How a part becomes a packet, and a packet becomes parts.
Praetore is a manufacturer with a distributed factory floor. The engineering happens once, centrally. The cutting happens across a network of American shops running one standard. Everything below is the whole model, end to end — the problem it exists to solve, the thing a shop actually receives, the loop it runs on, and the work we decline to take.
- For buyers
- A price in minutes, and a ship date written into the order as a contract term backed by money.
- For shops
- We send you the job, not the RFQ. No quoting, no programming, no sales function, paid on delivery.
Two days of machining inside twenty-five days of everything else.
American shops are not slow at cutting metal. US spindle time is roughly at parity with anywhere in the world. The gap is in the hours around the cut — and those are skilled engineering hours, which is exactly the input a low-wage country wins on and exactly the input this country has a worsening shortage of.
Quoting. DFM review. CAM programming. Fixture design. Setup. First article. Inspection documentation. And the coordination that holds all of it together. That ratio is the entire competitiveness gap for low-to-mid-volume precision work, and nobody closes it by making cutting faster.
America doesn't lose at cutting. It loses at everything around the cut. So we deleted everything around the cut.
Every previous attempt to organize American shop capacity attacked a different layer.
Marketplaces
Automated finding a shop. On the other side of the routing layer, every shop still quotes, still programs, still designs its own fixtures, still writes its own inspection reports. Search got faster. The unit being searched for did not change. It is twenty-five days of engineering with better distribution.
Shop software
AI CAM copilots make one programmer faster at one shop, and they work. Sold a seat at a time into the existing structure, they improve shops individually and change the industry's structure not at all — the same engineering work is still done from scratch thousands of times a year across the country.
Superfactories
Centralize the engineering and the machines together, inside new buildings. This also works. It scales at the speed of construction loans, and it competes with the existing industrial base rather than upgrading it. There are roughly forty thousand owner-operated American shops already standing.
The move none of them make: centralize the engineering, distribute the cutting. One engineering core produces complete, machine-ready work. Independent shops contribute the thing they are genuinely world-class at — spindle time, machine ownership, and craftsmanship — and nothing else.
A shop receives this. Not a drawing and a prayer.
Containerization didn't make ships faster. It standardized the interface between cargo and vessel, and everything restructured around the standard. The Job Packet is machining's container: the complete, self-sufficient definition of a job, such that any qualified shop can run it with zero engineering and zero clarifying phone calls.
All twelve artifacts listed below
Twelve artifacts, all mandatory.
Packets are immutable once released; a change creates a new revision with a changelog line, so a shop can always see what changed and why. They are delivered through the shop portal only — versioned, watermarked per shop, and never as an email attachment.
- 01
Cover sheet
Part image, qty, due date, material, runtime per op, special flags
1 page
- 02
Customer print + model
Controlled copies; PMI where available
PDF + STEP
- 03
Process plan
Op sequence, stock spec and lot requirement, machine class per op
Structured doc
- 04
Verified NC programs
Posted to your controller, simulation-cleared, proven feeds and speeds
G-code per op
- 05
Simulation record
Full material-removal sim including holder clearance — the evidence
Video + report
- 06
Setup sheets
Workholding placement, stock orientation, WCS origin, jaw ID, torque
Illustrated pages
- 07
Fixture plan
Soft-jaw programs and jaw stock spec; pallet assignment at v1
Programs + drawing
- 08
Tool list
Type, diameter, stickout, holder class, expected life, substitutes
Structured table
- 09
Probing routines
WCS pickup, in-process checks, final verification with tolerance gates
Macro programs
- 10
Inspection plan
Features, instruments, sample plan, report pre-filled with nominals
Form + CMM program
- 11
Packaging & ship spec
Protection, labelling, cert paperwork checklist, ship-to
1 page
- 12
Acceptance criteria
What done means. The shop's completion tap attests to exactly this list
1 page
Four gates stand between a packet and a shop.
A packet revision does not go live until it clears all four. This is the whole reason a shop can be handed a job instead of a problem.
| # | Gate | What it checks |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Sim gate | Full material-removal verification. Zero collisions, holder clearance at or above 0.100 in, or explicitly waived per feature. |
| 02 | Tool-crib gate | Every tool is either on the network standard crib list or it ships with the job. No shop hunts for a cutter. |
| 03 | Stranger test | A machinist who has never seen the part can describe the setup and the first-piece process from the packet alone. |
| 04 | Probe-coverage gate | Every guarantee-critical dimension has an in-machine probe check or an inspection-plan feature. Nothing critical is uninspected. |
If a shop has to ask a question to make the part, the packet failed — not the shop.
That is not a slogan, it is the escalation rule. An issue tap in the shop portal summons central engineering with the packet context attached, and the postmortem asks one question: what was missing from the packet. The fix ships as a packet revision, so the same failure cannot repeat anywhere else in the network.
