How Unit Price Drops with Production Scale (100 Units vs. 10,000 Units)

Divide the 100-piece unit price by 100 and you still do not have the 10,000-piece price. Most of the drop is four costs that barely care how many parts you ship: press setup, compound changeover, first-off inspection, and the tool sitting on the invoice.

Material per gram does not get cheaper because you ordered more, unless you crossed a drum or pail break. Cycle time does not magically halve. What changes is how much of the factory’s *fixed motion* each part has to carry.

What a 100-piece job is actually paying for

A 100-piece custom silicone run is a setup with a short burst of molding.

Walk the floor in order:

1. Compound prep. Pull a lot, weigh, color if needed, mill or drum for HCR, or load an LSR pail/cartridge. If the factory’s minimum buy on that grade is larger than 100 parts’ worth, you are buying leftover compound whether it is on the quote or not.
2. Press setup. Heat the tool (LSR cavities run hot), set clamp, set shot, set vacuum if fitted, purge the previous grade. This block of time is almost the same at 100 and at 10,000.
3. First offs and flash tuning. LSR in particular will tell you if the shutoff, vacuum, and cure window are wrong. You throw some shots. At 100 pieces those thrown shots are a visible fraction of the batch.
4. Run. 100 parts on a 1-cavity tool is a short shift. Operator attention is high because the run is over before anyone trusts the process.
5. Secondary. Deflash, post-cure, inspect, bag. On a 100-piece job this is often 100% visual plus a drawing check on a sample. Labor per part is ugly because there is no rhythm.
6. Pack and freight. A carton of 100 still needs the same documents, the same cushioning choices, and often the same international minimums as a larger carton.

So the 100-piece unit price is setup + scrap + nervous labor + a huge slice of the tool, divided by 100. The rubber is the small print.

What a 10,000-piece job can drop, and what it cannot

At 10,000, if the tool is already paid or is being amortized across a real annual volume, the same walk looks different.

Setup is still one changeover (or a few, if you split lots). Spread over 10,000 it becomes noise unless the factory insists on small batch releases.

Scrap rate should fall once the process window is known. It will not fall if the tool flashes, if the grade is wrong, or if you keep revising the CAD. Scale does not fix a bad shutoff. It multiplies it.

Labor per part drops where you can stop treating every piece as a prototype: consistent cure, a trim fixture instead of a knife, sampling instead of 100% dimensional, a packing cell that bags to a count. It does *not* drop if the part still needs a skilled hand-trim on every flash line. That is a design and tool problem wearing a labor costume.

Tool amortization is the headline drop people expect. A steel 1-cavity billed across 10,000 is a tenth of the same tool billed across 1,000, and a hundredth of billing it across 100. An 8-cavity only helps if 10,000 is enough to keep that press fed and if the extra steel did not eat the savings.

Freight per part drops until you hit dimensional weight, hazardous-declaration overhead (usually not silicone parts, sometimes the compound), or a customer who wants 200-piece weekly drops. 10,000 in one shipment is a different freight problem than 10,000 as fifty releases. Quote the release pattern, not the annual number.

What does not drop 100×:

• LSR or HCR list price per kilogram, unless you moved a price break
• Cycle time, unless you changed cavitation, cold-runner design, or cure
• Post-cure oven hours per kilogram
• Cosmetic reject rate on a tool that was never capable

A worked stack (drivers, not a quote)

Pretend one part, one 1-cavity LSR tool, same grade, same flash spec. Ignore currency. Watch the *weights*.

If someone sends you a 10,000-piece unit price that is 1/100 of the 100-piece price, they either gave away the tool at 100, or they are not quoting the same process.

Two scale mistakes that erase the drop

Releasing 10,000 as 100-piece calls. You bought the annual volume on paper and the 100-piece factory physics in practice. Setup fees return. Compound lots get restaged. First-offs happen again. Ask for the *batch* price at 10,000 *and* the price at your real release qty.

Scaling on the wrong process. Vacuum-cast RTV at 100 is a craft operation. At 10,000 it is a labor trap. LSR on steel is the opposite: ugly at 100, rational at 10,000. If the 100-piece quote is RTV and the 10,000-piece quote is LSR, you are not looking at a scale curve. You are looking at a process change. That is legitimate. Label it.

The quote to demand

Ask for one sheet with two columns, 100 and 10,000, same process family, with these lines split:

• Tool (if not already paid), class, cavitation
• Setup / changeover, once per lot
• Material, with the compound min-buy called out
• Press time (cycle × cavities)
• Secondary labor (trim, post-cure, inspect)
• Assumed scrap %
• Pack and freight for *one* shipment vs your planned releases

The drop should be explainable on those lines. If it is not, the cheap 10,000-piece number is a magnet, not a cost model.

Run this test before you pick a supplier: take the 100-piece quote, subtract a realistic tool share, and see whether the remainder looks like setup-heavy conversion. Then ask what happens to *only* those conversion lines at 10,000. That gap is the real scale economy. Everything else is storytelling.

FAQ

Why isn't the 10,000-piece price the 100-piece price divided by 100?

Most of the drop is costs that barely care how many you ship: press setup, compound changeover, first-off inspection, and tool amortization. Material per gram does not get cheaper unless you crossed a pack break. Cycle time does not magically halve.

What does not drop when silicone volume scales?

LSR or HCR list price per kilogram unless you hit a break, cycle time unless cavitation or cure changed, post-cure oven hours per kilogram, and cosmetic reject rate on a tool that was never capable. Scale multiplies a bad shutoff; it does not fix it.

Why do 100-piece weekly releases erase a 10,000-piece quote?

You bought annual volume on paper and 100-piece factory physics in practice. Setup, restaged compound, and first-offs return. Quote the batch price at 10,000 and the price at your real release quantity.

Is RTV at 100 and LSR at 10,000 the same scale curve?

No. That is a process change, which can be legitimate, but label it. Vacuum-cast RTV at 10,000 is a labor trap; LSR on steel is ugly at 100 and rational at 10,000.

Which lines should appear in both volume columns?

Tool class and cavitation, setup once per lot, material with min-buy, press time, trim and inspect labor, assumed scrap, and pack/freight for one shipment versus planned releases. If a 10,000-piece unit price is 1/100 of the 100-piece price, the tool was given away at 100 or the process is not the same.