PROCESS TRAVELER

“Specify the part. See the routing.”

Pick a manufacturing process for your part,
and see why the others don’t fit.

for: for injection molding, CNC machining, closed-die forging, SLS 3D printing, or sheet metal fabrication.

Start a recommendation

01 / What it does

Reasoning,
not a verdict.

Ranked recommendations

Nine candidate processes, checked against your material, volume, tolerance, geometry and awkward features. What survives is ranked by unit cost, with near-ties broken on lead time.

Every rejection explained

Nothing is quietly dropped. Each ruled-out process names the rule it failed and the capability number behind it — ±0.1 mm required against an as-forged ±0.5 mm, and so on.

Break-even economics

Unit cost is (tooling + setup) / Q + variable(Q). Crossovers are solved numerically for your inputs instead of quoting one rule-of-thumb volume.

Sourced, labelled data

Every figure is marked as a typical published range or an illustrative estimate, with its citation. Where sources disagree, a low / typical / high toggle lets you test both ends.

02 / The tool

Specify
the part.

Routing

03 / Break-even

Where the
lines cross.

Unit cost against volume for every process that passes the hard rules. Drag the quantity slider to move the marker.

DWGBREAK-EVEN
ScaleLOG-LOG
Ref part100–300 g
NoteRejected-by-rule processes are not plotted. ◆ marks the recommendation at your Q.

Crossovers among the top three

    04 / Full comparison

    All nine,
    side by side.

    Every process against every criterion for the requirements you set above. The winning column is highlighted.

    05 / Verified scenarios

    Cases it
    gets right.

    Three textbook answers a manufacturing engineer would give without hesitating. Pick one to load it into the tool.

    06 / Data & sources

    Labelled,
    or it doesn’t count.

    07 / About

    Ready to pick
    a process?

    Process Traveler takes the five questions a manufacturing engineer asks first — material, volume, tolerance, geometry, awkward features — and routes a part through nine candidate processes. It ranks what works, rules out what doesn’t, and shows every number behind both.

    It is meant as decision support: it explains the trade-off so you can argue with it, rather than hiding the answer behind a quiz. Decision support, not a quote — figures are ranges for a ~100–300 g reference part.

    Start a recommendation

    Scope
    Manufacturing DFM
    Stack
    Vanilla JS, no dependencies
    Data
    ~30 cited sources
    Built by
    Ayman Khayat
    Source
    GitHub

    About this project

    What it is

    Process Traveler takes the five questions a manufacturing engineer asks first (material, volume, tolerance, geometry, awkward features) and routes a part through nine candidate processes. It ranks what works, rules out what doesn’t, and shows every number behind both.

    What it demonstrates

    • DFM reasoning. Hard rules come from how each process physically works: a cutter can’t reach a sealed channel, a forging die has to split at the parting line, a mold core has to come out.
    • Cost modelling with amortized tooling. Unit cost = (tooling + setup) / Q + variable(Q), where variable cost falls from a small-lot price toward a volume price.
    • Break-even analysis. Crossovers are solved numerically (bisection on log Q), per input set, instead of quoting one rule-of-thumb volume.
    • Transparent data confidence. Every figure is labelled as a typical published range or an illustrative estimate, with its source.

    Why it was built

    Built by Ayman Khayat as a portfolio piece, with the source on GitHub. It is meant as decision support: it explains the trade-off so you can argue with it, rather than hiding the answer behind a quiz.

    How the model works

    1. Each process checks material, tolerance capability, geometry and features against hard rules. Any failure rules it out, and every reason is kept with the input and the capability number.
    2. Penalties (tight tolerance, 5-axis work, side actions, cores) multiply the variable or tooling cost.
    3. Injection mold tooling covers the run at the lowest cost: for each SPI class it buys ceil(Q / tool life) molds (105 aluminium: 10k shots, 104 P20: 50k, 103: 250k, 101: 1M+) and keeps the cheapest. Sheet metal takes the cheaper of laser + brake and progressive stamping at each Q.
    4. A feasible process costing more than 4× the best at your Q is ruled out as uneconomic.
    5. The rest are ranked by unit cost; near-ties (within 1%) go to the shorter lead time.

    Limitations

    • One reference part: roughly 100–300 g, ~100 mm envelope. Bigger or smaller parts shift every curve.
    • Figures are ranges collapsed to one line; the tooling toggle shows the spread for the tooling term only.
    • This is not a quote. Suppliers, regions, alloys and resins move prices a lot.
    • Out of scope: MIM, die casting, metal AM, extrusion, thermoforming, secondary operations and finishing.