Getting weldments fabricated is painfully slow. I've never encountered an easy process. You make complex drawings. You send to a quoter who takes a week to inventory material or get stock bids. The process takes another four weeks minimum of shipping raw stock, cutting, drilling, fit-up, fixing, swearing then shipping. If you absolutely need it now you're stuck in-sourcing it and finding ways to get all your plates and tubes cut. It sucks.

There's tons of successful auto-quoting shops: SendCutSend, Protolabs, Oshcut. But why hasn't it worked for welding? The huge variety of tubing and profile sizes means it's nearly impossible for a vendor to stock material — every job is a unique order from a local metal supplier. Joints, fit-up, and weld scheduling usually require experienced human oversight to properly gauge the difficulty of the work. Someone who's welded before needs to think critically about the order of operations and how things will shift when welding.

We think that if you place some reasonable, intelligent constraints on the design space it's possible to make quoting automated and lead times short.

  1. Profile and plate sizes: our offerings are constrained to the most commonly used tube and plate sizes of no more than 6.35mm (¼″). These sizes will always be stocked and engineers can design these sizes into the parts from the start.
  2. Joint types: we narrow the types of joints and welds that are performed. These can be characterized and understood well. We won't offer all the weld joints on the ASME menu, but we'll have enough that you can build a rigid structure.
  3. Lasers: Tube laser cutters, sheet laser cutters, laser welders. This is the killer recipe for fast metal processing. Cutting and beveling can be done with almost no human intervention. Parts will be ready for welding straight off the machine. When it comes time for welding — laser is one of the fastest processes with nearly zero heat affected zone and associated warping.
  4. Digital enabled factory: Nearly every "paperwork" step in the process is automated. From auto-quote to work order, material movement, cutting, welding, and finishing are scheduled digitally. No phone calls, no paper travelers.
  5. Overall Dimensions: initially, we're limiting the overall build volume to 8′×8′×8′ to keep shipping costs reasonable with LTL carriers. As volume scales, we'll be able to negotiate more favorable rates with larger volumes and intend to increase the build envelope.

We're still developing the software and the constraints and we need your help. We need to understand what builders need from weldments. Upload your latest CAD and get an instant quote. Then sign up to be a Beta tester when the service launches later this year. We'll be looking at every model to understand what the market needs for materials, stock sizes, and joints.

This is step one — and every build that goes through the system makes the next one faster.