In plastics the requirements come before the route.

Where it starts

On paper, a request for a plastic part looks like any other machined part: a STEP, a PDF, a quantity. The difference is in the detail. A tolerance only reachable in metal. A metal grade on the drawing of a plastic part. A flatness callout or a sealing face that drives the price hard.

Machining plastics calls for different decisions from steel or aluminium: how you clamp, how the material behaves under the tool, what you can prove to the customer. Spot those requirements only after costing, and you have priced the wrong route.

The customers are often in high-tech industry: many variants, and a drawing full of requirements that matter.

How it usually runs

The manufacturing engineers run the whole quoting process. For every request they build a full route, including requests that never become an order. Most of the routing effort goes to quotes that are lost, and the front office becomes the brake on growth. Open requests go through a daily review with several people, including the ones nobody has any doubt about.

Two experienced people can reach different conclusions on the same drawing. The know-how of whoever retires leaves with them. And post-calculation is often missing: the machine data exists, but it never makes it back into the next price.

What Blake prepares

Blake sets up the request part by part: STEP and PDF paired by file name, with any doubt left as a question for you. Material, tolerance, roughness and finishing from the drawing are ready as proposals before anyone builds a route. So a metal grade on a plastic part's drawing shows up on the part before the price is fixed. If a drawing arrives without its model, that stays an open question on the part.

Metals and plastics sit in one material catalogue, with your own purchase prices, their source and their history. More on materials.

Milling, turning and mill-turn each get their own line, at the machine's hourly rate, with quantity breaks for the quantities asked. A repeat part sits next to its last priced estimate. The quote goes out as a PDF, with CSV and JSON export. More on estimating.

Where people decide

A person confirms the drawing's requirements. A drawing value you change is kept with who and when. A correction to the estimate needs a reason, and that reason stays with the line.

So everyone prices with the same machines, rates and materials. Where two people still differ, you see on which line and why. A natural split follows: simple parts through faster, complex parts with the specialist.

Whoever retires then leaves more behind than a spreadsheet: the confirmed requirements, the setups per route and the reason behind every estimate correction.

What it comes down to

What you have to prove to the customer in plastics decides the route: a sealing face asks for a different setup and a different inspection from a free face. Those requirements belong on the part before anyone builds a route, and they stay there for the colleague who picks up the repeat part.

The daily review is then only about the doubtful cases. More on high-mix precision machining.

Key points

• In plastics, flatness, roughness and tolerance can drive the price hard.
• In Blake the requirements are ready as proposals before anyone builds a route.
• Metals and plastics in one catalogue, every operation on its own line.
• What you confirm or correct stays on record for the next colleague.