Metal stamping quotes, drafted from the RFQ package and print for your estimator to finish.

A buyer sends a print, sometimes a model, an annual volume and a set of requirements scattered through an email, a form and the drawing's notes. Your estimator works out the steel and thickness, the blank and the scrap, decides what kind of die the volume justifies, prices press time, send-outs and boxes, and then writes back about whatever was missing. A lot of that is finding facts in the package and pulling rates from your own sheets.

In the test, AI goes back through copies of RFQs you already answered and drafts your quote sheet line by line, every rate traced to your own sheets or an earlier quote for that part. Repeat parts carry what your records show. New parts leave the strip layout, stations, press rate and die price blank for your estimator, right beside the list of gaps. Nothing goes to a buyer.

The metal is priced on the strip, not the part. A progressive die feeds coil, so what you buy is coil width times progression times thickness, at about 0.283 pounds per cubic inch for steel. The part is only what stays; the rest is carrier and offal that your scrap buyer pays for at a fraction of what the coil cost. One seating supplier's published tooling standard shows how closely that is watched: its progressive die reviews call for the pitch, coil width, every station and pilot and the tonnage of each station, with the part nested in the strip for the best use of metal. A repeat part's strip is on file, and the draft carries it with the scrap credit your estimator last used.

A steel callout is more than a spec number. ASTM A1008 covers cold-rolled sheet, and A1011 covers hot-rolled sheet and strip. Each is a family: commercial steel types, drawing steels, structural grades and high-strength low-alloy classes, with deep and extra deep drawing, solution hardened and bake hardenable steels in the cold-rolled standard. A1011's abstract puts a grade 50 in both its high-strength low-alloy range and its improved-formability range. So a print that says "A1008" with no designation, or just "CRS", goes on the question list, and so does a thickness with no word on whether it is nominal or minimum. A1008's abstract also says sheet comes oiled unless the order says otherwise, which matters to whoever prices the wash before a weld or a plating line.

Volume and die type shape the quote before the press does. A package may ask for a progressive die, a transfer die, a compound die or a line of single-hit dies, or leave it to you. Annual volume, lot size and program life push that call. The draft records the die type asked for and the volume stated, and never chooses. Blanking force is estimated from length of cut, thickness and the metal's strength, and shops differ on whether they use shear strength or the higher tensile number as a margin, so press class comes from your own sheet. The rate you quote can be tested too: that same seating supplier requires a 300-piece continuous run from coil at the quoted rate before buy-off, and every tool warranted for at least 50,000 strokes in full auto.

Secondaries, plating and packaging hide in the notes. Tapping in the die is a different line from tapping after it. Weld nuts and deburring need a rate or a vendor, and a plating or e-coat callout usually means a send-out with its own minimum and freight both ways. Packaging is the line that gets skipped. One truck engine maker's published standard for fabricated metal parts sets three packing methods and calls for VCI film, paper or chips and a corrosion preventive coating on parts that can rust. One farm equipment maker's manual prefers reusable or returnable packaging whenever the packaging and the return freight are justified, and says its own site designs and owns those containers. The draft gives each callout its own line, with a source, and leaves it blank when you have none.

The question list is part of the quote. Your estimator will want the annual volume and program life, whether the revision on the form matches the print, whether the die is yours or the customer's, who supplies the steel and on what price basis, the plating spec, the packaging spec, the PPAP or first article level, and the ship-to and freight terms. Your reviewer, the estimator who knows this work best, checks each draft against the quote that went out and each question against what your estimator actually asked the buyer.

With your reviewer's approval, incoming packages get the same draft and question list for about 30 days.

Your estimator checks every line, prices every quote and decides what goes to the buyer. Nothing leaves unless a person approves it, and the same comparison keeps running through the live month.