Rev B shouldn't cost you another three weeks.
End-of-arm tooling, mounts, carriage plates, and the bracketry that holds a robot together — priced in minutes when the part is inside the envelope, and re-released from an existing packet when the geometry changes.
A typical low-volume order in this industry is roughly two days of machining inside roughly twenty-five days of quoting, DFM, programming, fixturing, first article, and coordination. That ratio is the industry's problem statement, not a measurement of ours — and your iteration loop pays for all twenty-five days of it.
- Materials that matter
- 6061-T6 · 7075-T651 · 303 · 304 · 4140 (annealed and PH) · Delrin 150 · UHMW · polycarbonate
- Finishes
- As-machined 125 µin (63 µin premium) · bead blast · anodize Type II clear and black · Type III hardcoat on wear faces
- Quantities
- 1 – 500 instant · 501 – 5,000 engineered quote in 2 business days
- Reorders
- Instant at any prior quantity. The packet already exists, so the engineering is not re-done and not re-billed
What a robot is made of, sorted.
Read the rule at the left of each row. A solid object line prices instantly. A dash-dot phantom line is inside the envelope but pauses for an engineer, inside four business hours. A dashed hidden line is real work on the Sourcing lane — human-quoted inside two business days.
Nothing here is a rejection. When a part falls out of the Catalog, the automated DFM names the feature that did it and offers the compliant alternative where one exists — increase that internal radius to 0.031″ and it prices instantly.
- End-of-arm tooling plates and adapter platesCatalogPrismatic plate work, 6061-T6 or 7075-T651, two setups at most
- Gripper fingers and jaws, prismaticCatalog3-axis geometry with internal radii at or above 0.031″
- Motor, gearbox, and servo mounting bracketsCatalogBolt patterns and pilot bores at Standard or Precision class
- Encoder, proximity, and vision-sensor mountsCatalogSmall prismatic parts, above the 0.375″ × 0.375″ × 0.125″ floor
- Linear-rail carriage plates and risersCatalogFlatness at 0.002″/in on Precision class; dowel holes at ±0.001″
- Tool-changer plates and quick-change interfacesCatalogRepeat geometry — the packet is written once and reused
- Wear pads and slides in Delrin 150 or UHMWCatalogIn the library. Min wall on plastics is 0.060″
- Structural and base plates up to 12″ × 8″ × 4″CatalogThe envelope's outer box, with fixture clearance on every network VMC
- Bearing bores and dowel fits called at ±0.0005″Catalog · flaggedTight class: in the envelope, routed to a CMM-verified shop tier
- Pockets deeper than four times the tool diameterCatalog · flaggedDeflection modeling limits. Flagged to 6:1; past that, Sourcing
- Anodize in a color other than clear or blackCatalog · flaggedType II clear and black and Type III hardcoat are on the fixed menu; colors flag and route to a finishing partner, which adds stated days
- Shafts, pulleys, standoffs, and turned spacersSourcingTurning is not in the v1 envelope. It is first in line for the next container size
- Harmonic-drive and gearbox housings with turned boresSourcingThe critical datum is turned, so the whole part follows it out of the lane
- Swept, organic gripper geometry needing simultaneous 5-axisSourcing3-axis with up to two setups. The DFM names the surface that made it a 5-axis part
- Welded frames, brackets, and fabricated basesSourcingNo welding in v1 — brokered through vetted shops with a committed date
- Robot base plates larger than 12″ × 8″SourcingOutside the box that fits every network VMC with fixture clearance
The engineering happens once.
Every job leaves here as a Job Packet: twelve artifacts, all mandatory, complete enough that any qualified shop can run the part with zero engineering and zero clarifying phone calls. Verified NC programs posted to the machine's controller, the simulation record behind the word “verified,” setup sheets, the fixture plan on the network standard, the tool list, probing routines, the inspection plan, and the acceptance criteria.
That packet is the reason a repeat order is not a repeat project. Reorders of an existing packet price instantly, at any prior quantity.
Your revision and ours are tracked separately
A fixturing improvement on our side bumps the packet revision, not your part revision. Your drawing does not acquire a rev letter because we found a better way to hold it.
Packets are immutable, and changes carry a changelog
Once released, a packet never mutates. A change creates a new revision with a required changelog line, so the shop — and you — can always see what changed and why.
A geometry change is a re-release, not a re-quote
Rev B re-enters engineering, not the quoting queue. The process plan, the fixture family, the tool list, and the inspection plan are already written against a part that looks almost exactly like this one.
Three axes. Two setups.
The narrowness is the product. Central engineering can verify a job before it is released only because the design space is small enough to verify — and the guaranteed date only exists inside what we can verify.
If it needs the fifth axis to exist, it is a Sourcing part
And the DFM will name the surface that made it one, in plain language rather than an error code. You get a human inside two business days with a real committed date — or a note telling you which feature to change to bring the part back into the Catalog.
No turning yet
Shafts, pulleys, and standoffs are Sourcing parts today. Turning is the next container size — first in the queue, and it lands when verification for it scales, not when a salesperson promises it.
The guaranteed date lives on the Catalog lane only
Inside the envelope, the ship date is a contract term with automatic credits — no claim forms. On the Sourcing lane you get a committed date without that instrument, because we guarantee with money only where we hold the delivery data. As the Catalog grows, so does the guarantee.
Read the guarantee, caps and voids included
Your build date holds because the job moves.
Anyone can promise a date. The question worth asking is what happens on the Tuesday a spindle goes down with your parts in it.
Every network shop runs the same modular workholding and receives the same complete packet, so a job in trouble at one shop moves to open capacity at another. That is the only honest mechanism behind a guaranteed date — not a buffer, not optimism, and not a phone call to your project manager three days before the deadline.
What a reroute actually is
Re-post
The packet is posted again for the receiving shop's controller and machine class, from the validated post library built at that shop's onboarding.
Re-verify
It clears the same four release gates it cleared the first time: full simulation with holder clearance, tool-crib coverage, the stranger test, and probe coverage on every guarantee-critical dimension.
Delta first article
A packet already proven at one shop gets a reduced first article at the next, covering setup-sensitive features. That is what makes rerouting fast without making it reckless.
Re-release
Only then does the job appear in the new shop's queue. Rerouting never means emailing a program to a shop and hoping.
Run a 3-axis shop with open spindle time and honest calendars?
Apply as a ShopTell us what you wish were instant.
Every Sourcing job is logged with the feature class that put it there. A class graduates into the Catalog when it exceeds five percent of inbound demand for two consecutive quarters and verification tooling for it exists — both conditions, never one.
If half your bill of materials is turned, we would rather know that from your uploads than from a survey. The envelope grows from delivered evidence.