10 to 1,000 pieces, machined in the United States — the bridge between a proven prototype and full production, without big-shop minimums or tooling you don't need yet.
There is a gap between prototype machining and full production that many shops handle badly. Your design is validated. You need 25 pieces for a pilot build, then 150 for launch, then maybe 600 next year — and you need each lot to match the last one, at a price that doesn't assume you're amortizing tooling over ten thousand parts. Large production shops answer with minimums and tooling charges sized for a program you don't have yet. Prototype houses answer with one-off pricing on every lot. Low volume CNC production, done right, is its own discipline.
Quick Brown Fox Solutions quotes 10 to 1,000 pieces as the primary job, not the leftover. Programs, setup sheets, and inspection plans are built once and maintained, so lot two costs less than lot one and lot five matches lot one. All work runs through our ISO 9001:2015 certified production network in the United States, with QBF as your single point of contact and accountability — UEI MA3DSJEPMFQ8, CAGE 201W8, SAM-registered.
Fixturing is where low volume quotes go wrong in both directions. Some shops bury a fixture charge in the piece price and you pay production tooling on a 40-piece order. Others skip fixturing entirely and eat the cost as scrap and rework. Our approach is to show the math: most parts in this quantity band run on soft jaws, vise work, collets, and standard modular workholding — no dedicated tooling line at all. When a dedicated fixture would genuinely cut cycle time or hold a tolerance more reliably, it appears as its own line on the quote with the break-even quantity stated, so you decide whether to invest now or when volumes justify it.
The same honesty applies to the make-versus-wait question. If your quantities are heading toward steady releases, we will tell you when a blanket order under contract starts beating lot-by-lot purchasing, and when it doesn't yet.
Low volume work runs across the full network cell: 3-axis VMCs with envelopes to X 32.5 inch / Y 20.5 inch / Z 20.1 inch for plates, housings, and brackets; a full 5-axis machining center with a 19-inch trunnion table and 18,000 RPM spindle carrying 60 tools for complex geometry in fewer setups; live-tooled lathes with 1.625 to 3.05 inch spindle bores for turned parts with cross features; and 5-, 7-, and 9-axis Swiss-type platforms with .812 to 1.50 inch bar capacity where a hundred small turned parts can run bar-fed and unattended. Routine tolerances are plus/minus .0002 inch with plus/minus .0001 inch repeatability where the print demands it.
Common materials in this band are aluminum 6061 and 7075, stainless steels, carbon and alloy steels, brass, and engineering plastics. Material certs follow every lot.
In the 10-to-1,000 band, the drawing is rarely frozen. A boss grows, a hole moves, a tolerance loosens after the pilot build teaches you something. Because programs and setup documentation are maintained per revision, a change between lots is a program edit, a setup-sheet update, and a first-article verification against the new revision — not a from-scratch re-quote with a new learning curve. We flag which changes are free, which cost a little, and which quietly change the part's process (a tolerance that moves a feature from milled to ground, for example) before you release the lot.
This is the cadence robotics, drone and UAV, and R&D teams live on: build, learn, revise, release.
Send the drawing or model, material and any acceptable alternates, and — most usefully — two or three quantity brackets you actually foresee (say 25 / 100 / 500). Quoting the brackets together shows you where setup amortization bends the curve and lets you place the order size that makes sense. Note required certs (material, C of C, FAI) up front; adding them later re-opens the quote. The RFQ guide covers the full package, or start from the quote request page.
Cost in this band is driven by setup count per part, tolerance where it isn't needed (see our tolerance guide), material choice, and inspection burden. The cheapest part is the one whose print asks tightly only for what the function requires.
Roughly 10 to 1,000 pieces per order — above one-off prototyping, below the quantities where dedicated fixturing and long unattended runs dominate the economics. It is the range where a design is proven but demand has not yet justified hard production tooling.
Only when a fixture genuinely earns its keep. Many low volume parts run on soft jaws, vises, and standard workholding at no dedicated tooling cost. When a fixture would cut piece price enough to matter, we quote it as a separate line so you can see the break-even quantity yourself and decide.
Yes — revision agility is the point of low volume work. Programs and setup sheets are maintained per revision, so a dimension change between releases means a program edit and a first-article verification, not a re-quote from scratch.
One-offs and first articles before the volume ramp begins.
Blanket orders and scheduled releases when demand steadies.
Scaled lot quantities with repeatable fixturing and lead-time discipline.
The full Quick Brown Fox Solutions service line.
