Foam part quote requests, read from the drawing up to the point your estimator prices them.

One request arrives as a dimensioned drawing with a density and a firmness on it. The next is a photo of a worn seat cushion and a line about how it should feel. A third is a packaging insert described only by the product going inside. Before anyone can price the job, your estimator has to work out what the foam is, how firm it has to be, what the part looks like, how it is bonded and how many are wanted at each break.

In the test, AI reads copies of requests you already answered and fills in your worksheet, naming where it read each value. A density with no firmness, a firmness with no test basis, a tolerance with no number or a lamination with no substrate each goes on the question list. The price column stays blank, because your estimator fills that one in.

Density and firmness are two callouts, and customers name them in several ways. The Polyurethane Foam Association's firmness bulletin calls them the two most common specifications in furniture, mattress and carpet cushion work, says firmness should never be specified without density, and treats them as independent, so a high density foam can be made soft or firm. Its joint industry bulletin says Indentation Force Deflection was formerly Indentation Load Deflection, and buyers' paperwork still carries both names. A State of Louisiana bid specification for mattresses and box springs, RFx 3000026215, writes one foam core as a thickness, a density per cubic foot and a compression range "as established by Indentation Load (Force) Deflection (ILD) tests", and another simply as pounds and ILD run together. The draft keeps the customer's words and does not convert them.

A firmness number needs its sample, and a density needs its basis. The firmness bulletin reports that IFD readings rise as the sample's surface grows, that no conversion formula covers differences in surface dimensions, and that end user and foam supplier must agree on identical sample dimensions. Thickness moves the reading too, and for carpet cushion, very firm foams or undersized samples the bulletin says CFD often replaces IFD. The joint guidelines add that density should be judged by polymer weight, leaving fillers out, and that a nominal specification is good practice because density varies within a block. So the worksheet records the test named, the sample size, and whether polymer density or a nominal band was stated, and it asks when none of them was.

A packaging insert is described by what it protects. The association's packaging bulletin has the package designed from the item's fragility, measured in Gs, its maximum drop height, its size and the foam's dynamic cushioning curves, and it cautions that foam cut parallel to the base of the bun may cushion a little differently from foam cut perpendicular to it. Few requests carry all of that. The draft lists product weight, size and any fragility or drop figure the customer gave, and whatever is missing becomes a question for your estimator or packaging engineer.

Shape and count point toward a method, and the method stays with you. A hole or pattern inside another pattern rules out most cutting methods and points toward waterjet or laser, yet the association says waterjet works only on a narrow range of densities and firmnesses and that the foam has to dry afterward. Compression cutting needs a cavity tool that large quantities help pay for, and because convoluting wheels are costly and hard to align, the bulletin says a foam supplier has to tell buyers which profile patterns are available. So the draft records the features and every quantity break exactly as the customer wrote them, and never names a method.

A bond is more than the word adhesive. The association's adhesives bulletin compares water borne, non-HAP solvent and hot melt systems on tack, bonding time, viscosity and melt temperature. It warns that substrates with certain plasticizers, some vinyl and plastic composites among them, can affect cure, and that a low melt temperature can let go in an automobile interior on a hot day. When a request names the substrate and the end use, they go on the worksheet beside the lamination note; when it doesn't, those are two more questions. Your reviewer, the person on your staff who knows quoting best and usually the lead estimator, holds each draft against the worksheet that was actually built, and watches whether it asked what your estimator had to ask.

With your reviewer's approval, new drawings and descriptions get the same worksheet and question list for about 30 days.

Your estimator prices, changes or declines each one, and a person approves every worksheet before it goes anywhere. How approved worksheets reach your shop system gets settled for that month and no sooner.