What a drawing needs before we can quote it

A quotation for a weldment is an estimate of hours on named machines plus material plus finish. Everything that makes it slow comes from the same place: a question the drawing did not answer, which then has to travel back to you and wait. Here is what the drawing has to carry for that not to happen.

The six things

• The geometry, in a format we can open. STEP is best because it carries the solid; DWG and DXF are fine for plate work; a dimensioned PDF is enough to start. A 2D drawing on its own is workable, and a 3D model on its own is not, because a model carries no tolerances and no weld symbols.
• The material specification, by grade and standard. "Steel" is not a specification. S235JR and S355J2 behave differently in forming, in welding and in cost, and the choice of subgrade changes what has to be certified.
• The weld requirements. Weld symbols with sizes, and the quality level if it is not the one that follows from the execution class. If particular seams need more than the rest, mark those seams.
• The tolerances that actually matter. A general tolerance class covers most of a weldment; the two or three dimensions that are functional need their own values. A frame with every dimension tightened is priced as though every dimension were functional.
• The finish. Raw, painted, or galvanised, and if painted then the system, the colour and the film thickness. Surface preparation grade if you have one.
• The quantity and the date. One piece and forty pieces are different jobs on the same drawing: forty justifies a fixture, one does not, and the price per piece follows from that rather than from the drawing.

What slows a quotation most

In our experience it is rarely the complicated part of the drawing. It is the missing material subgrade, the finish written as a colour with no system behind it, and a tolerance block that has been copied from another job and now asks for something the part does not need. Each of those is one email, and one email is a day.

The second most common is a model without a drawing. A STEP file tells us the shape and nothing about how good it has to be. Send both if you have both.

What you do not have to decide

You do not have to tell us the welding sequence, the fixture strategy, the nesting or which machine cuts what. Those are ours, and if a detail on the drawing makes the part expensive to make, we would rather tell you which detail and what a change would save than quietly price around it.

You also do not have to have finished the design. An early drawing with the functional dimensions fixed and the rest marked provisional is quotable, and the questions that come back from it are usually worth more than the quotation.

We do not publish a lead time, and a quotation is not a lead time. What we send back is a price and a date we can hold, both of which depend on what the drawing says and on the shop at that moment.