This list is the product.
Any process change that adds an item back to it is a regression, and we treat it as one.
- 01Quote
- 02Program
- 03Design fixtures
- 04Choose tools
- 05Interpret the print
- 06Write inspection reports from scratch
- 07Chase paperwork
Packet before pallet.
A container only works because every crane, ship, and chassis on earth agrees about the corner casting. Machining's corner casting is workholding. Version 0.1 of our standard is not a purchase — it is a specification, and it arrives inside the first paying job.
v0.1 — the soft-jaw standard
Defined vise classes, a jaw blank specification, and the jaw-machining programs delivered inside every Job Packet. The shop cuts its own jaws from our verified program as the first operation of its first job. That single act is three things at once: the fixture for the job, the test-part protocol — the jaw-critical dimensions are probed and reported, so the jaws are the qualification part — and proof the shop can receive, load, and run a packet end to end.
Because the program that cut the jaws is identical everywhere, the jaws are identical everywhere. The work coordinate system is picked up by probe, and setup sheets reference jaw features rather than one shop's bench.
No hardware to buy from us. No platform fees. Ever.
What jaws buy, and what they don't
Our own estimate is that the soft-jaw standard buys roughly eighty per cent of the interchangeability a zero-point pallet system would, at a small fraction of the hardware cost. That is an engineering judgement, not a measurement — and the missing twenty per cent is real. Op-flip repeatability and multi-part loading are genuinely worse on jaws than on pallets. We price that into the v0.1 runtime estimates rather than pretending it away, and it is the entire argument for version 1.
Deliberately small, and mostly things a shop already owns.
| Item | Specification | Typical cost to the shop |
|---|---|---|
| Vise | 6 in double-station or single, common Kurt-pattern class, from the approved-model list. You declare models at onboarding. | Already owned |
| Jaw blanks | 6061 or 1018 per packet spec, standard bolt pattern. | ≈ $40–100 a set — or shipped with the job at cost |
| Vise mapping | One time: probe and report vise location per our routine. Recorded in the shop profile. | About 30 minutes |
| Off-list vise | Qualify on a supplied adapter plate instead. We ship it. | No charge |
v1 — the zero-point standard
One pallet ecosystem, network-wide, chosen once and kept for a decade. Setup collapses toward pallet-swap time, op-flips repeat within system spec, and multi-part grid loading becomes something the batching engine can schedule. It is financed against routed work and earned into once a shop has been paid on several completed jobs and its yield and calendar honesty are in good standing — a graduation, never a condition of joining. The hardware becomes the shop's own asset at payoff, deliberately, because ownership aligns care.
Both versions coexist indefinitely. No shop is ever de-listed for staying on v0.1; the router simply knows which packets need pallet capability and which run on jaws, and the earnings difference makes the upgrade argument without us making it.
If you run three-axis machines with probing and you keep an honest calendar, the first packet is the whole conversation. There is nothing to buy from us to find out.
Apply as a ShopLoad the jaws. Run the verified program. Probe the part. Ship it.
Quote, engineer, verify, route, cut, probe — and the data comes back.
Seven stages, and the seventh feeds the first. Every delivered job writes what was promised next to what actually happened, per shop, per packet revision, per feature class. That record is the Capacity Ledger, and it is the only honest way to quote a date and stand behind it with money.
| # | Stage | What happens | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Quote | Automated envelope check, feature extraction, DFM flags. Price and date come off the model. | Central |
| 02 | Engineer | Process design, AI-assisted CAM with engineer review, jaw or fixture design, probe and inspection authoring. | Central |
| 03 | Verify | Full material-removal simulation including holder clearance. Zero collisions, or the packet does not release. | Central |
| 04 | Route | Qualified shops scored on capability match, trust-weighted open capacity, standing, and where the material already is. | Central |
| 05 | Cut | The shop loads the jaws, proves out, and runs the verified program. No programming. No quoting. | Network |
| 06 | Probe | In-machine probe cycles pick up the WCS, gate the first piece, and measure every guarantee-critical dimension. | Network |
| 07 | Ledger | Quoted against delivered — per shop, per packet revision, per feature class. Every job writes a row. | Central |
Three things get better every time a job ships, and they are the three things a buyer feels.
Better routing
The router scores shops on qualification match, feature-class capability, standing, and a trust weight on their declared calendar. Calendar honesty is measured, not moralized: a shop that chronically over-declares simply has its calendar trusted less. Reroute triggers are defined in advance — machine down, probe-gate failure pattern, a calendar diverging from reality — and a reroute means re-posting and re-releasing the packet through the same gates, never emailing a program and hoping.
