by Chris Anjel | Aug 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
Customer-supplied material (CSM) jobs show up in almost every digital manufacturing shop. A client sends their own bar stock, plate, filament, or powder and asks you to machine or print the parts. The request sounds simple — no material cost for you — but the quoting...
by Chris Anjel | Aug 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
Assembly work looks straightforward on paper: you receive parts, put them together, test, and ship. In practice, every subcontractor adds a handoff, a lead time, and a quality gate that can shift the final cost and delivery date. If your quote only covers your...
by Chris Anjel | Aug 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
Every shop schedules preventive maintenance. Few shops quote around it correctly. The result? Either you bake in a fat buffer that makes you uncompetitive, or you quote tight and scramble when a CNC or printer goes down for its quarterly PM.The fix isn’t...
by Chris Anjel | Aug 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
Ask ten estimators how they calculate shop rate and you’ll get ten different answers. Some use a single blended hourly number. Others separate machine time from labor time but apply the same overhead multiplier to both. Few actually track them independently from...
by Chris Anjel | Aug 26, 2026 | Uncategorized
You quoted the print time perfectly. The material cost is dialed in. The machine hour rate covers overhead. Then the parts come off the printer or out of the CNC, and your team spends three hours sanding, removing supports, tapping holes, and bead blasting — labor you...
