Tooling
A tool is bought once and paid for many times
A mould, a die, a fixture or a stencil is a one-off. It is cut before the first unit exists and it does not get cheaper afterwards. Everything interesting about a unit price at a small quantity is a consequence of that single sentence.
What a tool costs
Published bands, by tool class
Class 105 and 104 · pre-hardened, low volume
$8,000 to $25,000
Class 103 · medium volume
$25,000 to $60,000
Class 101 · hardened, high volume
$60,000 to $150,000 and above
Against those tools, a commodity resin part runs $2.50 to $6.00 a piece at 1,000 units and falls to $0.35 to $1.20 above 100,000. The piece price moves by a factor of roughly five across that whole range. The tooling share moves by a factor of a hundred, which is why it, and not the material, is what a bulk discount is actually made of.
Bands and piece prices from Jaycon’s 2026 injection moulding pricing report. The classes are the Society of the Plastics Industry mould classifications, which is the vocabulary a moulder will use on the phone.
The three shapes
How the same money reaches you, and what changes each time
As its own line
You can see it, so you can amortise it yourself.
A tooling line and a unit rate, quoted separately. You can compute your own break quantity, you know a reorder does not pay for the tool again, and you can ask who owns the tool at the end. Ask that last question in writing: a tool you paid for and cannot move is a tool that quietly ties you to one supplier.
Folded into the rate
One number, and no way to tell what is inside it.
The supplier has picked an amortisation quantity you were not told. If you order fewer than they assumed, they are short and the next quote rises. If you order more, the surplus is theirs. Neither outcome is visible, and a reorder can pay for a tool that is already paid for.
Across a committed volume
The cheapest headline, and the only one with a liability attached.
A low rate against a commitment. Read what happens if the volume does not arrive: a shortfall clause, a retrospective repricing of everything already delivered, or the balance of the tool invoiced. All three exist and they are very different numbers.
The practice of bundling tooling into a rate is documented by Omni Online Strategies, which gives the worked example of a $20,000 tool adding $2.00 a unit over 10,000 and $0.20 over 100,000. What no source quantifies is how often each shape is used, so this page does not claim a proportion.
The same tool, two quantities
$7.00
a $35,000 Class 103 tool, spread over 5,000 units
$0.14
the same tool, spread over 250,000 units
50x
the difference one decision about volume makes
Nothing about the tool changed between those two figures. The steel is the same, the cycle time is the same and the part is the same. The only thing that moved is how many units were asked to carry it.