Marketplace · Manufacturing · 2026

Alloy

Upload a part. Get it machined. Skip the phone tag.

  • Marketplace platform
  • Software design
  • Brand identity

The concept

Alloy is a manufacturing marketplace connecting product companies and hardware startups that need custom CNC-machined or 3D-printed parts with a vetted network of machine shops. Upload a CAD file, get an instant price and lead-time quote from the geometry, and the job is routed to a shop with capacity. It replaces weeks of emailing quotes with a checkout. Revenue: marketplace margin on each job plus a shop SaaS tier.

Who it’s for

Hardware startups, product designers and engineers sourcing low-to-mid volume custom parts.

60s
CAD → priced quote
3-day → same
Quote turnaround killed
2-sided
Buyers + vetted shops

Brand direction

PreciseFastIndustrialTrustworthy

Machined precision. A dark-workshop palette lit by one signal-orange, condensed industrial type, and interface geometry that echoes CAD and CMM readouts. Everything feels engineered and exact — tolerances, lead times and prices presented like machine specs. Orange means 'live/now'; grey is structure.

Visual identity

Machine Black

#0d0e10

Canvas

Signal Orange

#ff6a2b

Accent

Steel

#9aa0a6

Secondary

Chalk

#eef0f2

Type

Display type

Alloy

Khand — condensed, industrial, stencil-adjacent

Text + system

General Sans — spec tables and quotes

Prices, tolerances and lead times use tabular figures; orange is reserved for the live quote and 'in production' state.

Voice

A senior manufacturing engineer: exact, unhurried, quotes the tolerance before the price.

REF · Industrial precision UI — dark workshop, signal-orange, engineered mono; Xometry × Linear.

Homepage & product interface

Screen 01 · Instant quote
Instant quote. Upload a CAD file and Alloy prices it from the geometry — no email chains, no three-day quote wait.

Checkout flow

Screen 02 · Order & route
Order & route. Checkout routes the job to a chosen shop with a tracked production timeline — sourcing becomes one transaction.

Marketing angle

Kill the quote wait: every hardware engineer knows the pain of emailing five shops and waiting days. Alloy's promise is a price and a lead time before you finish your coffee.

The campaign

"Quote in 60 Seconds" — a developer/engineer-led campaign anchored on a public instant-quote demo (drop in a sample STEP file, see the price). Content lives where engineers are: hardware subreddits, maker YouTube, and CAD-tool integrations. Shops are recruited with a 'fill your idle machine hours' pitch.

Engineering & hardware communitiesCAD-tool integrations & pluginsMaker/hardware YouTubeShop-side idle-capacity outreach

Headline directions

“Five emails and three days, or one upload and a price.”

“Your CAD file already knows what it costs.”

“Machined, finished, tracked — from one screen.”

What Limited Labs built

  • 01Two-sided marketplace: instant geometry-based quoting + shop routing
  • 02CAD-upload quote flow with DFM checks and quantity pricing
  • 03Order + production-tracking and shop-side capacity tools
  • 04Industrial-precision brand identity and interface system
  • 05'Quote in 60 Seconds' demo-led launch and shop recruitment

Service demonstrated

Software

Marketplace platforms & software — building a two-sided transaction engine that removes friction (instant quoting, routing) from a slow, offline B2B process.

Explore this service

Work 17 of 25

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