What a buyer wants in a casting enquiry reply: pattern, weight, grade and quantity

A valve maker has emailed a drawing for 300 SG iron bodies and wants your best rate by Friday. Do not open with a rate. Open with what you understood from the drawing: whose pattern it will be, what each casting will weigh, which grade you will pour and test to, and how many are needed. Ask only what the drawing leaves out. A wrong guess on grade or pattern, caught now, costs one email instead of a rejected batch.

Four guesses that turn into rejected castings

Pattern. "Pattern available" can mean a sound aluminium match plate. It can also mean a cracked wooden pattern last used at another foundry, built for a different moulding box. Assume the first, receive the second, and both your sample date and your piece price are wrong.

Weight. The drawing shows the machined part. The rough casting carries machining allowance and draft, and any hole you core rather than leave for drilling changes it again. Your price rests on this weight, so estimate it from the buyer's 3D model or a similar part, say how, and fix the piece price on the weight of approved samples. How to word the metal part of that price so it can move fairly is in metal prices and open quotes.

Grade. A drawing from a European or American parent may name EN-GJS-500-7 or an ASTM class. Write the grade you will actually pour and test against, and ask the buyer to accept it. Equivalents across standards are close, not identical, and the buyer's quality engineer may want a say.

Quantity. Three hundred pieces once and three hundred a month are different jobs. The yearly figure decides the pattern material, whether the part runs on your moulding line or the hand-moulding floor, and therefore the price.

The reply, before any price

Send it on email so it can be forwarded to the quality engineer, with a short WhatsApp to say it has gone. The figures are illustrative.

Subject: Gate valve body GV-80, drawing rev C: our reading before we quote

Thank you for the drawing. Please confirm or correct the points below.
Our quotation follows once they are settled.

PATTERN     Yours: we inspect it on arrival and report its condition,
            and any repair or conversion, before pricing.
            New: we propose an aluminium match plate with two core boxes.
GRADE       Drawing states EN-GJS-500-7. We pour SG 500/7 and test each
            heat for chemistry, tensile on a separately cast test bar,
            hardness and nodularity. Is this acceptable?
WEIGHT      Rough casting estimated at 14.5 kg from your 3D model, with
            3 mm machining allowance on faces A and B. Piece price will be
            fixed on the weight of approved samples.
QUANTITY    Samples: 5 pieces. First order: 300. Expected in a year: ____?
CONDITION   Fettled and shot blasted, unpainted. Machining not included.
QUESTIONS   1. Bore C is drawn solid. Cored by us, or drilled by you?
            2. Is radiography or a pressure test needed on the body?

Keep it to one screen. The commercial layout of the quotation that follows, with tooling and piece price on separate lines, is covered in what to put in an RFQ reply.

What to ask, and what never to ask

Never ask anything the drawing already answers. A question about the material when the title block names it tells the buyer you did not read the drawing, and the buyer will wonder what else you missed.

Ask about the gaps a foundry sees and a machinist does not. Where may the parting line go? Is extra draft allowed on the inside walls? Which holes are cored and which are drilled? Does the buyer want their part number and your heat number cast on, and where? Is any area to be left free of chills or feeders because it is machined later?

One offer beats all of these. If the buyer has sent only the machined drawing, offer to prepare a casting drawing with your allowances marked and send it for approval. It turns your assumptions into the buyer's signature before a single mould is made.

Imagine: a Kurichi foundry and a gate valve body

Imagine an SG and grey iron foundry in the Kurichi industrial estate, Coimbatore, which receives a drawing from a valve maker in Ranipet. The details are illustrative.

The sales head replied the same day with a rate per kg and "approx. 12 kg" from a glance at the drawing, assuming the buyer's pattern would be fine. The foundry won the sample order. The pattern arrived as a wooden one made for another foundry's box, and the foundry quietly paid to rework it. Then the samples weighed just over 15 kg, because the allowances and a solid bore added metal nobody had counted. The foundry asked to revise the piece price. The buyer pointed to the 12 kg in the quote and refused.

The foundry poured that order at a loss on 300 pieces, then changed how it answers drawings. The read-back above now goes out before any rate, written by the methods engineer, not sales. On the next enquiry from the same buyer, the buyer corrected the bore to "drilled by us", accepted the grade and gave a yearly figure. The weight came from the buyer's 3D model. When the samples weighed close to the estimate, the price stood without a conversation.

When a two-line reply is right

A repeat part on an existing pattern with an agreed grade needs a rate and a date, nothing more. A trader asking per kg rates for "CI castings" wants your rate range for your standard grade and your minimum order. And if the part is beyond your largest moulding box or your furnace, say so in two lines and name the weight range you do pour. A polite regret is remembered when the next drawing fits.

Write your read-back template before the next drawing

Draft the template above in your own foundry's words, with your grades, tests and delivery conditions filled in, and keep it where whoever opens enquiries can find it. Sorting real drawings from rate checks before the estimator starts is lead qualification. The rest of the foundry's selling job is on the casting and foundry page. If drawings are reaching you and orders are not, tell us what you need.