Turnkey Finishing Project: What Happens From First Drawing to First Part

A turnkey finishing project—one that ends with a robotic deburring, polishing, or grinding cell running production parts on your floor—moves through six stages: requirement review, sample part trials, proposal and quote, build and integration, factory acceptance test (FAT), and site installation with commissioning and training. Typical clock: inquiry to written quotation typically 3–6 weeks including sample trials, with the quotation itself taking 1–2 weeks once trial results are in for straightforward applications; build and integration 8–20 weeks after order; on-site installation 1–3 weeks. From purchase order to first production parts, most projects measure in months, not years. None are promises—they are the ranges real projects occupy; where yours lands depends on part mix, utilities, and how fast decisions travel on your side.

The last objection between a buyer and a purchase order is rarely the technology. It is the process. What happens after I send drawings? When does money move, and what do I receive at each gate? If you are still weighing whether the project pays for itself at all, that case—cost ledgers, worked examples, payback ranges—is built in the deburring automation ROI guide. This page covers the other half: how the project gets delivered, with deliverables and typical clock at every gate.

The journey in one table:

Stage 1—Requirement Review: The Questions Before the Numbers

If the technology is new to your team, the fundamentals of what robotic deburring actually is are covered elsewhere on this site; here we start where that page ends—you have parts, drawings, a volume target, and a pain you want gone.

Requirement review is an engineering read of your data, not a sales call. Someone goes through your 3D model and 2D drawings and produces a question list, because drawings never tell the whole story: Where do the burrs come from, and how consistent are they part to part? Which edges are cosmetic and which are functional? What tolerance applies to surfaces the tool will touch, and which faces must never be touched? Is the takt per part or per cycle including load and unload? None of it appears on a purchase requisition, and all of it changes the machine.

Your involvement is one technical call, typically 60–90 minutes, plus follow-ups. The output is a feasibility read—this application fits a robotic cell, fits batch equipment, or fits nothing we sell—and the question list, which you keep whether or not you buy from us. Straightforward applications clear this stage in days; high-mix portfolios take 1–2 weeks of sorting.

One red flag, because it is the cheapest screening tool you have: an integrator who quotes from drawings alone, without parts or questions, is not quoting—that document is a guess wearing a quote’s clothing. The reverse holds too. An integrator whose first response is a wall of questions is doing the job you are about to pay for.

Stage 2—Sample Part Trials: The Milestone That De-Risks Everything

Sample trials are where process feasibility gets proven before contract, not after. You ship 5–10 real production parts—real meaning pulled from normal production with their typical burr population, not the five cleanest parts in the tote, a classic and expensive mistake. We run them through tool and abrasive selection, path strategy, and force parameters—first articles inspected, parameters adjusted, confirmation parts re-run.

What comes back is physical: your parts, processed, plus a short brief with the measured cycle time, stock removal, and an honest list of anything that stays manual. That list matters—plenty of applications end up 90 percent automated with one manual touch left on a deep pocket, and knowing it before the contract is worth more than any discount.

On cost, industry practice splits into two tiers. A first-cut trial—one process pass to establish feasibility—is commonly free or nominal, with shipping on your side. Extended development—multi-round parameter studies, full-mix program work across a dozen part numbers—is typically fee-based, frequently credited toward the order if the project proceeds. Exact terms belong in writing before work starts; the pattern is standard.

This stage is the milestone that moves the risk: the cheapest moment to learn a part family belongs in a vibratory bowl, not a robot cell, is before the purchase order. And to be direct about why we insist on parts: without seeing the actual distribution of your burrs, any cycle-time promise is arithmetic on imagination. Sample parts are not procedural bureaucracy—they are the boundary of honest engineering, and an integrator who skips them is telling you something about every promise that follows.

Stage 3—Proposal and Quote: What the Document Should Contain

The quote converts trial results into a commitment. From first inquiry, the quotation itself typically lands in 1–2 weeks once trial results are in; high-mix cells can take 2–4 weeks to scope honestly. Faster is possible. Honest is better.

A real turnkey proposal contains more than a price: a cell layout drawing, a cycle-time calculation traceable to the sample trial, the equipment list (robot, end effectors, spindles, force control, vision if any), the fixture scope with part-family count, a draft of the FAT acceptance criteria, the delivery schedule, and the utilities you must provide. If any of those are missing, the number is not comparable across vendors however similar the totals look.

