Where shops come from
The list of businesses comes from Overture Maps, an open dataset of places (release 2026-09-23). We keep machine shops, fabricators and coaters that are open, have a name and a website, and pass a confidence check.
How capabilities are read
We visit each shop's homepage and up to four pages about its capabilities, respecting robots.txt. An AI model (Anthropic's Claude) reads that text and records processes, materials, certifications, industries, equipment and tolerances, each with the exact sentence that supports it. Every quote is checked word for word against the page, and a detail whose quote can't be found there is left out. A certification counts only when the site names the standard; "ISO compliant" does not.
Who gets a page
A shop gets a profile when its website clearly belongs to it, it does work for other companies, and it lists at least two processes plus materials, industries, certifications or equipment. