How a quote is produced

Six steps

1. 1The customer uploads a file in the widget on the shop's website or on the shop's hosted page. The customer needs no account.
2. 2The engine analyses the geometry: bounding box, volume, holes, pockets, slots, threads, thin walls, rotational bodies. From the same file it generates a 3D preview with clickable features.
3. 3The customer sets the parameters: quantity, material, tolerance and roughness classes, confirmed threads and fits, finishing operations and lead time.
4. 4The engine calculates the price from the shop's configuration: material, roughing and finishing, drilling, setup and CAM programming per batch, external operations, margin, delivery.
5. 5The safety gates decide whether the price is shown at once, waits for review, or whether the part needs an individual quote.
6. 6The shop approves or adjusts the price. The customer receives an e-mail with a link to the quote and can order from that page.

What the price is built on

The model calculates machining time from the volume of material to remove, the surface to finish and individual features (holes, pockets, threads). It does not generate a toolpath.

Material is priced from a blank the shop can buy:

• by default, the bounding block plus an allowance, with the plate thickness rounded up to a stockist's catalogue series;
• for a turned part, a catalogue bar diameter;
• for a part recognised as a commercial rolled section, a cut length of that section.

The width of a plate blank is either sawn to size (charged per order and per piece) or bought as the next catalogue flat bar and milled down. By default the engine prices both and uses the cheaper one. The shop can set a fixed strategy, and a technologist can change it for a single quote. Per batch, the engine adds the fixed costs: setup scaled by the number of fixturings and by complexity, CAM programming, tooling and delivery.

The engine is deterministic: the same inputs always produce the same price, and the breakdown shows every line of it. The accuracy of the price therefore depends on the configuration: machine rates, material prices and the multiplier from Calibration.

The engine prices the part on every machine that can take it and selects the cheapest. In the panel, a technologist can pin a single quote to a specific machine of the park. A machine cannot be selected in the widget.