What we need to quote your job fast

Send these five things with every job

• →1. The file. Vector, clean, quote-ready — see the DXF file preparation guide for what "clean" means.
• →2. Material and thickness. Tell us the material and the thickness in mm (e.g. 3 mm cast acrylic, 4 mm ACM). If you're not sure which material suits, say what the job is and where it's going and we'll steer it.
• →3. Quantity. How many of each part. Quantity changes the price and the schedule, so it's the one to get right up front.
• →4. Finish. Cut only, or cut plus engrave/score? Edges as-cut, or polished? Any masking to stay on? Tell us what matters.
• →5. Where it's going and when. Pickup or delivery, and any deadline. If it's an outdoor or coastal job, say so — it affects the material call (see the outdoor materials guide).

Units and scale — the most common trap

• →Draw and supply at 1:1, in millimetres.
• →A surprising number of files come in scaled, or in the wrong units, and a part that should be 300 mm arrives as 300 inches or 30 mm. We'll catch the obvious ones, but it costs a round-trip to confirm. Set your document units to mm and draw real-size.

What the machines can and can't hold

Every cutting process has a point where fine detail stops surviving the material. These are general rules of thumb — the exact limit depends on the material, the thickness and the process, and we'll confirm anything marginal before we cut.

• →Fine detail scales with thickness. As a rough guide, thin webs and small features shouldn't be much narrower than the material is thick, or they get fragile and can snap or distort. The thicker the stock, the chunkier the smallest safe detail.
• →Small text and fine lines. Very fine text often engraves better than it cuts — tiny cut-out letters can char or fall out. If text is small, consider engraving it rather than cutting through.
• →Internal corners on routed parts carry a radius. A router bit is round, so inside corners come out with a radius equal to the bit — you can't rout a perfectly sharp internal corner. Laser cutting holds much tighter internal corners. If sharp inside corners matter, that points to laser (and a laser-suitable material).
• →Small holes and narrow slots in thick material can be tricky and may need a minimum size. Flag them and we'll confirm.

Stencils and floating centres

• →If you're cutting a stencil, or any letter with an enclosed centre — O, A, P, e, and so on — the middle is a separate floating piece and will fall out unless it's held.
• →Add bridges (small tabs) to connect those centres to the surrounding material, or the design won't survive as a stencil.

Cut, engrave or score — keep them separate

• →If the job has more than one operation — cut through, engrave a logo, score a fold line — separate them in the file so it's unambiguous which line does what. The DXF guide covers how we like layers and colours set up.

Not sure it'll hold?

Send it. We'd rather look at marginal detail and tell you before we cut than have a part come off the machine fragile or charred. If something won't hold at the size or in the material you've picked, we'll flag it and suggest the fix — a different process, a slightly heavier line, or engraving instead of cutting.

The short version

Five things every time: file, material + thickness, quantity, finish, and destination + deadline. Draw at 1:1 in mm. Keep fine detail sensible for the thickness, bridge your stencil centres, and separate cut from engrave. Do that and the quote's fast and the cut lands right first time.