By Joe Egbert,
VP / General Manager,
Libra Industries — Dayton, Ohio
What happens between a print arriving and a number going out
People ask how long a quote takes and why the number varies so much between shops. I can only speak for ours, so here is what actually happens here between a print landing on the desk and a number going back out.
Quoting looks like a pricing exercise from outside, but it is mostly an engineering exercise. Before anyone can put a number on a part, somebody has to work out how we would actually make it, and that is where nearly all of the cost gets decided.
I have been on this side of it for about 25 years, in tool and die, engineering, and operations. What follows is not complicated, but I don’t think it’s obvious either.
The first thing we do is not pricing
A package comes in and one of our estimators opens the model and the drawing together. What she is doing at that point is building a process in her head: how the part gets held, what has to be cut first so the part does not move when you cut the next thing, which machine it belongs on, what tooling it needs, how many setups it takes, and how it gets inspected at the end.
Setups are usually where the money is. A part that can be done in two operations costs meaningfully less than the same part in four; and which one it is depends on geometry, on tolerance relationships between features, and on what we can hold it by without distorting it. On a thin-walled part, or a part with a flexure in it, the fixture is the whole challenge and the cutting is straightforward.
Inspection is the other place people are surprised. On a small precision part, verifying it can take longer than making it. A full CMM report on 80 features is a different job from a report on 12, and First Article to AS9102 is different again from a dimensional report. That one line in a package moves our number more than the machining does on a lot of parts.
What we do when something is not settled
Most packages have at least one open question in them. That is normal — drawings get released under schedule pressure, and the details that go missing are the ones that did not matter while the part was still on paper. When we hit one, we have three options, and I want to be straight about all three because you cannot tell from the quote which one we picked.
We can call and ask. With busy schedules on both sides, questions that take a week to connect on can turn a three-day quote into a three-week one, though, and nothing about the part will have changed in the meantime.
We can make an assumption and price it conservatively… Take the title-block tolerance at face value. Assume the finish callout applies wherever it is drawn. Assume full inspection, since nothing said otherwise. Each of those is a defensible call on its own. Stack three of them and the number comes back 20 to 30 percent high, and it reads as an expensive shop rather than as a cautious one.
Or we can pass on it. I will admit this happens. A package that clearly needs a week of back-and-forth competes for estimating time against packages that do not, and in a busy week it loses. From the customer side that looks identical to no response at all.
When we do assume, we say so in the quote — which assumption we made and what it is worth — so the uncertainty is visible rather than buried in the price. It is the thing I most often send back for a second pass.
What makes a quote come back fast
The packages we can turn in 48 hours tend to have the same things in them. I am listing these because people ask, not because a package without them is wrong.
- A model and a dimensioned drawing rather than one or the other.
- Material called out by specification and condition, since condition sets hardness and hardness sets tooling and speeds.
- Some indication of which two or three features actually control fit, because if nothing distinguishes them we have to treat all of them as critical, and that changes fixturing and inspection at the same time.
- A stated inspection requirement. Quantity and expected annual usage, so fixturing gets amortized against something real instead of against a guess.
- A specific production date.
- And the one that helps most: a name and a number for someone technical who can answer questions in real time, so the price contains all the right data.
Two things we try to do
The first is to tell customers when we are not the right shop. Envelope, tolerance, volume, material — if one of those puts a part outside where we are any good, that is better said up front.
The second is to flag a requirement that looks like it is costing more than it is doing. A tolerance tighter than the function seems to need, or a finish on a face nothing touches. We would rather raise that before quoting than after the work is ours, because afterwards it looks like a change order. Sometimes the answer is that it stays for reasons the drawing does not show, and that is a complete answer.
What to expect from us
For a part inside our normal work, with a package that answers the questions above, 48 to 72 hours. For something that needs a fixture design worked out, or a process we have to think about, a week. If we are going to be longer than that we will tell you, and if we have a question we will call.
The least expensive way is to send us two or three prints from something you are quoting elsewhere. You will find out what our numbers look like and how we handle the questions.
Would you like to test any of this with us? Send an email to sales@libraind.com.
