What to send when you ask a forging shop for a quote
Five items that turn a two-week quoting loop into a two-day one.
Most quoting delays are not the supplier being slow. They are the supplier waiting on information that was never sent.
The five things
A 3D model, not just a PDF. STEP or IGES. The 2D drawing tells us what you will inspect; the model tells us whether it forges.
The drawing with tolerances and datums. Which features are critical matters more than the overall size. A shop that knows your datum scheme can forge closer to net shape.
Alloy and temper. 6061-T6 and 6082-T6 behave differently in the die. If the alloy is still open, say so — sometimes a small change makes the part far cheaper to produce.
Annual volume and order pattern. Tooling amortisation is most of the price difference between 2,000 and 50,000 pieces a year.
Where it goes in the assembly. This is the one people skip, and it is the one that most often saves money. Knowing the function lets us suggest a geometry change that keeps performance and removes a machining operation.
What comes back
With those five, a feasibility answer takes about two days: whether it forges, roughly what tooling it needs, and an indicative piece price.