Services

Anderson’s Custom runs two lines of work. They share a set of people, a way of quoting, and a preference for solving the problem in front of us rather than the one that fits our tooling.

Technology consulting

Software work for teams that have outgrown the way they were building. That is usually one of a few shapes:

Architecture and technical due diligence. An outside read on a system: where it breaks as it grows, what the current design costs to keep running, and which of the things worrying you are worth money to fix. Useful before an acquisition, before a rewrite, and before you commit to a platform you will live with for five years.

Platform and developer experience. The build is slow, the deploys are frightening, and everyone has learned to work around it. This is the work of making the boring parts boring again: reproducible builds, deployments that are not events, and environments that behave the same way twice.

Build versus buy. The decision is rarely about licence cost. It is about who maintains the thing in three years, and that argument is easier to have with someone who has maintained both.

Fractional technical leadership. For teams that need the judgement of a senior developer without a full-time hire. Technical direction, hiring support, and being the person who says which of the six urgent things is first.

Additive manufacturing

Plastic parts, made properly, in quantities that do not justify a mould.

Prototypes. The common case: you need to hold the thing before committing to it. Printed parts turn a CAD argument into a physical one, usually within days, and one iteration with a real part in hand is worth several without.

Short-run and bridge production. Injection moulding is excellent and its tooling is expensive. Between “a handful” and “enough to pay off a tool” there is a gap, and additive fills it, bridge production included: parts that keep a product shipping while the tooling is cut.

Jigs, fixtures and tooling. Some of the highest-value printing anyone does, and the least glamorous. A fixture that holds a part at the right angle pays for itself in a morning, and it does not need to be beautiful.

Design for additive. Printing a part designed for machining usually works and usually costs more than it should. A review before anything goes on a machine catches the unsupported overhangs, the walls that are thinner than the nozzle, and the tolerances that want to be a post-process rather than a print setting.

Materials and process

The shop works in thermoplastics. Which one depends on what the part has to do, and the honest answer is usually a trade rather than a winner:

Layer height, wall count and infill are chosen per job rather than per shop default. A bracket that carries load and a housing that only has to look right are not the same part, and pricing them identically would be a way of overcharging for one and under-delivering on the other.

What we will not take on

Some jobs we turn down, and say so rather than take them. Parts where a printed plastic component is the wrong answer and a machined or moulded one is right. Anything load-bearing where failure hurts someone, unless people qualified to test it are going to test it. Firearm components. Food or medical contact parts, which need material traceability and a process discipline this shop does not claim.