Know what's on the truck before it leaves.
Heatmark is a proposed shop-floor system for structural and misc-metals fabricators with about 20 to 75 people. Import the piece list from the files your detailer already sends, scan piece marks at four handoffs, build the load list and bill of lading from what's actually done, and keep the mill certs tied to the heats.
Works alongside Tekla, SDS2 and SigmaNEST. Doesn't replace them, doesn't do nesting, detailing or accounting.
The tools were priced for bigger shops. The rest run on whiteboards.
Most small fabricators track production on spreadsheets, whiteboards and paper travelers. The steel-specific suites exist, but they are priced and staffed for larger operations. Here is what we could verify, and what we couldn't.
Scan at handoffs. Ship from the scans. Bill from the shipments.
Not a full MIS. A narrow loop the shipping lead, the foreman and the office manager each get something out of, priced per shop so the whole crew can use it.
Floor
Three or four scans per piece: cut list complete, to paint or galv, back, on truck. Scan the QR tag, or type the piece mark when the tag is painted, burned or galvanized over. Android phones or a shared kiosk tablet.
Yard
Pick finished pieces, check weight against the truck's limit, sequence by erection sequence, print the load list and bill of lading. If the connection is down at 5:30am, the device builds the BOL from cached data. The truck never waits on software.
Office Add-on
Mill test reports stored per job and PO, with heat number, grade and values drafted by AI and confirmed by a person against the PDF. Progress-billing backup by tonnage shipped. The PM approves; nothing goes out automatically.
Four steps, live on the next job
Import
KISS, detailer CSV/XML reports, DSTV/NC1, or a PDF bill of materials. Inferred fields are highlighted for review. Open jobs come in too, with status bulk-set by sequence.
Tag
Print QR tags for assemblies and loose parts on a label printer or wire-on poly tags. Every tag carries the piece mark in plain text.
Scan
Handoffs only. Each scan is an append-only event with time and user. When Rev 2 arrives, a revision diff flags changed pieces against what's already been cut.
Ship and bill
Load list and BOL from completed pieces. Percent complete by tonnage. A drafted progress-billing summary with a backup table of every piece shipped.
Does your shop have a problem worth $400 to $900 a month?
Enter your own numbers. The starting values are placeholders for illustration, not data from any shop. We have no customer savings figures, and we won't make any up.
Excludes onboarding (about 20 to 30 hours of your people's time, Assumption) and the real risk that the crew stops scanning. The plan models 18% annual customer churn for exactly that reason.
Per shop. Unlimited floor users.
Proposed prices, not an offer. They are untested, and the small tier is about three times EZIIL's headline price. We say so up front.
Shop
- Import, tags, handoff scans
- Job board by count and tonnage
- Load lists and BOL
- $350/mo with annual prepay
Shop Plus
- Everything in Shop
- Revision diff and in-flight job import
- Ship-morning support from 5:30am local
- Scan-health alerts to the owner
Office
- Mill-cert storage, human-confirmed extraction
- Heat-to-piece lookup
- Progress-billing backup, CSV/IIF export
- Aimed at AISC-certified and DOT-prequalified shops
A modest business, if the tests pass
The founding team's own red-teamed model says the base case reaches about 209 shops and $1.7M ARR in year 5, with about $140k of fully loaded operating profit. Every line below is an assumption.
Ending ARR, bear / base / bull, from model.json. Assumption Rests on new-logo funnels capped by seller capacity, 12–25% annual churn and segment pricing. Toggle scenarios in the owners' case →
Questions an owner should ask
Do you have customers or case studies?
No. Heatmark is at concept stage: no customers, pilots, partners, LOIs or revenue. The demo uses a fictional shop called Demo Iron Works, labeled on every screen.
Does it replace Tekla, SDS2 or SigmaNEST?
No. It reads what those tools export (KISS, CSV/XML reports, DSTV/NC1, IFC, PDF BOMs) and tracks pieces through the shop. No nesting, detailing, CNC control, inventory, accounting or payroll.
Why not just use EZIIL? It's cheaper.
It may be the right answer for you. EZIIL's headline is $140 to $338 a month, but BOM, shipments and certificates are add-ons with unpublished prices [S4]. Get a real quote. Heatmark's case is depth on US structural workflows: detailer import, revisions, load lists and BOLs, heat traceability and tonnage billing, all included. If the gap is under about $150/mo and you can't see the difference, buy the cheaper one.
What happens when tags get painted or galvanized over?
They usually don't survive blasting, paint or galv. Typed piece-mark search is a first-class input, not a fallback, and the outside-vendor handoff is a scan-out and scan-in at the galvanizer or painter.
Is the mill-cert extraction compliant with AISC or BABA?
Heatmark will never claim that. AI drafts the fields, and a person confirms every field against the source PDF. Records support your QA program; they don't certify compliance. The specific AISC and BABA clauses are Unverified and need to be read before any marketing claim.
What if the internet is down on ship morning?
The device keeps a local copy of the job and can build the load list and BOL offline. Scans queue with IDs and sync in order; conflicts go to the foreman, never silently overwritten.
Do my time records become payroll records?
Hours in Heatmark are labeled job costing, not timekeeping, and V1 has no payroll export. Wage-hour rules vary by state; check with your own counsel.
Send us the files from your last three jobs.
The founding team is looking for 20 shops to interview before writing production code. We'll show the prototype on your own piece lists. No obligation, nothing to sign but an NDA covering your drawings.