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When you charge more for rush orders, what happens when you shorten standard lead times? No surprise, fewer people pay for faster delivery, but there’s a big upside.

In the last 70 years, technology destroyed, created, and transformed virtually every industry and market worldwide—every market except for manufacturing.

The world is changing quickly, and sheet metal fabrication is changing right along with it. The digital transformation is changing how people design and order sheet metal parts.

Southwest Airlines left thousands stranded over the holidays. For airlines and fabricators alike, the experience proves how risky business can be for manufacturing shops with antiquated software.

Software automation can improve efficiency, minimize production bottlenecks, and decrease downtime in a high-mix shop. What used to take days or weeks could occur nearly instantaneously.

Slip Robotics is transforming the freight industry by increasing delivery speed, improving loading and unloading time, and reducing product damage and work accidents.

Imagine a world in which even the smallest metal fabrication shops could write their own custom software. Thanks to AI, that world might not be too far away.

Cutting and bending a sheet metal part is often much cheaper and faster than other manufacturing alternatives, but it isn't always the first design choice. Why is that? We suspect that people's reservations aren't driven by what is possible, but what is easy. And until recently, getting sheet metal parts wasn't easy.

Columnist Caleb Chamberlain discusses lessons learned in sheet metal nesting and inventory management, and how high-product-mix job shops can better use data.

Kass and Beth Kremer, and Daryl Magner - Co-founders of Sasquatch Expedition Campers - are combining their love for the outdoors with their engineering background to add economic energy to the manufacturing sector in Silverton, CO. Photo by Scott DW Smith, @Imagesmithphoto

OSH Cut CEO Caleb Chamberlain recalls his experience, and ultimate success, in writing production, inventory, and shipping software for his metal fabrication business.

A manufacturing print provides your fabricator a wealth of information, but in the world of digital manufacturing, quoting and manufacturing from a print is expensive and time-consuming. Sometimes using a print makes sense, sometimes it doesn't. Here's why.

As tariffs and reshoring continue to stir uncertainty and volatility, Tim, Caleb, and Lance talk about how fabricators are looking for ways to stay competitive and agile. AI and automation are emerging as powerful tools, with the potential to transform everything from quoting and scheduling to sales and customer service in manufacturing.

OrcaVue, the market leader in the photo booth industry, has revolutionized the event experience with their slow-motion glamor booths. Founded by engineering graduate Daniel Rosenberry and his brother, OrcaVue started as a way to capture captivating moments with just one camera. With a commitment to innovation, customer service, and quality - OrcaVue is set to lead and create more categories within entertainment.

Engineers and analysts in performance racing and financial planning use Monte Carlo simulations and data to predict outcomes of incredibly complicated scenarios. Soon, more fabricators might be doing the same.

This month’s Tech Talk gives a preview of Next-Gen Metal Fab, FMA’s newest podcast, with episodes featuring conversations between Senior Editor Tim Heston and Caleb Chamberlain, founder of Utah-based custom fabricator OSH Cut.

Columnist Caleb Chamberlain backward casts his eye, to quote Robert Burns, and delves into the challenges of moving shop, laying bare the best-laid plans of mice and men.

Digital tech has transformed sheet metal manufacturing, and it is changing sheet metal ordering processes as well. Sheet metal parts can now be ordered quickly and easily, with fast lead-times, lower prices, and minimal overhead.

I believe that manufacturing is perfectly illustrative of how markets are supposed to work. For starters, customers have options. Lots of them. There are tens of thousands of manufacturers in the United States, spanning hundreds of industries, and serving millions of people and companies. Customers have a lot of mobility and power. If my company starts shipping poor-quality products or charging too much, my customers can just go elsewhere. That’s as it should be.

Ignoring deficit spending and tariffs, manufacturing is still poised for dramatic macro change over the next decade. Manufacturing also will remain relatively insulated from AI-driven disruption for the foreseeable future.

Service centers can’t do every kind of work, but large jobs requiring relatively simple value-added services are an easy win. They command enough scale to earn direct-to-mill buying power and can therefore drive prices down far enough to win the big jobs. We need those kinds of efficiencies to help reduce manufacturing costs in the U.S.

The FABRICATOR welcomes its new columnist, Caleb Chamberlain, CEO and co-founder of OSH Cut, a fab shop that, with automated quoting and order processing, exemplifies the metal manufacturing industry’s push toward digitization.

