Buying Guides
Every month the invoice arrives from the cutting vendor, and every month it gets paid, because the parts came back and the jobs shipped. That is exactly why outsourced cutting is the most durable leak in a fabrication shop's ledger: it never fails loudly. This post prices the leak with the one published figure that exists for it, walks through a worked example you can rerun with your own invoices, and is honest about when outsourcing is still the right call.
Vantix prints this on its tube and profile cutting spec sheet: most shops pay a 15 to 25% markup on outsourced tube work. That margin stays in your pocket when you cut in-house. It is a published band, not a per-shop measurement, and it is the only sourced outsourcing figure in this article; everything else below is either your own numbers or clearly labelled arithmetic on this band.
The markup exists because your vendor is a business: they carry the machine, the operator, the floor space, and their own margin, and all four are priced into every part they cut for you. None of that is unfair. It is simply margin that belongs to whoever owns the machine.
The markup is the visible part. Three costs ride along with it and never appear as a line item:
None of these three can be priced from the outside, which is why the honest move is to count them in hours and missed dates from your own last quarter rather than invent a dollar figure for them here.
Treat the following as a worked example with round numbers. It is not a quote, not a promise, and not your shop; its only job is to show the arithmetic so you can rerun it with real invoices.
Say a shop sends out $10,000 a month of tube and profile cutting. Apply the published 15 to 25% band:
That is the recoverable margin alone, before a single hour of queue time or one late-delivery ripple is counted, and before any new work the shop could quote once cutting capacity lives in the building. A shop outsourcing $25,000 a month runs the same arithmetic at $45,000 to $75,000 a year. A shop outsourcing $2,000 a month runs it at $3,600 to $6,000 a year, which may honestly not justify a machine, and the next section says so.
To rerun this with your own numbers, pull last quarter's outsourcing invoices, take the monthly average, and put it through the laser cutting machine ROI calculator. That monthly figure is the single strongest input in the payback math.
Vantix publishes its payback claim for this exact move: most shops see payback on tube cutting within 18 to 24 months, based on outsourcing cost elimination and new work capture. The machine behind that claim is the Vantix tube and profile laser cutting systems platform: 2-, 3- and 4-chuck configurations, tube to 48 ft (14 m), round diameter to 40 in (1000 mm), wall thickness to 1 in (25 mm) material dependent, positioning accuracy of ±0.05 mm, semi-automatic loading at 6 to 7 tubes per cycle, and near-zero tail waste on the 3-chuck build. Parts come off the machine with miter cuts, copes, hole patterns, and notches already in place, which is what turns outsourced lead times into same-day turnaround when tube cutting lives in your shop.
Which configuration recovers your margin fastest depends on your work mix; the decision logic is in 2, 3 or 4 chucks and which configuration pays, and the full platform ladder is on the TPC Tube and Profile Laser Cutting System page.
On the capital side, you do not have to trade the leak for a lump sum: Vantix offers laser equipment financing through multiple financing partners, with leasing, finance-to-own and hybrid programs and most credit decisions within 24 to 48 hours, and every system includes a 2-year warranty, 5-day on-site training, a 1-year spare parts kit, 24/7 Canadian support, and installation plus commissioning.
An honest page has to say this: if your outsourced cutting spend is small and irregular, keep outsourcing. Shops with very low cutting volume may not justify the capital investment, even with financing. A machine also needs floor space, an operator, and electrical service, and none of those are free. The trigger is not the existence of an outsourcing invoice; it is a consistent monthly leak large enough that the recovered margin plus the schedule control outweigh the cost of owning the capacity. If this quarter's invoices do not clear that bar, file this article and re-read it the quarter they do.
How much markup do shops pay on outsourced laser cutting? The published figure that exists is for tube work: Vantix's spec sheet states most shops pay a 15 to 25% markup on outsourced tube work. No equivalent published band exists for outsourced flat-sheet cutting, so this article does not invent one; the same invoice arithmetic applies to whatever your own vendors charge.
What payback should I expect from bringing tube cutting in-house? Vantix publishes 18 to 24 months for tube cutting, based on outsourcing cost elimination and new work capture. Your own number depends on your monthly outsourced spend, which is why the calculator asks for it first.
How do I work out what outsourcing actually costs my shop? Three steps: average your last quarter's outsourcing invoices into a monthly figure, apply the published 15 to 25% band to estimate the margin portion, then add your own record of late deliveries and requote cycles. The first two steps are arithmetic; the third is the part only your job files can answer.
Ready to price the alternative against your real numbers? Book a demo or request a quote. Bring last quarter's outsourcing invoices and your longest tube spec to the Lumby, BC showroom, and we will run your material and model the payback against your own spend.
Often the mechanism is not doing existing work faster. It is taking on work you currently turn down or send out, and in some shops running contract cutting or welding for others nearby.
Whether that adds up depends on your rates, your volume, and what the machine actually displaces. Those variables differ enough between shops that a payback figure calculated somewhere else tells you nothing reliable about yours.
We can build that model with your numbers. We would rather show you the arithmetic and let you test the assumptions than quote a payback period you have no way to check.
Vantix tube and profile systems handle tube up to 48 ft (14 m) long and round tube up to 40 in (1000 mm) in diameter. Square and rectangular sections go up to 36 x 36 in (900 x 900 mm), with wall thickness up to 1 in (25 mm) depending on material.
Those are platform maximums. The configuration quoted for you is matched to the sizes you actually run, because chuck count and machine length are specified per order rather than fixed across the range.
Financing can be arranged, and it is worked through during the quote process.
We do not publish fixed rates, terms or payment examples here, for a straightforward reason: they depend on the system, the structure you want, your business and the lender, so any number shown on this page would not be the number on your agreement. Publishing one would only make the real quote look like a change of terms.
Ask for financing to be included when you request a quote and it will be worked out alongside the machine specification.
