Obsolete part replacement, manufactured in metal
The component is out of production, the drawings never existed or went with the company that made them, and the machine is standing. We measure what you have, establish what it was made from, produce a drawing you own, and see the replacement manufactured. Quantity of one is fine.
Five situations, one problem: the part cannot be bought
The OEM has stopped making it, or stopped trading
The machine is fine. The part is out of the catalogue, the equivalent does not fit, and any drawings went with the company.
The lead time is unacceptable
The part exists, at sixteen weeks. Your machine does not have sixteen weeks.
The only one you have is broken
You have the pieces, or a part worn well past its original dimensions, and no reference for what it should be.
There was never a drawing
It was made from a pattern, a sample or somebody’s judgement, and nothing was written down.
You need a second source
One supplier, one part number, no alternative — and your name against that risk on a register somewhere.
Most UK reverse engineering hands you a CAD file and wishes you luck
There are two kinds of firm in this market and neither solves the whole problem. Scanning bureaux measure your part beautifully and deliver a model — at which point finding somebody to make one, in the right material, to the right fits, is your problem again. Obsolete parts specialists mostly find old stock; when the stock has gone, so has the answer.
The handover between them is where jobs fail. The bureau does not know what the part has to do. The machinist does not know which dimensions came off a worn surface. Nobody owns the question of whether the finished component fits.
Measurement, material work, the drawing and the first article — one price, one organisation accountable for the part fitting. Elsewhere those are three quotations from three suppliers that stack, and the cheapest of them is only the first step.
From the part in your hand to the part on the machine
You are told what we found at each stage, including when what we found was inconvenient.
Assess before you commit
Send photographs and tell us what the part does. We say whether this is straightforward, difficult or a bad idea before anyone raises a purchase order. Some enquiries end here, with the part still available from a distributor for less than our engineering would cost. That is a good outcome.
Measure, and record what is worn
Dimensional inspection with every measured feature recorded against what it does. Damage, wear and previous repairs are noted rather than averaged away.
Establish the material
This is the question that decides whether the replacement lasts: a visually identical component in the wrong grade will fit perfectly and fail early. We work from duty, environment and hardness, and where it matters, independent chemical analysis. The drawing states whether the grade was tested or inferred.
Recover design intent, and draw it
Measuring a worn part to three microns tells you what it is now, not what it was designed to be. Functional dimensions — fits, registers, sealing faces, threads — are toleranced for duty; everything else gets a stated general tolerance and no false precision. To BS 8888, in DXF, DWG, STEP, PDF, and yours. How this judgement is made
Manufacture
Cut, folded, welded, machined and finished, or placed with a specialist supplier where the process warrants it. You are told which before you order.
Inspect, and leave a route to the next one
Dimensional report against the drawing, material certification where it was specified, and the drawing package archived so a repeat order is a purchase order rather than a project. If it does not fit, that is ours to put right.
If the part is safety-critical, the conversation changes
A guard interlock bracket, a lifting component or a pressure-retaining part is not a reverse engineering exercise with a certificate stapled to it. For those we agree in advance what evidence is required — material certification to EN 10204, batch traceability, the inspection regime, who is signing off the duty, and whether replacing the component affects the conformity of the machine it goes into.
Sometimes the answer is that we should not be the ones making it. We would rather say so than take the order.
In order of usefulness
Most enquiries start with the first item and nothing else.
- Photographs
- The part from several angles with a rule or vernier in shot, and one picture of where it sits in the machine.
- The mating part
- Often the most valuable item of all, because it defines the fits the replacement has to achieve.
- What it does
- Load, speed, temperature, what it bolts to, what happens when it fails. This drives tolerancing more than any measurement.
- Anything written down
- An old purchase order, a parts-list extract, a photograph of a plate. Partial documentation is still documentation.
- The real deadline
- Not the comfortable one. If the machine is down we plan the job differently.
Straight answers
Usually. A broken part is often easier than a worn one, because the fracture surfaces still carry the original geometry. Worn parts need more judgement: we are recovering what the component was when it was made, not reproducing its current condition. Copying a worn part gives you a replacement already part-way through its life on the day it is fitted.
If you have two, send both. How we recover a nominal from a worn feature
Not to start. Photographs with a rule or vernier in shot, plus a picture of where it sits in the machine, are usually enough to tell you whether this is worth pursuing. For anything with fits, threads or complex geometry we will need the part in our hands — and if it is still bolted into a running machine, we will talk about when it can come out, or come to it.
Yes. Quantity of one is the normal case here, not an awkward exception. The engineering work is the same whether you order one or forty, so the first part carries most of the cost — worth knowing if you have three identical machines.
Laser cutting, CNC punching and folding, steel fabrication, MIG, TIG and spot welding, and CNC and manual machining. That covers most fabricated and machined components.
It does not cover everything. Castings, forgings, gear cutting, heat treatment, plating and specialist coatings are placed with specialist suppliers we manage, and we tell you which parts of your job are which before you order.
For a component you are reproducing to keep your own equipment running, you are in the territory UK design law most clearly accommodates — the interface geometry that makes a part fit is the part of a design least likely to attract protection. If you intend to make parts to sell, that is a different question and deserves proper advice first. We raise this at enquiry stage rather than at invoice stage. The full position, and where to stop and take advice
Send us a photograph of the part.
That is the whole first step. No specification, no drawing, no purchase order — a photograph and a line about what the part does. We reply within one working day with whether we can help, and if we cannot, who else to try.