When you read the quote, the line to interrogate is not the robot. The robot is a commodity with a published price; the money and the risk live in the integration and fixture lines. Two plants automating the same application can receive quotes 3x apart and both be fair—the spread is part families, programs, and tooling scope. The full anatomy of what drives a robotic cell’s price is broken down in the robotic polishing machine price guide, and if you are still assembling your vendor list, the deburring machine for-sale buyers guide covers the market and the sellers in it.

Your role at this stage is challenge, not ceremony. Question the cycle-time assumption, the fixture count, what happens when a new part number arrives in year two. The answers here preview the support you will get after the crate clears your door.

Stage 4—Build and Integration: The Long Middle

This is the stage the schedule actually fears. After purchase order, a single-station cell typically takes 8–12 weeks to build and integrate; dual-station and high-mix cells more commonly run 14–20 weeks; vision-based localization or tight conveyor interfacing can extend past that—work scales with part-family count, not robot size.

Inside those weeks: base, guarding, and fixtures get fabricated; the electrical cabinet gets wired; robot, spindles, and tool changers get mounted; part programs get written; and the line gets internally commissioned—first on trial parts, then on repeats of your samples, reproducing the trial results at machine pace.

Your involvement is parallel, not supervisory. There is a design-freeze confirmation (layout, fixtures, program list—the moment changes stop being free) and typically one or two mid-build checkpoints—a visit or video walkthrough of the assembled cell. Meanwhile your side prepares the floor: power drop, air supply, foundation plan, extraction routing. Utilities finished after delivery is the most common cause of a stalled installation—and entirely within your control. For high-mix fettling work of the kind die casters run—ten-plus part programs called up by barcode—the die casting deburring automation page details that variant and where its schedule risk concentrates.

Stage 5—Factory Acceptance Test: Proving the Cell Before It Ships

FAT happens in our building, on your parts, before anything is loaded onto a truck. You send a batch of acceptance parts from current production, and one to three people: an engineer, a quality rep, and ideally the future cell operator. Attendance runs 2–5 days in typical practice.

The test is defined by the acceptance criteria drafted at quote stage and fixed in the contract: which parameters, measured how, on how many parts. A well-run FAT covers four things:

FAT is a gate with teeth. If the cell misses, the finding is documented, fixed, and retested—nothing ships until the protocol is signed. That signature matters commercially too: FAT pass is the standard trigger for shipment and the next payment milestone, which is why the criteria belong in the contract rather than in goodwill.

Stage 6—Installation, Commissioning, and Training on Your Floor

The cell arrives, gets set in position, leveled, wired to your power and air, and recalibrated; then the FAT programs are restored and re-proven on your floor. On-site work typically runs 1–2 weeks for a single cell and 2–3 weeks for larger or line-fed installations—driven more by your site readiness than by the machine.

Commissioning at your site is the SAT—site acceptance test—and it repeats the FAT measurements under your conditions: your power quality, air supply, real incoming parts with full dimensional spread, operators at the controls. That difference from factory conditions is exactly what SAT exists to catch.

Training is part of the same visit. Operator training—clamping, starting, changeover, alarm response—typically runs one to two days; maintenance training—daily and weekly checks, abrasive changes, spindle care—adds another one to two. Programmer training is available for plants bringing new part numbers in-house. After SAT sign-off, expect a ramp: cells commonly run at 60–70 percent of target output in the first weeks while consumables settle and operators build speed. That ramp is normal, and a written handover says so.

FAT vs. SAT: What Each Acceptance Actually Measures

Both tests carry the word acceptance, and buyers often treat them as duplicates. They measure the same three things—cycle time, part quality, continuous running—in two different worlds. FAT runs in a controlled environment: our utilities, our floor, acceptance parts from a narrow batch. It proves the cell was built and programmed correctly.

SAT runs in yours. Production parts vary more than any trial batch; line voltage sags at 2 p.m. when the press shop peaks; the air dryer is shared with three stations. SAT proves the cell works inside the conditions it will live in, run by the people who will actually run it. Its criteria often carry a short ramp allowance—measured over a defined window after stability, not on day one—because site reality differs from factory reality.

Skipping either test shifts risk to you. Skip the FAT and you find build defects during installation, on your schedule, with production waiting. Skip the SAT and you inherit the gap between trial parts and production parts with no formal moment to close it. Together, the two signatures make “turnkey” a description of risk transfer rather than a marketing adjective.

What You Need to Have Ready

A turnkey project needs a short list of things only you can supply. Prepared early, none of them is hard.

