If you have ever sent a drawing to five suppliers and received five wildly different prices, the problem usually is not the suppliers. It is that each of them filled the gaps in your drawing package with a different set of assumptions — and the cheapest quote is often just the one that assumed most optimistically.
Here is what we actually need to quote a sheet-metal or tubular component properly, and more usefully, why each item moves the number.
The drawing itself
A 2D drawing in PDF is enough to start. A DXF, DWG or STEP file alongside it is better, because it lets us nest the part on the laser and check formability without re-drawing your geometry.
What matters on the drawing:
- Dimensioned tolerances, not just nominal dimensions. A part where every dimension is ±0.1 mm costs far more than one where three critical dimensions are tight and the rest are general tolerance. If you have not distinguished them, we have to price as though everything is critical.
- Datum references. Which face or hole does the part locate from? This decides how we fixture it, and fixturing is a real cost.
- Bend and form details. Internal radii, bend reliefs and the sequence in which forms are made.
Material specification
Say the grade, not just “mild steel”. CRCA, HR, a specific IS or EN grade — they behave differently in a draw operation and they cost differently.
Thickness matters more than most designers expect. Moving from 1.6 mm to 2.0 mm can push a part from one press tonnage to the next, and on a deep-draw part it can change the number of draw stages required.
Annual volume and call-off pattern
This is the single biggest driver of price, and the one most often left out.
A part quoted at 500 pieces a year and a part quoted at 50,000 pieces a year are effectively different products. At low volume we may cut on the laser with no tooling at all. At high volume a progressive die makes sense, the piece price drops substantially — and someone has to pay for the die.
Tell us both the annual quantity and how it will be called off. Twelve equal monthly releases and one bulk order a year have very different implications for our scheduling and your inventory.
If you genuinely do not know the volume yet, say so. We would rather quote two scenarios than guess at one.
Finish requirement
“Coated” is not a specification. Powder coating in a specific RAL shade, a plated finish with a salt-spray requirement, or bare and oiled are three different costs.
If the finish has a performance requirement — hours of salt spray, coating thickness, adhesion standard — include it. It determines which finishing process is viable at all.
Tooling ownership and expectations
If the part needs a die, agree upfront who pays for it and who owns it. We state this explicitly in our quotations because ambiguity here causes real disputes later, usually at the worst moment.
Also worth asking: who stores and maintains the tool, and what happens to it if the programme ends.
Your target price and date
Some buyers hold these back on the theory that revealing them weakens their position. In component manufacturing it mostly wastes everybody’s time.
If your target is 40% below what the process can deliver, you want to know that in week one — because the answer is probably a design change or a different process, not a harder negotiation. And if your delivery date is not achievable, hearing it at quotation is infinitely better than hearing it after the purchase order.
A short checklist
Send these and you will get a firm number quickly:
- Drawing (PDF) plus DXF, DWG or STEP if available
- Material grade and thickness
- Critical tolerances identified separately from general ones
- Annual volume and call-off pattern
- Finish specification, including any performance requirement
- Target price and required delivery date
- Any packaging, labelling or documentation requirements
- Whether an NDA needs signing first
We acknowledge every enquiry within one working day. Parts quoted from an existing process typically come back in two to three; parts needing new tooling take longer, because we cost the die properly rather than guess at it.
Send us a drawing and we will tell you what we can do — including, occasionally, that we are not the right supplier for it.