---
title: "Machine the pads here or buy them in — priced, not argued"
url: https://partimation.com/for/fabricators/make-vs-buy/
description: "The machined parts inside a steel job are where make-or-buy actually gets decided. Each route step comes back marked in-house or priced at your accepted vendor's markup with the queue days it adds, and the in-house side is checked against a real removal simulation rather than a memory of the last one."
---

# Machine the pads here or buy them in — priced, not argued

The machined parts inside a steel job are where make-or-buy actually gets decided. Each route step comes back marked in-house or priced at your accepted vendor's markup with the queue days it adds, and the in-house side is checked against a real removal simulation rather than a memory of the last one.

## A concrete case

Thirty weld-up frames on a four-week promise, off one multi-body STEP. Each frame carries four machined mounting pads out of 20 mm plate and a bored trunnion block, so a hundred and fifty machined components sit inside a job everybody in the building thinks of as a steel job. The VMC is booked ten days out. The machine shop across town already has an accepted markup in your cost model. Every time this comes up it gets settled in the two minutes it takes to walk to the office, and nothing about those two minutes ever reaches the estimate anyone can look at afterwards.

## How it plays out

1. **Get the parts out of the assembly first** — The multi-body STEP splits into its distinct placed bodies, duplicates collapsing into a quantity, and rolls up into one costed BOM — cheapest feasible route per part, tooling counted once across the job, and a critical-path lead time. Make-or-buy on a fabricated job is a question about the pads and the trunnion block, and this is the screen where they stop being part of a weldment and start being parts you can price.
2. **Open the route on the part, not the opinion** — The route comes back built — tooling, forming, degating and fettling, heat treatment, machining, finishing, and the handling and queue time every move between departments actually costs — as expandable route cards, each step naming the rule that produced it, with candidate routes ranked cheapest, quickest and fewest-steps.
3. **The badge on the step is the make-or-buy call** — Each step carries a posture: run in-house, or priced through the vendor your shop has already accepted for that work, with the markup percentage and the queue days that step adds shown on the step itself. Ranking by quickest as well as cheapest is what puts the days a sourced step adds on the same screen as the money it saves, which is the half of the decision that usually gets made by whoever answers the phone.
4. **Check that 'we can run that here' is true** — Holes, pockets, flats, bores and bosses come back detected with a confidence each, and a real voxel removal simulation against the tooling you actually run quantifies and locates the stock that cannot be reached. When a feature needs a second setup, a 3+2 setup plan is generated, gouge-checked and priced into the quote — so a bored trunnion block that quietly becomes two setups is priced as two setups before you commit the machine to it.
5. **Know where the comparison stops** — One accepted vendor per step is the shipped posture. There is no second machine shop lined up beside the first, no quote solicitation, no marketplace, and no market rate invented on your behalf — a made-up market number would make the comparison feel rigorous and be worth nothing. The in-house side is priced off your rates and the part's own geometry, not off your machine's calendar: the ten days the VMC is booked is a fact you hold, not one the model knows.

## Where you end up

Both versions of the same hundred and fifty parts land on one ledger, every line tracing to a named rate, a posture setting or a rule in the engine. The sourced version carries your own accepted markup and the queue days it adds to a four-week promise; the in-house version carries a cycle time that came out of a removal simulation against real tooling, with a second setup priced where the geometry needs one. Two things stay yours: which of your subcontractors gets the work, and whether the machine is free. The difference is that both are now judgment applied to a number instead of standing in for one.

## What backs this

- Assembly BOM roll-up + interference screen — [AssemblyDFM](https://partimation.com/assembly/)
- Full manufacturing route builder, ranked — [RouteDFM](https://partimation.com/routing/)
- In-house vs. brokered-vendor step pricing — [RouteDFM](https://partimation.com/routing/)
- Feature-level machining detection + reach simulation — [MachDFM](https://partimation.com/machining/)
- 3+2 multi-setup machining, gouge-checked and priced — [MachDFM](https://partimation.com/machining/)
- Itemized cost ledger traced to a named rate or rule — [CostDFM](https://partimation.com/costing/)
- Shop-editable rates & cost model (Rates Studio) — [CostDFM](https://partimation.com/costing/)

## Frequently asked questions

#### Should the machined parts inside a steel job run in-house or go out?

Route steps are where that gets settled. A multi-body model rolls up into a costed BOM, each part's route comes back built and ranked, and every step in it is marked run in-house or priced through the vendor your shop has already accepted — with the markup percentage and the queue days that step adds shown alongside. Both versions of the decision sit on the same screen before anyone walks to the office to settle it.

#### Can we hold two subcontract machine shops against each other on the same step?

One accepted vendor per step is the shipped posture, so no. Pricing a sourced step applies the markup your shop has already accepted for that vendor, set once in your own cost model — not a solicitation, not a marketplace, not a rate somebody else invented. Comparing two subcontractors against each other on one step is not something the suite does today, at any tier.

#### How do we know we can actually cut a part before promising to run it here?

Feature detection and a removal simulation answer that before the promise. Holes, pockets, flats, bores and bosses come back with a confidence each, and a real voxel removal simulation against the tooling you run quantifies and locates the stock that cannot be reached; where a feature needs a second setup, a 3+2 plan is generated, gouge-checked and priced into the quote rather than discovered at the machine.

#### Does the in-house price know how loaded our own machines are?

Machine load is not modeled. The in-house side of a step is priced from your rates and the part's own geometry, so a VMC booked ten days out costs exactly the same in the estimate as an idle one. Whether the capacity is really there stays your call — what changes is that you are making it against a costed route with the sourced alternative's markup and queue days next to it.

## Explore further

- [For steel fabricators — price the hours, not just the tonnage](https://partimation.com/for/fabricators/) — You quote weldments where fit-up and arc time set the price, not the steel. What runs in the browser today is the handrail and stair configurator — tonnage, fit-up hours, weld metres, coating area, a should-cost curve — plus routing that prices the coating you send out, on a ledger where every line names its rule.
- [In-house or send it out? Price the step instead of arguing about it](https://partimation.com/solutions/make-vs-buy/) — Whether a step runs on your own machines or goes to a vendor is usually judgment and a phone call. Partimation builds the full route — tooling, forming, heat treatment, machining, finishing and the transfers between departments — and prices each step in-house or at your accepted vendor's markup, with the queue days.

## Related pages

- [For steel fabricators — price the hours, not just the tonnage](https://partimation.com/for/fabricators/)
- [In-house or send it out? Price the step instead of arguing about it](https://partimation.com/solutions/make-vs-buy/)
- [RouteDFM](https://partimation.com/routing/)
- [MachDFM](https://partimation.com/machining/)
- [AssemblyDFM](https://partimation.com/assembly/)

## See what this looks like on your own parts

Send a model or a drawing and book a walkthrough — or start free and run one through yourself.

## Book a demo

Tell us about your shop and we'll set up a walkthrough on a real part.