How Long Will It Take, and Can You Make It Faster?
The honest answer is that nobody can give you a lead time before reading the drawing, and a shop that quotes one instantly is quoting a hope. What we can do is give you a date with the price within 16 hours, and tell you exactly what that date is made of — which parts of it we can compress, which parts belong to somebody else, and which parts we will not shorten at any price.
Machining is rarely the longest part of a machined part’s lead time
Most customers picture the whole lead time as spindle hours. It usually is not. On a typical job the cutting is a minority of the calendar, and the two blocks that decide whether you get the parts on time are material and finishing — one of which happens before we start, and the other after we finish.
| Stage | What happens | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| Quote and drawing review | An engineer reads the drawing and raises the questions that matter. Back within 16 hours | Us — and you, if the answers take a week |
| Material procurement | Stock grades and sizes arrive quickly. A grade or a section we do not normally hold has to be bought in, and nothing can start before it lands | The mill and the stockist. This is the block we can do least about |
| Programming and fixturing | Writing the program, building or adapting the fixture, proving the first piece | Us. This is where overtime actually helps |
| Machining | Spindle time, across however many machines the batch justifies | Us — and it is the part we can most reliably predict |
| Finishing | Anodising, plating, passivation, blasting, marking. Almost always at a specialist, on their queue | A third party. On many jobs this is the single largest block of unpredictable days |
| Inspection | First article measured before the batch runs, then sampling through the run | Us. Not negotiable — see below |
| Packing and freight | Air is a few days, sea is several weeks. For a heavy order this is often the biggest number on the whole schedule | The freight market, and your choice of mode |
Four things push a date, and the first one is usually us waiting on you
1. Unanswered drawing questions
This is the most common delay on the whole site, and it is entirely avoidable. If a callout is ambiguous, the clock does not really start until we understand it — we will not guess and then send you 300 pieces of a guess. Our engineers answer Monday to Saturday 08:00–23:00 and Sunday 08:00–17:00 China time, which covers most of the European and American working day, so a question asked in the morning your time is normally answered before you finish.
2. A material we have to buy in
A common aluminium or stainless grade is quick. A specific tool steel, an unusual section, a grade specified by a trade name only one mill sells — those are days before a cutter turns, and no amount of paying more at our end changes it. We will tell you at quotation if your material is one of these, and usually offer an equivalent you can accept or refuse.
3. The finishing queue
Anodising and plating are done by specialists and they run to their own schedule. A cosmetic finish with a colour match, or masking, adds days beyond the queue itself. If the schedule is tight, the finish is often the thing worth simplifying — not the machining.
4. A revision after the order
Every change after we start costs time, and a change after the fixture is built costs more than the drawing suggests. It is still better than the alternative — tell us the moment you know, and we will tell you honestly what it costs in days before you commit to it.
What we can compress, and what we cannot
Every shop says it offers expedite. Very few say which parts of the schedule the money actually reaches. Here is ours.
| Stage | Can we compress it? | How |
|---|---|---|
| Programming and fixturing | Yes | Overtime, and putting the engineer on it the day the order lands instead of in queue order |
| Machining | Often | Splitting a batch across more than one machine, or running through the night. It costs us more and we will say so rather than absorb it silently |
| Material | Only if it is stock | If we hold it or the stockist holds it, it is fast. If it has to come from a mill, no amount of urgency moves it |
| Finishing | Rarely | It is another company’s queue. Sometimes a simpler finish, or shipping unfinished, is the real answer |
| First article inspection | No | This is the one we will not shorten. It is a few hours against the risk of a whole batch, and skipping it is how a rush job becomes a disaster |
| Freight | Yes, a lot | Air instead of sea is usually the single biggest lever on the calendar, and the one customers forget to consider first |
Six things you can do that genuinely shorten the date
Answer the DFM questions the day they arrive
Usually two or three questions. Answering them same-day rather than at the end of the week is, on most jobs, the largest single day-saving available to you, and it costs nothing.
Say which grade you can accept, not only which you prefer
“6061 preferred, 6082 acceptable” on the enquiry can remove the entire material-procurement block before it happens.
Let the finish be a standard one where it does not show
Clear or black anodise moves faster than a matched colour. For an internal part nobody sees, that is free time.
Split the order
Fifty pieces by air to keep your line running, the remaining four hundred by sea. You pay air freight on a tenth of the order instead of all of it, and the urgent need is still met.
Approve the first article quickly
We send the report and then we wait. If it sits in someone’s inbox for three days, the three days are real. Tell us in advance who approves it and how to reach them.
Tell us the real deadline, and what happens if it slips
“As soon as possible” tells us nothing. A date, and what it is for — a trade show, a customer’s line, an assembly slot — lets us plan around the thing that actually matters and warn you early if it is at risk.
95% on time in 2025 — and what we do about the other 5%
We publish the number rather than the promise. Ninety-five per cent means that in a year of orders, some were late, and we would rather you knew how we behave then than hear a claim of a hundred per cent that nobody in this industry actually achieves.
What we do when a date is at risk: you hear it from us before the date, not after it. We say what happened, what the new date is, and what we are doing about it. On a batch of titanium knife scales last year the surface finish was not good enough to ship, we found it ourselves, we re-worked the parts by hand, and we shipped five days late with a discount we paid for. The customer had been buying from us for five years and still is.
A late part you were warned about on Monday can be planned around. A late part you discover on Friday cannot. That difference is most of what “reliable” actually means.
- QuotationWithin 16 hours
- On-time delivery, 202595%
- Engineers reachableMon–Sat 08:00–23:00, Sun 08:00–17:00 (UTC+8)
- Minimum orderNone
- Quantities1 to 10,000+
- If a date slipsYou hear it before the date
Send the drawing and tell us the real deadline
You get a price and a date within 16 hours, with the two or three things that are putting that date at risk flagged before you order — not after. If we cannot hit your deadline we will say so rather than take the order and apologise later.