A gun-drilling service offer can cover a drilling operation, a sequence of machining operations or a delivered component with agreed inspection. Establish that scope before comparing price or a supplier’s general capability statement.
Read the offered work precisely
TBT’s contract-drilling page offers single-part and series work, with accompanying machining operations. This verifies a published service scope. It does not independently establish that a particular quoted component meets its drawing, or rank the supplier against competitors.
Identify which operations the proposal includes and the state in which the component is delivered. A bore drilled before subsequent milling, threading or finishing may need to be assessed against a different intermediate requirement from the final drawing. Retain who supplies the starting material and which condition it must have.
Make inspection part of the comparison
List the required bore characteristics and ask what evidence the quote includes for each. Diameter, datum-related geometry and surface texture are distinct deliverables. A general promise of “high precision” does not identify the measured region, evaluation method or supplied report.
Novacam’s bore-metrology page illustrates an offered optical architecture with point-cloud and evaluated feature outputs. It does not imply that a prospective drilling service uses that equipment, nor that that architecture is required for every drawing. Compare the proposed method and accessible coverage to the actual requirement.
Normalize the unit being quoted
For an assumed component with several bores, a per-hole drilling price and a per-accepted-part delivered price use different denominators. Identify setup, supplied material, additional operations, inspection and the treatment of nonconforming output. Do not count a partly accepted component as several accepted delivered parts simply because individual holes passed.
The quote’s stated acceptance unit should match the delivery decision. Where alternative inspection scopes are offered, describe their difference before treating a lower price as an equivalent proposal.
Ask for a comparable response
The RFQ worksheet below collects the drawing, material condition, bore identities, quantity and acceptance requirements. It supports a concrete response without inventing a supplier score or an unverified capability benchmark.
Read quality control to define the inspection link and the quotation article to check the commercial scope. A useful selection rests on the proposed work and identifiable evidence; the public service pages alone cannot supply the actual part’s acceptance result.
Revision note
October 8, 2026: revised the technical explanation and connected reading after source review. Original publication date and URL retained.
