What a buyer checks before sending a drawing to a new CNC shop

A development engineer with a new drawing is about to trust a shop never used before. Before attaching the file, the engineer spends a few minutes checking four things. Can your machines hold the part? Can you measure what the drawing asks for? Have you made something like it? Which operations happen in your own shed? The engineer looks on your website, your directory listing and your Google Maps pin. If those answers are missing, the drawing goes to a shop that shows them.

The check, in the order buyers do it

Machines first. The engineer reads your machine list for working size, number of axes and what the machine can do in one setting. "VMC 850, 4th axis" says something. "CNC machines available" says nothing. A turning centre with a bar feeder and live tooling says you can run small turned parts in volume. Two machines from different decades say you are a job shop that takes what comes.

Measuring next. This is where many shops lose the engineer, and the next section covers it.

Similar parts. The engineer looks for the same material and the same kind of geometry. A photograph of a long, thin shaft in alloy steel matters to a buyer with a shaft drawing. A gallery of shiny aluminium parts does not.

In-house or outside. The engineer wants to know which operations you control directly. Many smaller shops buy in grinding, heat treatment, plating and wire cutting, and that is fine. Hiding it is not.

Can you measure what you make?

An engineer reads your instrument list against the callouts on the drawing. Positional tolerances on a housing need a coordinate measuring machine, or at least a dedicated gauge. A close-tolerance bore needs a bore gauge or air gauging, not a vernier. A surface finish callout needs a roughness tester. Threads need plug and ring gauges of the right class.

So list your instruments by name and range, and say that their calibration is current. The buyer's quality engineer will ask for calibration certificates at the first audit anyway.

If you do not own a CMM, say how you get CMM reports when a drawing needs one, for example through an outside measuring lab near you. An honest "we send this to an outside lab" keeps you in the running. Claiming a tolerance you cannot measure loses you the part at first-article inspection, which costs both sides far more.

In-house or outside: say which

Many small shops buy in some operations. The buyer will find out at the plant visit, so say so first. Split your capability list into two columns: what runs on your own machines, and what goes to partners you have used for years. For each outside operation, say how you check the work when it comes back.

A shop that writes "heat treatment through a partner, hardness checked in-house on every lot" looks more reliable than one claiming to do everything itself.

A one-page capability sheet

This is the document to send with your first reply, to put on your website as a PDF, and to leave behind after a visit. Fill it in this afternoon, and leave out any line you cannot back up.

[Shop name], [industrial area, city]
Contact: [name], [role], [mobile], [email]

WHAT WE MAKE
Parts we are good at:   e.g. turned shafts up to [length], milled aluminium housings
Materials we run:       e.g. EN8, EN19, SS304, SS316, aluminium 6061
Batch sizes we prefer:  e.g. [smallest] to [largest] per release

MACHINES (in-house)
[Make / model]   [working size]   [axes / bar feeder / live tooling]   [qty]

MEASURING
[Instrument]   [range]   calibration current: yes / no

DONE IN-HOUSE             THROUGH PARTNERS, AND HOW WE CHECK IT
Turning, milling          Heat treatment: hardness checked on each lot
Deburring, inspection     Zinc plating: thickness checked on sample pieces

SIMILAR PARTS WE HAVE MADE
[Part type]   [material]   [industry]   (photo where the customer allows)

DOCUMENTS ON REQUEST
GST, Udyam, certificates held, sample inspection report

Keep it to one page, since a buyer may not read four, and date it so the buyer can see it is current.

Imagine a machine shop near Tiruchirappalli

Imagine a CNC shop in the Thuvakudi industrial estate near Tiruchirappalli, turning and milling parts for boiler and valve makers. Its profile PDF listed turning, milling, grinding, wire EDM, gear hobbing and heat treatment, all under "our capabilities". The details are illustrative.

A development engineer from a valve maker visited after receiving the profile. Half the list turned out to be outsourced, and nobody had said so. The parts were not the problem. The surprise was, and the shop was not invited to quote.

The shop rebuilt its profile on the sheet above. The capability list was split into in-house and partner operations, with how each outside job is checked. The measuring room got a page of its own, listing the height gauge, bore gauges, roughness tester and thread gauges. A note said CMM reports come from a lab in the area. A photograph of a long shaft, machined to the shop's own dummy drawing, replaced the stock image on the cover. The next visiting engineer asked about grinding, and the owner could show the answer on paper. The shop still lost that quote on delivery time, but it was invited to quote.

Where the buyer looks, and what puts them off

A buyer searches for the process and your town, then reads your website, your directory listing and your Maps pin. The owner's LinkedIn profile may get a look too. The same name, address and phone should appear on all of them.

Some things put a buyer off quickly: stock photographs of five-axis machines you do not own, and the phrase "all types of precision machining". So does a free email address, or a website address that does not match the one on the map.

Buyers check a wire EDM shop and a turning shop on different things, such as corner radius for one and bar capacity for the other. The CNC machining hub covers the trade, and the manufacturing hub covers the rest.

Read your profile with a drawing beside it

Print the profile you send today. Put one of your own customer drawings next to it and read the page as that engineer would. Could the engineer tell that you can make the part? That you can measure it? Which steps happen elsewhere? Rewrite the first line that fails. If you would rather someone outside the shop did that reading, with capability presentations in mind, tell us what you need.