Can You Build This Cheaper?

We get this question a lot.

Somebody finds a part online…usually a bracket, a mounting plate, or something similar…and they call and ask if we can make one cheaper. Sometimes it’s Amazon, sometimes eBay, sometimes they found it through a manufacturer. They’ll send me a picture or a link and say, “Can you build this for less?”

Honestly…it’s a fair question.

Most of these parts don’t look that complicated. It’s a piece of steel with a couple bends in it, maybe a few holes, maybe a weld. On the surface, it seems like it shouldn’t cost much to make. The problem is, you’re comparing two completely different things.

That company might have made 20,000 of those parts. They bought steel by the truckload. They’ve already paid an engineer to design it, built fixtures to hold it, written the programs for the laser, figured out the bend sequence, and probably found three different ways to shave ten seconds off the build time over the last five years.

I’m starting with…one. That means everything starts from scratch.

Sometimes the part doesn’t even exist as a drawing. We have to reverse engineer it first. Then we’re deciding what material it should actually be made from, how we’re going to hold it while we work on it, whether it makes more sense to weld first or bend first, and whether there’s an easier way to build it than the original manufacturer used.

By the time we’ve answered all those questions, we haven’t even made the part yet. That’s the difference people don’t usually see.

The funny thing is…this conversation usually goes one of two ways: sometimes I tell them, “Just buy it.” Seriously.

If you can buy exactly what you need for fifty bucks, I’d much rather you do that than pay me a couple hundred dollars to prove I could make it. It doesn’t bother me to lose those jobs. In fact, I’d rather have somebody remember that I gave them honest advice than take their money when there was a better option.

Now…if that part doesn’t exist anymore, that’s a different story.

Maybe it’s off an old piece of equipment and nobody makes replacements. Maybe it’s on backorder for three months and your machine is sitting idle. Maybe the original design has always been a little flawed and you’re tired of replacing the same broken bracket every year.

That’s where custom fabrication starts making sense. Those are my favorite jobs, honestly. I like solving problems more than I like copying parts.

Sometimes we’ll end up making something that looks almost identical to what you brought in…except one gusset gets moved, or we use thicker material in one spot, or we change the way it’s welded because we’ve already spotted why the original one failed. Those little changes usually don’t make much difference to the appearance…but they can make a huge difference in how long the part lasts.

That’s something a production manufacturer usually can’t do. They’re building the same thing over and over. We’re looking at your problem.

So, can we make that part you found online?

Probably.

Can we make it cheaper?

Usually not.

Can we make it better for your application?

Now we’re asking a much more interesting question.