Bar stock and drops
Bar stock is material bought in standard lengths of round, square, or hex bar, and a drop is the leftover piece after the parts have been cut from it.
Working out bar stock for a quote means knowing the bar length, the part length, the saw kerf or cutoff width, any facing allowance, and how much the machine needs to hold onto at the end. From that you get parts per bar, bars to order, and the size of the drop. Getting it wrong either short-ships the job or buys a bar you didn't need.
Drops, also called remnants, are money sitting on a rack. Most shops keep them but can't find the right one when it would save a material purchase, because nobody wrote down the size, alloy, and heat lot. For traceable work, a drop without its heat lot is effectively scrap.
The free bar stock calculator on this site does the parts-per-bar math. Inside Traveler, the same calculation is built into quoting, and a remnant bin is planned that prompts you to log the drop at job close with its size and lot carried over, then suggests it the next time you quote that material.
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