OSH Cut offers automated quoting for flat sheet cutting and bending. The fabricator now is diving into near-instant quoting for laser tube cutting.

Balancing nesting efficiency against limited work-in-process (WIP) is an ongoing challenge for OSH Cut, a high-mix, on-demand sheet metal manufacturing service. So it developed in-house software that balances nesting efficiency against production needs.

Over the next several weeks, OSH Cut will be rolling out expanded bending capabilities. This will allow larger side and return flanges, as well as multiple bend radius options.

You can do a lot with metal sheet and plate. Once you see what is possible, it may change everything about how you design. Here are four reasons you should consider using sheet metal for your next design.

Manufacturing supply chains can’t be overhauled overnight. Even so, U.S. manufacturers that leverage software automation could make the process a little less painful.

After months of working through numerous tube bending challenges, we’ve designed customer-facing software that simulates rotary draw tube bending tailored for specific bend dies, mandrels, and other tooling we have available.

In the digital age, advertising can be tracked and measured. How manufacturing shops and other metal fabricators use that data can make or break a marketing program.

The Silicon Valley mantra of “move fast and break things” might not apply everywhere in custom metal fabrication, especially when it comes to new equipment. Columnist Caleb Chamberlain just found this out the hard way with a tube laser.

Labor shortages have been an ongoing problem for manufacturers even before the "great resignation." OSH Cut observed that pattern, and found a simple solution: if you want talented adults to stick around, you have to pay a living wage, regardless of what the industry averages might be.

Young people are primed to expect a different experience from manufacturers. This is the age of Amazon. Speed, accessibility, and simplicity are the new normal. This is obviously true for consumer products, but young people are bringing their expectations into businesses as well.

In this year-end episode of Next-Gen Metal Fab, Tim Heston sits down with All Metals Fabricating’s Lance Thrailkill and OSH Cut CEO Caleb Chamberlain to unpack a wildly unpredictable 2025 in metal fabrication.

Fabricators used to buy software in a box. Today, they turn to the cloud. And in the near future, AI tools will change how we interact with computers in ways impossible to foresee.

Software has allowed complex organizations to manage production more efficiently at scale. Offline programming and simulation make programming equipment more efficient and predictable. On the balance, it’s safe to say that today’s manufacturers are far more productive than they were just a few decades ago.

Just because you can draw it in CAD doesn’t mean you can make it. Columnist Caleb Chamberlain imagines a world where this isn’t the case.

Successful companies are very good at cutting the waste. Two huge causes of waste in an organization are overproductions and excess inventory. Utilizing on-demand metal fabrication can significantly reduce the amount of inventory a company needs to have on-hand and streamline other production processes. Technology and software-enabled shops are paving the way to revolutionize the industry.

Caleb and Jacom Chamberlain, both engineers, needed precision sheet metal parts cut and bent, but found it difficult to find vendors to do the job. So they started OSH Cut to make it easier for themselves and others. OSH Cut now offers precision blank cutting and bending services, shipping all over the US.

In the aftermath of COVID, steel prices exploded, peaking 2.5x higher than before the pandemic. But starting at the end of 2021, prices started falling again. After a brief spike at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, we are approaching levels not seen since 2020.

We built our sheet metal service to meet the needs of shops, contractors, and engineering companies. Here's how we've changed, and where we are going.

Transforming Innovation: How Zack Nelson's DIY Electric Humvee Showcases the Power of Custom Fabrication and Sheet Metal

There has recently been an increase in new startups brokering manufacturing services. It's an exciting trend, but as direct manufacturers take advantage of software and automation to improve customer experience, brokers will have a difficult time staying competitive.

I just used an AI agent to write a custom app for my shop. It took less than two hours.

Explore how on-demand sheet metal fabrication revolutionizes manufacturing for OEMs, offering unmatched flexibility, reduced costs, faster prototyping, and superior quality—all essential for staying competitive in today's dynamic market.

Aside from quality, supply chain, personnel, compliance, and hosts of other complexities, scheduling alone is complicated for many manufacturing businesses. So how is one Utah-based metal fabrication shop tackling the high-mix scheduling problem? OSH Cut Founder/CEO Caleb Chamberlain explains in his latest column.

Healthcare.gov’s disastrous rollout tells metal manufacturers what to avoid when looking into software, its quality, and how it was developed.