QuoteTool was built to solve a problem that every CNC machining shop knows well: the manual quoting process is slow, labour-intensive, and creates friction between shops and their customers. A customer sends a STEP file, waits two days for a quote, and half the time walks away before a price is even discussed.

QuoteTool changes that. By embedding a live quoting widget directly on a shop's website, customers get an indicative price in under 30 seconds — without anyone picking up the phone. The shop stays in control of the final number. The customer gets the transparency they're looking for.

My name is Luc Witke. I am a mechanical engineering student based in the Netherlands, and I built QuoteTool out of a genuine interest in the intersection of manufacturing and software.

Studying mechanical engineering means spending a lot of time around machined parts — learning how they are designed, how they are made, and what drives their cost. I became fascinated by the gap between how straightforward cost estimation is in theory and how painful it remains in practice for most small and mid-sized shops.

QuoteTool started as a personal project to see how accurately part cost could be predicted from geometry alone. The pricing engine is built on academic cost estimation methodology — Boothroyd & Dewhurst, Sandvik cutting data, real Dutch supplier pricing — not on black-box machine learning. Every number has a source.

The goal is to start with the Dutch and Belgian market, work closely with real shops to calibrate the model against actual quotes, and build a product that genuinely earns the trust of the people using it.