From Carbide Boring Bars to Metal 3D Printing: My Xometry Experience as a Buyer and Supplier

It was a Tuesday afternoon in Q2 2024 when I got an email that made me cancel a $4,200 purchase order.

I've been the procurement manager at a 42-person industrial equipment company for six years. My annual fabrication budget is roughly $180,000. I've negotiated with more than 30 vendors, tracked every invoice in our procurement system, and built a TCO spreadsheet that I trust more than my own memory. My rule is simple: total cost, not unit price. Setup fees, material handling, quality paperwork, expedite charges—all of it gets added to the quote before I compare anything.

So when our manufacturing engineer forwarded a Xometry quote, I almost deleted the email.

The Carbide Boring Bar That Started It All

We needed six custom boring bar carbide tools for a specialty holder. If you've ordered these before, you know they aren't off-the-shelf. The carbide grade, the shank diameter, the bushing, the angle—everything depends on the machine and the part.

Our usual supplier quoted $312 per bar plus a $150 setup fee. Total: $2,022. Lead time: three weeks.

A different vendor quoted $288 per bar with no setup fee. I almost signed. Then I read the full quote. They added a $68 material handling charge and a $120 quality documentation fee. Total: $1,916. The setup was free, but the paperwork wasn't.

Everyone told me to read every line before approving a quote. I only believed it after a 'free setup' turned into a hidden cost. Not ideal, but workable. I had to explain it to my boss, which is never a good use of a Tuesday.

Our manufacturing engineer sent the same bar model to Xometry. 'Just upload the CAD and get a quote,' she said. 'It's instant.'

I rolled my eyes. Instant quotes are usually just parametric pricing for simple brackets, not custom carbide tooling with tolerances measured in tenths.

I uploaded the part anyway. Within a minute, I had a number: $268 per bar. No setup fee. No material handling charge. The only add-on was $32 shipping.

When I compared the two quotes side by side, I finally understood why the details matter so much. The specialist's base price looked reasonable; the fees were the actual cost. The Xometry quote was fully itemized, with the carbide grade and tolerance called out on the same screen.

I placed the order. Even after hitting confirm, I kept second-guessing. What if the bars showed up with a different edge prep than the print? The ten days until delivery were stressful.

They showed up on day eight. I measured three of them myself before signing the packing slip. All within spec.

That was my introduction to Xometry products—and it wasn't what I expected. According to Xometry's website, the same quoting engine covers CNC machining, sheet metal fabrication, 3D printing, and injection molding. I could upload a model and immediately see process, material, quantity, and price. Not a quote request. A price.

Metal 3D Printing: The 'Best of 2025' Search That Led Me Back

A few weeks later, our engineer asked about a bracket for a new sensor mount. The design had a lattice interior that would save weight, but it couldn't be machined conventionally. We needed metal 3D printing.

I spent a week searching best custom metal 3d printing services 2025. The results were the same ten names every year, most with pages optimized for affiliate articles rather than engineering quality. None of them gave me a straight answer on price until I submitted files and waited for a salesperson to call.

Xometry, by contrast, gave me an instant quote for the same part. The material was 17-4 PH stainless steel, the lead time was 12 business days, and the price was lower than two of the providers I had contacted. I'm not going to say Xometry is definitively the best custom metal 3D printing service for everyone. But for a small manufacturer like us, 'best' means a clean quote, clear tolerances, and no hand-holding.

That bracket is still in service today. No cracks, no warping, no drama.

A Side Note on Creality, Shenzhen, and In-House Prototyping

I should mention that we also bought a Creality resin printer for quick plastic prototypes. Before buying it, I looked up where are Creality 3D printers made, because the answer affects spare parts and lead times.

Creality is headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China (source: Creality's official site). That's not a problem—it's a fact. The machine cost $230, replacement parts are cheap, and for small fit-checks it's been workable. But a desktop resin printer is not a substitute for a production metal printing service. It's a toy that happens to be useful.

When I Decided to Try the Supplier Side

Here's where the story turns. After two good orders, I started looking into how to become a supplier on Xometry. Our shop had two Haas VF-2 mills and a lathe with idle capacity. If they could quote parts instantly, maybe we could win work the same way.

The exact phrase 'Xometry become a supplier' is how I found the intake form. I submitted our capabilities, uploaded machine photos, and listed our available tolerances. I expected to wait weeks. Instead, a capacity planner called within two business days, asking about our inspection process and open hours.

Within six weeks, we won our first RFQ. Ten parts, 6061 aluminum, +/- 0.005 inches. Nothing exotic. We quoted it based on our actual cycle times, not on a guess. It went into production, passed inspection, and got paid through the platform.

I'm not going to pretend it's passive income. You still have to quote carefully, and the platform takes a margin for finding the customer. But our shop has now completed $27,000 in Xometry orders so far in 2025. That's idle capacity that would have been wasted.

Looking back, I should have looked into Xometry two years earlier. At the time, I didn't trust automated quoting for tight-tolerance work. That trust cost us about 20% of our tooling budget—and a few gray hairs.

If you're a procurement person like me, don't ignore the platform because it's a platform. Test it with a real part. Read the full quote. Compare the all-in cost, not just the base price. And maybe consider the supplier side too. The tools are the same; the role just changes.

Prices mentioned above are from quotes I received in Q2 2024 and Q1 2025. Verify current rates before planning your budget.

That's the lesson. It took me six years and a $2,022 boring bar order to learn it.