Tooling in general depends on many factors starting with the type of process lets say punching. Are you punching on an iron worker, a punch press, a CNC punch, or a cnc punch with rotating head positioning. What is the thickness of material? What is the accuracy of the hole? Is this a uni-punch setup or a stand alone die set? What is the life expectancy 1000 parts or 1,000,000 parts? How do you feed the material in a roll or single pieces? What type of material is it cork, steel, brass or paper? What is the size of the part 4" square or 4' square?
You must define your process and then someone can help you with tooling costs.
The intent is looking at the cost of tooling at a marco level, in other words if someone were to look at stamping a component of x by y size, tooling could run anywhere from $10-$15K, and so on.
At the micro level, we have the detail covered for processes that we normally use as standard. It's the new processes that we are getting into that everyone was hoping to find a gage.
Not exactly related to your query, but this site has been available for quite some time which you may find useful. We use it on occasion as a sanity check when we do internal cost estimating.
I'm a former toolmaker, with most of my experience being in one-of-a-kind tooling or low volume quantities for powder metal houses. If there was one of those programs out there, my life would have been a lot easier. The problem with trying to generalize tooling costs deals not only with part size, but part complexity. A punch with a 5" base diameter, 4" bearing diameter x 8" long with a flat face is pretty cheap to make. Add an ID, and the price goes up. Add taper to the ID, and it will depend on whether or not I can grind it or I have to EDM it. Putting a bearing in the ID? The length will dictate what method I used. The same goes for face detail. That's problem #1.
Problem #2 usually lies in your design department. You can design for manufacturability/cost, design a highly engineered tool, or do a combo of the two (with some give and take) to get an acceptable design which works, but may not be the best money can buy. Obviously the first option is usually the lowest cost, and the second option is the highest. If you don't have a design department which understands how the toolmaker actually makes the tools, you run the risk of developing very high priced tooling. So take that 4" bearing OD I mentioned earlier. Hold it to ±.0001" and the price will be very high. Hold it to ±.0010", and your price will be much more reasonable.
Easiest thing to do? Hire one. Or pick dedicated suppliers that you can work with to come up with a design-for-cost solution. Companies don't often like to run those sorts of partnerships as they're not the cheapest, but in the long-run they can be beneficial.
