Every LinkedIn post from Lupton Associates and Joe Guadagnino, newest first. Each one links to the original.
Joe walks through the processes our shops run, from sheet metal and stampings to castings, molded plastics, cable and board assemblies, and machined parts, prototype to production. Send the drawing and we find the right shop.
A short video on what we build for OEMs in data center and power equipment, medical devices, heavy trucks, defense and industrial systems, and the one ask: send us the drawing.
Every liquid-cooled rack is a plumbing job: cold plates, quick disconnects, manifolds and CDUs, most of them machined, stamped, brazed and wired by shops the chip side never hears about.
September's ISM report shows backlogs up 4.6 points and supplier deliveries slower for 10 straight months. Your supplier's price is probably fine; their date might not be, so line up a second source early.
Eaton's new Arkansas enclosure facility is a signal for anyone buying fabricated parts for power and data center equipment: the sourcing conversation, revision, fit dimensions, finish and volume, needs to start earlier.
Why our new video puts the year on screen and lets it sit: buyers want the part right, on time, and a team that still picks up the phone next year.
Send the drawing, material, volume and timing.
From Google to Lupton: reading Project Suncatcher as a parts story, with machined housings, stamped brackets, formed heat plates and tested harnesses behind every TPU in orbit.
Send the drawing, material, annual volume and timing, and get a straight answer on lead time up front across sheet metal, machining, molding, PCBAs and cable assemblies.
Lead time promised at 6 weeks, now 14. How we handle it: drawing, material, volume and timing in, a straight answer on quote timing and lead time before the PO.
We take working prototypes into stamping, fabrication, machining, molding and electronic assembly, and quote them directly.
AI CAD, desktop printers and cheap board runs make prototyping easy for new hardware founders. Production still means redesigning for stamping, molding or machining, with real tolerances, tooling and lead times.
32% of U.S. contract manufacturers are quoting reshoring projects, double last year, and 63% of OEMs plan U.S. capital spend in 2026 or 2027.
Up from 29%, and we see it too: more prints coming in for work that used to ship from overseas. The work lands with the shop that can confirm fit, capacity and lead time the same week.
Remembering the lives lost and thanking the firefighters, police officers, EMS professionals and all who continue to serve.
A UTV program needed six stamped structural components; tooling took 2 to 3 weeks and parts were on the welding line 3 weeks after kickoff, by matching each part to the right process.
When the same bracket, cover or enclosure keeps becoming the problem part, bring us the drawing, finish, quantities and date, and we review another source.
Start with the drawing: a tolerance that could open up, a finish the application no longer needs, a material worth revisiting. One of the ideas in September's Over The Wire.
September's Over The Wire covers second-source planning, cost reduction, Q4 quoting, and Armstrong RM's prototype and low-volume capabilities.
A bracket cut, formed and coated at three different shops has nobody who owns the fit. Joe walks through what changes when the part never leaves the building.
Thanks to the skilled people across our manufacturers, our customers and the Lupton team who keep the working world moving.
Sabrina joins Lupton Associates as Finance Manager, bringing experience in corporate accounting, financial reporting, cash management and payroll.
Three POs, three lead times, three quality systems, and a tolerance argument nobody owns. The fix is fewer hands on the part.
What day eleven of a supplier gone quiet looks like, and why the second-source hunt is the part we have already done.
Lead time is honest when the shop already runs your part family, an engineer reviewed the print before quoting, and you talk to the project manager after the PO.
A $12.9B model library shows where demand is heading, and every rack behind it needs chassis, bus bars, harnesses, panels and machined cooling parts.
A multi-billion East Austin plant for Amazon's robotics systems. The software gets the press; the chassis, enclosures, brackets, stampings and harnesses still have to get made.
$76B+ in submarine awards and $3B+ in munitions frameworks all run on sub-tier machined components, stampings, weldments and harnesses.
Navy submarine awards, multiyear munitions frameworks and open Army test ranges: the next 18 months separate OEMs with qualified domestic suppliers from OEMs explaining delays.
The gap is knowing which shops can genuinely scale. If a program needs to ramp, share drawings, details, volume and timing.
Oliver Wyman surveyed 160+ suppliers: Tier 2 and below is the thinnest layer, uncertainty is stalling investment, and buyers pay a “trust tax” in buffers.
Sourcing for a build this size is decided years before the ribbon cutting: brackets, enclosure panels, harnesses, machined parts, castings and tooling.
SpaceX and Tesla's Grimes County chip plant would be 100 million square feet. Before it makes a wafer it needs frames, panels, brackets, bus bars and cable.
Clean drawings, real volumes, six days of silence. Send us the drawings and get a direct factory quote path in days, not weeks.
Lead times are stretching and steel, aluminum and electronic components are tight. OEMs who wait until Q4 to line up capacity will get lead times they don't like.
June durable goods rose 0.3% to $334.8 billion, up three of the last four months, with $1.59 trillion promised and not yet shipped.
Behind data center CapEx are brackets, housings, bus bars, harnesses and sheet-metal enclosures, and the real question is who can run them, hold tolerance and hit the date.
CSIS and a PwC/AIA survey say the shops under the primes have to scale. The bottleneck is getting drawings in front of the right shop fast enough.
$557B in backlog at the top three primes, and the constraint is qualified processes, sub-tier capacity and parts that ship on time.
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