A real case
A repeat customer wants two numbers for an A356 valve body at 6,000 a year: tooling paid up front, and tooling carried in the piece price. Here is how a foundry prices the pattern, core boxes and permanent-mold die off this part's own geometry, amortizes the tool into the curve, and reads the crossover quantity.
The situation
A customer you already pour for sends a revised STEP on Monday. Aluminium A356 valve body, 6,000 a year, three-year program, and this time the buyer wants two numbers: tooling paid up front, and tooling carried in the piece price. There is a real question underneath it — a cut pattern with two core boxes on the sand line, or a permanent-mold die — and the figure everybody reaches for is the die price off a 2023 spreadsheet, different cavity layout, different part. Nobody in the room believes that number, and nobody has a better one before Wednesday.
Step by step
Upload the STEP — or the drawing, or both on the same job — and the first look comes off the geometry the customer actually sent. The revision that moved the flange and added the second core is in front of you, rather than being the difference nobody spotted between this job and the one whose tooling price you are about to reuse.
Pattern, core boxes, permanent-mold die: all three price through one block-and-machining tool-cost model, reused unmodified across HPDC, permanent-mold, injection and forging. That single basis is the point. A pattern-and-core-box figure and a die figure that came out of the same model can be put side by side and the difference means something; two quotes built on two shops' conventions never could.
Tooling amortizes into the per-piece should-cost curve against a stated tool life rather than landing as a lump sum, so the two numbers the buyer asked for come off one model instead of one number and an adjustment. Every cost line traces to a named rate, a posture setting or a rule in the engine — and the rates underneath are your foundry's own, set once in Rates Studio, so melt, moulding, degating and fettling are priced at what they cost you rather than at an industry average.
Should-cost curves run at every quantity, and the exact quantity where one method becomes cheaper than another is solved in closed form rather than eyeballed off a chart. At 6,000 a year the answer may be obvious; the useful part is knowing where the line sits, because the buyer's next question is what happens if the programme runs at 2,000 or at 20,000, and that is a curve rather than an argument.
Tooling need not land as one lump figure. A die or mold quote breaks it out into named lines — die base, slides, gate and runner, trim die, core inserts — for the processes that have them, and those lines sum to the tooling total, so a buyer asking what the slides cost gets a line rather than a share of a number nobody can take apart. The report plus mold, pattern and component files export together from the same job, and pattern geometry carries the published per-alloy shrinkage allowance rather than a rate the pattern shop applies from habit.
What you get
You send two prices on Wednesday that came out of the same model — the tool paid up front, and the tool carried at a stated life across 6,000 a year — plus the quantity where the die stops being the expensive option and starts being the cheap one. When the buyer pushes on the tooling line, you can answer with the rate and the rule behind it and the tool life it is amortized over, which reduces the argument to two answerable questions instead of one figure with a story attached. The toolroom gets pattern and component files with the alloy's own shrinkage already in the geometry. And the 2023 spreadsheet stops being the foundry's memory of what a die costs, which is the part that was quietly costing you money on every job that did not look quite like that one.
Already shipped
Built into PartDFM.
Built into ToolDFM.
Built into ToolDFM.
Built into CostDFM.
Built into CostDFM.
Built into ProcessDFM.
Built into ToolDFM.
Built into ToolDFM.
FAQ
Tool cost comes off this part's own geometry through one block-and-machining model that prices dies, molds, patterns and core boxes alike, reused unmodified across HPDC, permanent-mold, injection and forging. The pattern-and-core-box figure and the die figure therefore rest on the same basis and can be compared directly, which is exactly what a remembered price off an older job with a different cavity layout cannot give you.
Tooling amortizes into the per-piece should-cost curve against a stated tool life rather than sitting on the quote as a lump sum, so both versions of the number come out of one model instead of one number and a hand adjustment. Every cost line traces to a named rate, a posture setting or a rule in the engine, so the buyer can see what the piece price is carrying and over what quantity.
Named lines, not one lump tooling figure. A die or mold quote breaks tooling into die base, slides, gate and runner, trim die and core inserts for the processes that have them — die casting, injection molding and forging, not CNC programming alone — and those lines sum to the tooling total. The total still amortizes into the per-piece curve against a stated tool life, so the breakout answers what the slides cost without moving the number the quote carries.
A report plus mold, pattern and component files export together from the same job, and the pattern geometry carries the published per-alloy shrinkage allowance rather than a figure applied from habit at the bench. The tooling price and the files the toolroom works from therefore come out of one job on one part, instead of a quote in one place and a model somebody re-scaled in another.
Where this fits
You pour metal, and the expensive surprises land late: a section that won't feed, a pattern price someone recalled, a yield nobody scored. Partimation screens the casting before tooling, runs fill and solidification physics on every casting job, prices the pattern into the piece, and quotes on your foundry's rates.
Tool cost is usually a figure someone remembers from the last job that looked like this one. Partimation prices dies, molds, patterns and core boxes through one shared block-and-machining model and amortizes the tool into the per-piece should-cost curve, so the number has a basis you can push back on.
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