Part and tooling quote requests, read off the drawing and drafted for your estimator.

A customer's engineer or buyer sends a part drawing and a few lines of notes: a material, a gauge or a minimum wall, a texture, perhaps a flame or food-contact line, and a yearly number. Someone at your estimating desk works out what the print really asks for, which tool and trim it needs, and what's still open before anyone can price the sheet, the tool or the part.

For the test, AI goes through copies of requests you already quoted and fills your quote sheet field by field, noting where each value came from on the drawing or in the message. What the customer left open goes on a list for your estimator, and nothing is priced or guessed. Your reviewer, the person on your staff who knows this quoting best, holds each sheet against what actually went back.

Starting gauge and finished wall are two different promises. SPE's Thermoforming 101 column on down gauging, from 2007, asks why custom thermoformers state a starting gauge on proposals when a buyer cares how the finished part performs. It says that when an RFQ names no gauge, many shops quote two or more, and that a stated gauge is often carried over from a competitor's proposal or an old spec. So the draft keeps separate fields for the gauge as stated and for the minimum finished wall or the range of walls the print gives, with each location it names. A request that fills in only one gets a question, never a guess.

The tool decides where the sheet gets thin. SPE's 2005 tutorial on how a sheet stretches says forming into a female cavity leaves the wall thickest at the rim and thinnest at the bottom corner, and forming onto a male tool tends the other way. The side against the mold holds the more accurate dimension, so it is chosen when a part mates with another, and a liquid-tight container with an integral lid may need one half formed female and the other male. One sheet maker's wall thickness brief works a flanged rectangular cavity from 0.125-inch sheet: about 0.079 inch on a male mold and about 0.031 inch on a female mold, with the last formed edges thinnest of all. The draft carries any note about tool side, mating surface or the surface the customer cares most about into the tooling field.

Tooling and trimming are their own lines. SPE's tutorial on mold materials says most commercial molds are aluminum, larger ones cast and smaller ones machined from plate, with wood used for straight vacuum-formed prototypes and electroformed nickel reserved for extremely fine detail. Its thin-gauge trimming column calls the steel rule die the most common method, with punch-and-die or matched metal dies at high production; its thick-gauge column runs from hand routers to CNC routers and, for flat trim lines on parts such as tote boxes and refrigerator liners, to saws and guillotines. Heavy-gauge parts may sit in a fixture between forming and trimming, and polypropylene goes on crystallizing after forming, so the design trim line and the final edge can differ. The draft records any tool type, trim method or existing tool number the request names, and the choice stays with your estimator.

A material name, a grain or a third-decimal tolerance isn't finished information. SPE's 2005 column on concept and reality warns that specifying general purpose polystyrene isn't enough, that a list of property requirements has to follow, and that not every grade meeting them is made as sheet. A published thermoforming manual from one sheet maker says a three-to-one draw spreads a grain about three times, with texture valleys thinning more than peaks. The same manual questions tolerances held to the third decimal, since a 20-inch part measures about 0.05 inch shorter at 20°F than at 70°F, and it says most amorphous sheet takes up moisture and may need drying, a step that can change with thickness. The draft copies each callout as written and lists the ones that leave something open.

Flame and food-contact lines stay exactly as written, and your reviewer checks the rest. A rail customer may cite 49 CFR Part 238, whose Appendix B names ASTM E 162 for surface flammability and ASTM E 662 for smoke density, bars flaming running or dripping, and reads E 662 in whichever mode, flaming or non-flaming, gives the most smoke. The draft sets each requirement on its own line, with any thickness it applies to, beside the minimum wall. SPE's own list of reasons not to quote, parts needing uniform or stepped walls, tolerances thermoforming can't hold, trim accuracy your shop can't reach, is a useful checklist. The owner names your reviewer, usually the lead estimator, who compares each sheet with the quote that went out. Standards are named only as words a print may use; none of this is engineering or legal advice.

For about 30 days after a yes, live requests go through the same sheet, one by one.

Your estimator sets the gauge, the tool and the price, then decides what goes back. No quote reaches a customer or your shop system unless a person approves it, and the same table keeps scoring the month.