In this episode, Justin Gray (CTO at Toolpath) sits down with James Dyer (Accurate Dial and Nameplate) and Jon Rabinowitz (The Shop Inc.) to talk about the painful, confusing, and occasionally hilarious world of quoting CNC jobs.

This one’s for the machinists who:

• Feel like every quote they write is a shot in the dark

• Have been burned by material costs, missed features, or surprise inspection demands

• Use slitting saws, glue and tape, or even manual mills to solve wild quoting puzzles

• Are trying to raise prices without losing customers (or their minds)

We get real about:

• Quoting mistakes (and the weird lessons learned)

• Setup strategies for weird parts—including a $2,000 block of PEEK

• Expediting nightmares, tooling tricks, and the soft jaw rabbit hole

• Whether automation, zero-point systems, or tape-and-glue workholding actually change how you price jobs

• When to send a “go away” quote—and when it backfires

Plus: the story behind Toolpath’s “question mark bracket,” how to keep a part flat with a spider crane and rollers, and the surprising math behind quoting scrap.