Drawings. 3D STEP models plus 2D drawings stating the edge requirements: which edges, what burr height is acceptable, what surface the customer’s quality department checks. Edge specs that exist only in a veteran operator’s hands are the hardest kind to automate against—write them down.

Sample parts. Five to ten real parts, ideally including a worst case, shipped for the Stage 2 trial and replenished for FAT and SAT. Curated good parts produce optimistic trials and expensive surprises.

Takt and volume. Annual volume, shift pattern, and a takt definition stating whether the number is per part or per cycle including load and unload. A cell quoted against the wrong definition will be “late” forever.

Utilities and space. Three-phase power (380–480 V typical for this class), compressed air at roughly 6 bar with stated flow, floor space with crate access, dust-extraction routing—site works with lead times, so start at Stage 4, not at delivery.

People. One trained loader per shift, and one process owner—part-time is fine—who owns programs, consumables, and uptime. A cell with no internal owner degrades into a manual station with a robot parked in it—close that gap in planning, not in hindsight.

How Payments Are Typically Structured

Payment for a turnkey cell is almost always milestone-based—the money follows the gates described above, so neither side holds all the advantage at any moment. The common shape: a payment at contract or design freeze, the largest at FAT pass, and the balance at SAT sign-off. Splits in the region of 30/40/30 or 40/30/30 recur across the industry, though ratios vary with project size, custom content, and credit terms. Some contracts add a small retainage beyond SAT, released after an agreed production window. A sample-development fee charged at Stage 2 is commonly credited against the order.

These shapes are industry practice, not our quotation. Exact terms are contract-level; ours are stated in writing at quote stage, before signature, so finance reviews them as part of the decision.

After Handover: Spares, Support, and Where We Draw Honest Lines

A finishing cell consumes abrasives, spindle components, and fixture wear parts. The wear-parts list ships with the FAT documentation, and a first spares package sized to your consumption rate is standard practice—on the shelf before it is needed.

Support after SAT runs on two channels. Remote diagnostics over a secure gateway handles most incidents—alarms, parameter questions, program reviews—typically answered same business day, with on-site visits scheduled by region when hands are required. New part numbers and process changes are scoped change orders, not free iterations; we state that plainly, because a support promise with no boundary quietly expires.

That plainness is the point of this page. We ask for sample parts before quoting, put acceptance criteria in writing before building, say no to applications whose economics do not work, and define support boundaries before you need them—four expressions of one principle, the only reliable one in this industry: a vendor who never says no is not a vendor you can trust with a capital request.

If this is the project you want to run, the first step is small: send a drawing package, a part description, and your annual volume and takt through the contact page. The first review carries no fee and no commitment—you keep the feasibility read and the question list either way.

Câu hỏi thường gặp

How long does a turnkey finishing project take from first contact to production parts? Typical ranges: inquiry to quotation 3–6 weeks including sample trials (2–4 weeks longer for high-mix), build and integration 8–20 weeks after purchase order, installation and training 1–3 weeks on site. From purchase order to first production parts, most projects land within 3–6 months. These are typical ranges, not commitments—part mix and site readiness move the number.

What is a FAT, and what happens if the cell fails it? The factory acceptance test proves the cell in the integrator’s building, on your acceptance parts, before shipment: cycle time against the quoted takt, measured part quality, an endurance run typically of 4–8 hours, and safety-function tests. A failed item is documented, corrected, and retested—the cell does not ship until the protocol is signed, and FAT pass normally triggers shipment and the next payment milestone.

What do we need to prepare before requesting a quote? A 3D STEP model and 2D drawings with edge requirements stated, 5–10 real sample parts including a worst case, a takt definition (per part or per cycle, with annual volume and shift pattern), and early planning for utilities—three-phase power, ~6 bar air, floor space, extraction. Staffing one process owner, even part-time, is the preparation projects most often skip and most often regret.

How are payments structured across the project? Milestone-based payment is the industry norm: at contract or design freeze, at FAT pass, and the balance at SAT sign-off, with splits commonly in the 30/40/30 region though they vary by project. Sample-development fees, where charged, are frequently credited against the order. These are common shapes rather than our quotation—binding terms appear in the written proposal and contract.

What support do we get after the cell is running? Standard practice: a wear-parts list and first spares package, remote diagnostics with same-business-day response, regionally scheduled on-site service, and scoped change orders for new part numbers. Exact terms are contract items—get them in writing at quote stage, and treat any support promise without a stated boundary as marketing.