run.

One piece: 90 minutes of setup plus 4 minutes of running, so almost all of the price is setup. Ten pieces: the same 90 minutes spread over ten parts, so the per-part price drops sharply. A hundred pieces: setup barely shows up in the number, and material and run time dominate.

The exact figures will differ for your part, but the shape of the curve does not: the first few pieces are expensive, and the tenth through hundredth are much cheaper than the first. This is why a prototype often costs more per piece than the production run, and why it is not a sign that you were overcharged.

When one piece is the right call

When you need to check fit, test a function, or show a customer a physical sample, one piece is exactly right. Paying a higher unit price for a single part that proves the design is cheap compared with making fifty parts to a drawing that turns out to be wrong.

The same applies to a part you are not sure about yet. Order one, hold it, measure it, then decide.

When a bigger batch is the right call

When the design is fixed and you know the annual volume. If you will need 200 parts over the next year, ordering 50 now and 50 later usually costs more in total than ordering 200 once, because setup is paid again each time and material is bought in smaller quantities.

If you are unsure, tell us both numbers. We quote one price for 1 piece and one for the batch, and you can see the trade-off instead of guessing at it.

What we need to quote a small order

The same six things as any other order: file, material grade, tolerances, quantity, finish and destination. On a one-piece order the file matters even more, because there is no second part to compare against — the first one has to be right.

Send the drawing, say how many you need now and how many you expect later, and we will price both. There is no minimum, and no charge for asking.