Better underwriting
A quoted date is constructed, not hoped for: the runtime estimate, the packet revision's own error distribution, the shop's standing, the trust weight on its calendar, and a buffer priced from historical variance for that feature class. A quote is software; a ship date is a machine that has to be free on Tuesday. The instrument that turns the second one into a contract term — the tiers, the caps, and the exhaustive list of what voids it — is published on the guarantee page.
Better prices
Every released packet contributes to a pattern library: operation strategies per feature class, proven feeds and speeds per material and tool pair, jaw program families, probe routine templates. Engineering gets faster because it ships. And a reorder skips the pipeline entirely and goes straight to routing, because the engineering already exists and is already proven.
The Ledger, as of today
The Ledger is populated one delivered job at a time, and it cannot be populated any other way — which is exactly why it is worth building. We are not going to print a network on-time rate before there is a network of delivered jobs behind it. When there is, it publishes on The Ledger with its methodology beside it.
Quoted against delivered, with the methodology published beside it. It appears on The Ledger when there is enough of it to mean something — and not before.
Every diagram on this page describes a designed system. None of them represents accumulated performance data, and each one says so under its own drawing.
The whole model depends on shops telling us the truth about their calendars. So here is what their data does and does not do.
- 01A shop’s data wins it work and underwrites it (routing priority, financing eligibility).
- 02It is never used to negotiate that shop’s rates down.
- 03Each shop sees its own standing in full, including exactly how routing priority is computed.
- 04Public and aggregate uses (the Index, capability claims) are anonymized; no shop-identifiable data leaves the network without written consent.
Violating that once would poison the supply side permanently. It is a product constraint, not a policy — which is why it is printed here rather than filed somewhere.
Your part, someone else's part, same stock, same fixture family, one setup.
No single shop sees enough order flow to do this. A network does. It is the machining equivalent of nesting many customers' parts on one sheet — and it is the structural reason network utilization beats any one shop's, which is the reason it shows up in your price.
Drawing scrolls sideways
Five keys, in order of leverage.
| # | Key | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Material + stock ladder step | One bar or plate purchase. One lot certificate covers every member of the batch. |
| 02 | Workholding family | The same jaw program family, or the same pallet and fixture. One fixture load. |
| 03 | Tool-list overlap | The batch crib is the union of the member packets. We target at least 70% overlap, so tool changes consolidate. |
| 04 | Tolerance class | A tight-class part does not ride in a standard-class batch. The inspection cadence is different. |
| 05 | Date compatibility | Every member's committed date has to be achievable inside the batch window. If it is not, there is no batch. |
And what blocks one outright
- ITAR segregation
- Customer-supplied material
- Cosmetic-critical finishes sharing a fixture with heavy roughing
- Customer exclusivity terms
Orders never wait for a batch
Batches form around orders, not the other way round. The scheduler holds a rolling three-to-seven-day formation window per key cluster, and a batch fires when the economics clear or when the earliest member's routing deadline arrives — whichever comes first.
Batched or not, the date is the date. The guarantee always outranks the batch.
The split is published on purpose
The saving comes from one setup amortized across members, one material buy and one lot certificate, one fixture load, and consolidated tool changes. It is divided three ways: roughly a third to customer pricing, roughly a third to the shop — paid above solo rate for a batch run — and roughly a third to Praetore. The ratios will be tuned from delivered data; the three-way principle is fixed.
We publish it because the alternative — quietly keeping the whole saving — is exactly how you teach a network to start lying to you about its calendar. A shop has to want the batch.
Traceability never merges
A fired batch compiles into a batch packet with a super-setup sheet and a merged tool list, but the per-member probe and inspection plans stay separate. Every part keeps its own packet lineage, its own material lot linkage, and its own inspection record. A first-piece hold pauses only the affected member where the geometry is independent; a shared-cause failure — fixture, material — pauses the batch.
Batching is a scheduling decision. It is never a documentation decision.
The envelope, stated plainly.
A date can only be backed with money inside a design space we can verify before release. So the space is deliberately narrow, and we publish its edges here rather than letting you discover them with your part. The constraint is not caution. It is the product.
In the Catalog, v1
Three-axis vertical milling, up to two setups per part — an op1 / op2 flip. Drilling, tapping both formed and cut, reaming, counterboring, and chamfering within those milling operations.
Not in the Catalog, v1
Turning, 3+2, five-axis, wire and sinker EDM, grinding, welding. Each of those is a future container size, added when verification scales to it and not before. Turning is first.
