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Rick:<br>
<br>
It will be interesting to see the responses to this question ... in
my experience there is a greater lab-to-lab variation in how people
charge for lab usage than anything else.<br>
<br>
Here is what we do at the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility.
Details are at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://snf.stanford.edu/join/fees.htm">http://snf.stanford.edu/join/fees.htm</a>, but I'll
provide more of a prose discussion of what we do and why.<br>
<br>
First, we don't charge a monthly access fee and we don't charge for
being in the clean room.<br>
<br>
We charge one of three hourly rates for equipment usage: most
equipment is charged at $75 per hour for academic users. Wet
benches, manual spinners, and a number of basic characterization
tools are charged at $50 per hour (2/3 of the base rate). Three
tools (Raith 150 ebeam, ASML i-line stepper, and AMAT Centura epi)
are charged at $92 per hour. Industrial rates are double that of
academic rates for all tools.<br>
<br>
We then have what we call the "notched" cap. If your equipment use
charges reach $3000 in a month (the equivalent of 40-hours of
base-rate equipment usage), your equipment charges don't go up ...
unless you exceed 160 hours of equipment use in a month. If that
happens, you begin to get charged again at 25% of the original rate
for each tool. The industrial equipment cap kicks in at $6000, so
both the "flat" portion and the non-zero slope kick in at the same
point in terms of hours of usage. The purpose of the slope after
160 hours of equipment usage is both to prevent equipment hogging
and to discourage people from working around the clock for extended
periods of time.<br>
<br>
I view the cap as a volume-discount in the hourly equipment rate for
our biggest users. We have survived many audits ... although I
believe that auditors are genetically predisposed to dislike
anything other than a flat hourly rate.<br>
<br>
Oh, one minor wrinkle: we also charge for precious metals (Au, At,
Pt, and Pd, and Ir, I think) based on the net weight used for each
of those materials (labmembers weight the target/crucible before and
after their deposition) and those precious metal charges are not
subject to capping.<br>
<br>
Staff usage for processing wafers and training are charged on an
uncapped basis of about $60 and $90 per hour, respectively. That
rate is applied equally to academic and non-academic users.<br>
<br>
People like the cap because it is predictable in terms of budgeting
and proposal writing. It also doesn't penalize folks for taking
longer to get something done (in a given month) than they might have
first envisioned. The users who only use a lab a few hours a month
probably don't like it because their hourly rate has to be higher
than the "true" cost of that usage (otherwise the cap can't work
...) but they still get access to a lot of equipment, technology,
and infrastructure for a pretty reasonable hourly rate.<br>
<br>
Let me know if you have any questions,<br>
<br>
John<br>
<br>
<br>
On 3/19/2013 11:32 AM, Morrison, Richard H., Jr. wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:D3862732F46DEB4B93B4A7A80614D2880996E436@mbx2.draper.com"
type="cite">
<p class="MsoNormal">Hi All,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Draper is investigating cost recovery for our
new Microfabrication Center. Right now we charge a flat fee of
$117 per hour to recover cost. I was wondering what others did
in this regard. I have the presentation from UGIM on the
Berkeley Marvell center but I was wondering if others could
share their detail with me.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thanks<br>
Rick<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
</blockquote>
<br>
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