CNC machining in San Francisco, CA
Upload a STEP file and we will get it machined and delivered. San Francisco has 190 machine shops for one of the densest hardware buyer populations in the country, so speed comes from sourcing wider.
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How OpenSpindle helps with CNC machining in San Francisco, CA
OpenSpindle is the manufacturing partner built for hardware companies and startups.
For CNC machining in San Francisco, CA, that usually starts before a quote exists. We look at the model and tell you which features are driving the price: the setup you could design out, the tolerance that is tighter than the function needs, the corner radius that does not match a standard end mill. Then we route the job to a shop set up for that part, at that quantity, and stay on it through first article and revisions.
We work with a sourcing network of 260+ independent machine shops, fabricators, and manufacturers, and we source the right capabilities for each project.
But we're more than a marketplace or a matchmaking service. We stay involved in the process.
- Finding the right CNC machining partner
- A shop set up for that part at that quantity, not whoever answered the phone
- Reviewing designs for manufacturability
- Cost drivers caught while changing the model is still free
- Finding ways to reduce production costs
- Process and material substitution, fewer setups, better yield
- Getting CNC machining prototypes and one-off parts made
- Quantity one quoted seriously, not deprioritized behind a production run
- Sourcing hardware and other components
- The rest of the BOM, not only the parts we make
- Managing quotes and supplier communication
- One thread instead of nine, revisions included
- Helping transition successful prototypes into production
- Re-sourced as volume changes, instead of capped by one shop
Who buys precision machining in San Francisco, CA
Third-party market data about the San Francisco metro. These are counts of entire industries in the area, not a description of the OpenSpindle network.
| Industry | Establishments | Location quotient |
|---|---|---|
| Machine shops | 190 | 0.54 |
| Machinery mfg | 281 | 0.43 |
| Computer & electronic product mfg | 565 | 1.13 |
| Architectural, engineering & related | 2,832 | 0.85 |
What San Francisco builds
San Francisco creates hardware companies faster than it can house them. Scientific R&D services run at 1.59 times the national average across 1,814 establishments, specialized design at 1.32 across 1,214, and computer and electronic product manufacturing at 1.13. Machine shops sit at 0.54 across 190. Counting research, design, engineering and electronics firms together gives roughly 6,400 establishments whose work involves specifying physical things.
The imbalance is not decline. San Francisco robotics companies raised $4.8 billion across more than 120 deals in 2025, concentrated in warehouse automation and humanoid robotics, and Y Combinator alone has funded around 70 hardware companies headquartered in the Bay Area. This is a city generating hardware demand at a rate few places match.
What it cannot generate is room to build. Reporting on the sector puts it plainly: the companies that thrive in this ecosystem find large-scale industrial space and infrastructure hard to come by, and the successful ones eventually leave to manufacture elsewhere. The demand is created here and satisfied somewhere else, permanently.
The buyers are early and they move quickly. Bedrock Robotics builds autonomous construction robotics from the city after a $270 million round. Smaller teams like DeepReach, building wearable capture devices for physical-AI data collection, and Antimattr, building a voice-first hardware interface, are typical of the population: funded, urgent, and ordering parts long before they have a supply chain.
The practical consequence is that sourcing here is not about finding a nearby shop, it is about moving at the speed the buyer is moving. A team between a funding round and a demo does not need the cheapest quote in the Bay Area. It needs a part that arrives before the milestone, made by a shop that will take a five-piece order seriously.
Anchor employers in the metro include Bedrock Robotics (San Francisco), DeepReach (Bay Area), Antimattr (Bay Area), The Y Combinator hardware cohort (~70 Bay Area companies).
What San Francisco buyers machine
Robotics dominates, and the parts follow the mechanism: actuator housings, linkages, joint hardware and structural plates, ordered a few at a time while a design is still being argued about. AI hardware teams order first-article enclosures and mechanism parts before they have any supplier relationship at all. Consumer device companies order machined prototypes on the way to injection tooling, which is a different job from the tooling itself and priced differently. And the research and instrument base orders mounts, optical hardware and test apparatus. What almost none of them have is a production line, or a purchasing department, or time.
Sourcing at the speed the buyer is moving
The constraint in this metro is rarely price and almost never capability. It is that a team between a funding round and a demo has a date it cannot move, an order quantity most shops find uninteresting, and no existing supplier to lean on. A five-piece order that sits unquoted for a week has cost that team a meaningful fraction of a milestone. We route small and first-run work to shops that want it rather than tolerate it, and we quote against the demo date rather than a standard lead time. That is the whole job here.
