One record per one-off machine.

A special purpose machine is built once. Nothing about it repeats cleanly. Design review moves a pneumatic cylinder, a proximity sensor shifts by a few millimetres, and the parts list drifts away from the drawing that reached the fabricator.

Management software for machine builders keeps the specification, drawing revision and bill of materials together for each machine, so fabricator, fitter and buyer read one revision. Tell us how a machine moves from concept to commissioning, and the first record follows those stages.

A customer sends a requirement sheet naming the component to be handled, the cycle time wanted, the safety interlocks and the floor space. You draw a concept and cost the machined plates, the welded frame and bought-out items such as servo drives, LM guides, ball screws, a PLC and a light curtain. The quotation lists payment milestones. Design review fixes the layout after the order.

Frames are fabricated and stress relieved, base plates are milled or surface ground, and fitters assemble the stations, shimming each rail until the carriage runs level. Electricians wire the control panel while the programmer loads ladder logic and builds the HMI screens, so mechanical and electrical stages overlap rather than queue. The machine runs in your shop on the customer’s sample components, and faults seen in the trial are logged and cured before anyone from the customer arrives. The customer then visits, watches the cycle on sample parts, runs the interlock checks and signs the factory acceptance report, which becomes the trigger for the pre-dispatch instalment. The machine is crated. A commissioning engineer then follows the crate to site and runs the site acceptance test once the machine is bolted down and levelled.