Who you would be working with
About
A custom solutions shop that does software consulting and additive manufacturing, and why those two things sit together rather than apart.
Anderson’s Custom is a small custom solutions shop. Small is the point: the person who quotes the work is the person who does it, and nothing gets handed to an account manager on the way through.
Why both halves
The two lines of work look unrelated until you have done both. They are the same job at different scales.
A software system and a printed part fail for the same reasons. Somebody guessed at a tolerance, somebody made the wrong step faster, somebody designed for the happy path and met the real one later. The habits that catch those problems carry straight across: version control, staged changes, testing the thing you are going to ship rather than a model of it, and writing down why a decision was made. All of that is as useful in front of a printer as in front of a repository.
It also means a project does not have to be handed across a gap. Hardware that needs firmware, a fixture that needs a jig designed around a process, a prototype that needs a control board and an enclosure that fits it. Those are the jobs where a shop that does one half spends its time coordinating instead of building.
How we work
Plain quotes. A written scope and a price up front, with the things that would move it named. If a job turns out to be bigger than quoted, we say so when we find out, not when we invoice.
Straight answers about fit. Turning down work we are wrong for is cheaper for everyone than taking it and finding the problem in week three. If a part wants to be machined, or a project needs a full-time team rather than outside help, we say that.
Work in the open. You see progress as it happens. Changes get discussed while they are still cheap, which is the only time changes are cheap.
Finish properly. Parts ship with notes on what to watch. Code ships with enough written down that the next person can pick it up. The measure of the work is whether it holds up once we are not in the room.
Where we are
The shop takes work remotely and ships parts. Consulting happens wherever the team is, which is usually a video call and now and then a visit, when the problem is easier to understand in person.