Process equipment fabricator takes the guesswork out of quoting with automated software

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Situation

Bruns Bros Process Equipment is a metal fabricator with 37 years’ experience serving the food and beverage, dairy, and pharmaceutical industries. While the company uses laser and waterjet cutting for its own job shops, it also has become known as a go-to provider of CNC cutting in its home state of Maine.

“Our CAM software does not accurately estimate cutting times, so we were making educated guesses, which means we weren’t being very consistent from quote to quote,” said Operations Manager Caleb Davenport.

“At best, we were using a ‘guessing and rounding’ approach. With recent expansions, we’ve taken on more estimators, so it’s become more important than ever to have a consistent tool for each person to use,” he said.

Resolution

The fabricator decided to trial ToolBox, by Tempus Tools, an all-in-one fabricating estimating system designed to help users save time and produce accurate, repeatable quotes for laser, plasma, waterjet, and oxyfuel cutting services.

From the start of the trial, Bruns Bros noticed the time it was saving, as well as the desired quoting consistency.

“The user interface was simpler and more user-friendly than any other software we’d tried, and it was able to deliver us faster estimates with totally consistent, repeatable pricing,” said Davenport. “We were able to turn several minutes into just seconds to develop a completed quote, which not only saves us time, but allows us to respond to more RFQs in a day.”

With the system, fabricators and job shops can upload PDFs and extract the 2D DXF/DWG CAD files. The software automatically selects only the parts to be cut, including all internal geometries, alleviating the need for tracing and fixing of drawings. It also offers automatic unfolding of 3D models, including STEP, SLDPART, IPT, and IGES files.

In addition to 2D and 3D unfolding, the software includes a folding module that has been developed by specialists with decades of experience using press brakes.

Tempus Tools CEO Ivan Cooper said, “After uploading the drawing through our 3D module, ToolBox recognizes fold lines on the correct layers, populates the fold length, calculates prices, and produces a flat DXF.”

Cooper explained that when files or assemblies are dragged and dropped into the software, such components as nuts and bolts are separated out. “Solid modelling software is not required, and the user does not need experience in this type of software,” he said.

And as a Software as a Service platform, ToolBox can be updated with new features to suit the needs of its user base. Regular software and security updates can be rolled out easily so that users don’t have to purchase a new software package.