Materials this metro orders most
6061 and 7075 aluminum carry most robotics structure, with 7075 where stiffness matters on a moving arm. 304 and 316L stainless serve fluid, wear and medical-adjacent parts. Titanium appears where mass genuinely matters, which on a mobile robot is more often than people expect. Delrin and PEEK cover bushings, wear surfaces and the electrically isolating parts sensor packages need, and brass shows up on optical and fitting work.
CNC Machining options
| Process | Lead time | Tolerance | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3-axis milling | From 3 business days | +/- 0.005 in (0.13 mm) | The default for prismatic parts, plates, and housings with features on one or two faces. |
| 5-axis milling | From 5 business days | +/- 0.002 in (0.05 mm) | Contoured and undercut geometry, and parts you would otherwise have to fixture three times. |
| CNC turning | From 3 business days | +/- 0.002 in (0.05 mm) | Shafts, bushings, and anything round. Live tooling adds cross-holes and flats in one setup. |
| Swiss machining | From 7 business days | +/- 0.0005 in (0.013 mm) | Small, long, high-precision turned parts in volume: pins, connectors, shafts, and fasteners. |
| EDM and wire EDM | From 7 business days | +/- 0.0002 in (0.005 mm) | Sharp internal corners, thin ribs, and hardened tool steel, where a cutter either cannot reach or cannot survive. |
| Precision grinding | From 5 business days | +/- 0.0001 in (0.003 mm) | The finishing operation for flatness, parallelism, and surface finish a mill cannot hold on its own. |
Lead times are typical shop turnaround and exclude transit.
Shipping and transit
The Bay Area is compact and same-day courier covers the city and the peninsula, but very little machining happens in San Francisco proper. Most parts arrive from the South Bay in a day, from elsewhere in California in one to two, and from the rest of the West in two to three. Coast to coast runs four to five. The practical constraint is not transit, it is that a startup address is often an office without a loading dock or a receiving desk, so say who signs for the part.
Spec references
Related processes
CNC Machining material guides
Who we build for in San Francisco
Top California metros for CNC machining
| Metro | US rank | Machine shops | Location quotient |
|---|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles, CA | 1 | 956 | 0.84 |
| San Jose, CA | 9 | 318 | 2.37 |
| Riverside, CA | 12 | 229 | 0.87 |
| San Francisco, CA | 18 | 190 | 0.54 |
| San Diego, CA | 21 | 175 | 0.83 |
| Sacramento, CA | 44 | 75 | 0.46 |
| Oxnard, CA | 46 | 72 | 1.45 |
| Fresno, CA | 87 | 35 | 0.44 |
Ranked by machine shop establishments in each metro (NAICS 332710), the closest census measure of where machining capacity sits. Source: BLS QCEW 2025 Q2.
Where San Francisco sits nationally
San Francisco ranks 18 of 378 US metros on Machine shops (190 establishments). On demand it ranks 13, so local capacity and local demand are roughly in step. We still quote it against the national network, because the right shop for a part is the one set up for it.
We tap our partner network. You get the best-match quote.
Upload your part and we tap our network of partner shops to get you a competitive, all-in quote that is the best match for the job.
Frequently asked questions
Are there machine shops in San Francisco?
Not many: 190 across the metro at 0.54 times the national rate, and industrial space in the city keeps shrinking rather than growing. There are good shops in the East Bay and down the peninsula. The honest answer is that a San Francisco-only search narrows your options for no gain, because machined parts ship well and a day of transit buys a much wider field.
Will a shop quote five pieces for an early-stage San Francisco team?
Some will and many will not, and that is the real problem in this metro rather than price. A shop running repeat work has little reason to price a five-piece first article attractively. We route that work to shops that want it, which is often outside the Bay Area, and the extra transit day is usually worth the week you stop waiting.
How fast can I get a machined part in San Francisco?
Simple aluminum parts commonly run three to five business days in the shop, plus a day from the South Bay or one to two from elsewhere in California. Tell us the demo or review date rather than asking for a lead time, and we quote against it. In this metro the date is almost always the real requirement.
How much does CNC machining cost in San Francisco?
Setups and material drive it, and the Bay Area premium is real but avoidable: shops here price against semiconductor and medical work, so an ordinary bracket quoted locally often looks expensive for capability you are not using. Sourcing wider usually lowers the number rather than raising it. Quoting is free either way.
Who signs for the delivery?
Worth settling before the part ships, because it catches people here more than anywhere. A lot of San Francisco hardware teams work from offices without a loading dock or a receiving desk, and a freight delivery to a WeWork does not go well. Tell us the delivery situation and we pick a carrier and service that fits it.
Around San Francisco
We quote CNC machining for the wider San Francisco area, including Oakland, Berkeley, South San Francisco, Daly City, San Mateo, Redwood City, Alameda, Emeryville, Richmond.
More of what we make in San Francisco, CA
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