Limits, and the reason for each one.
| Parameter | Limit | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Max part size | 12 × 8 × 4 in | Fits every network VMC with fixture clearance, on one stock library |
| Min part size | 0.375 × 0.375 × 0.125 in | Below this, workholding stops being standard |
| Min wall | 0.030 in metals · 0.060 in plastics | Chatter and verification risk |
| Min internal corner radius | 0.031 in | Accepts a 1/16 in end mill — the tool library floor |
| Hole depth : diameter | 8:1 standard · 12:1 flagged | Drill wander, simulation confidence |
| Pocket depth : tool diameter | 4:1 standard · 6:1 flagged | Deflection modelling limits |
| Threads | UNC/UNF #2–3/4 in · M2–M20 · 2B/6H | Standard tap library |
| Undercuts, T-slots, dovetails | Flagged | Special tooling path — an engineer looks at it |
Flagged means the automated quote pauses and an engineer dispositions it within four business hours. It does not mean no.
Tolerances are a menu, not a conversation.
| Class | Linear | Holes | Flatness | Use |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | ±0.005 in | ±0.003 in | 0.005 in/in | Default. Instant price |
| Precision | ±0.002 in | ±0.001 in | 0.002 in/in | Instant price, premium |
| Tight | ±0.0005–0.001 in | to ±0.0005 in | Per feature | Flagged. CMM-verified shop tier |
GD&T is accepted. Position and profile callouts beyond the Precision class flag automatically, and a print with mixed exotic callouts is re-quoted per feature class, mechanically.
Fixed, and stocked.
- Aluminum
- 6061-T6 · 7075-T651
- Stainless
- 303 · 304 · 17-4PH (Cond. A & H900)
- Steel
- 1018 · 4140 (annealed & pre-hard)
- Brass
- 360
- Titanium
- 6Al-4V — flagged pricing tier
- Plastics
- Delrin 150 · UHMW · PEEK (flagged) · polycarbonate
Standard stock is plate and bar on a defined thickness ladder from 0.25 to 4.5 in — the shared ladder is what makes cross-customer batching possible at all. Customer-supplied material is accepted with a certificate; it voids the batching discount and flags the job. The library grows only by tested addition: proven feeds and speeds, stock supply, and at least one committed recurring buyer.
A fixed menu, with stated days.
- Bead blast
- Anodize Type II — clear
- Anodize Type II — black
- Anodize Type III hardcoat
- Passivation
- Zinc plate
- Black oxide
- Powder coat — standard RAL subset
Roughness values are in microinches. Anodize colours beyond clear and black are flagged. Chem film, nickel, and anything not on this menu are partner-routed and add a stated number of days — stated before you order, not after.
Quantities
| 1 – 500 pcs | Instant lane. Price and date on screen. |
| 501 – 5,000 pcs | Engineered quote, two business days. |
| Above 5,000 pcs | A program conversation, with a human. |
| Reorders | Always instant, any prior quantity — the packet already exists. |
Outside it is not a rejection.
Nothing is ever refused at the door. Out-of-envelope work enters the Sourcing lane — the brokered, human-quoted service that is the original Praetore business. Different promise, same company, same single point of accountability. Both lanes are laid out side by side on Get Parts.
- 01Automated DFM names the violating feature in plain language. You find out on the upload screen, not in an email four days later.
- 02Where a compliant change exists, we suggest it: bring that internal corner up to 0.031 in and the part prices instantly.
- 03Otherwise it goes to a human. A quote with a committed date within two business days, brokered through vetted shops, with full documentation — and an honest yes or no.
- 04The Sourcing lane carries committed dates without the automatic-credit guarantee, because we only guarantee with money where we have the delivery data. As the Catalog grows, so does the guarantee.
The log is the roadmap
Every Sourcing job is logged with its feature class, and that log decides what the Catalog absorbs next. A feature class enters the envelope when it exceeds 5% of inbound demand for two consecutive quarters and a verification method for it exists. The envelope grows from delivered evidence, never because a salesperson promised something. Tell us what you wish were instant.
One boundary demand does not move
Regulated finished goods. Machined components for a medical device: yes, in either lane, today. A finished, registration-gated device: that is a deliberate certification decision, not a quiet yes — and we will say so plainly rather than take the order and find out.
Negative commitments are the most credible kind, so here are ours.
A bid-brokering marketplace
We never send a shop an RFQ. A shop that has to estimate a job to find out whether it gets the job is a shop doing our work for free.
A software vendor
The software exists to run our factory floor. It is not sold seat by seat, and the network is not the product.
A shop's competitor
We do not buy machines that compete with the network. Metrology and test capacity excepted — measuring is not cutting.
Unlimited scope in the Catalog
“Any part, any material, any process” is the epitaph of this industry. The wide door is the Sourcing lane. The narrow factory is the Catalog, and it stays narrow on purpose.
Choose your lane
I need parts
Upload a model. In-envelope work gets a price in minutes and a date backed by money. Everything else gets a human and a real timeline, from the same company.
Documentation by default · material certs · dimensional reports
I run a shop
We send you the job, not the RFQ. Packets arrive verified, your machinist loads and runs, and you are paid on delivery. No hardware to buy from us. No platform fees. Ever.
No quoting · no programming · no sales · QuickPay terms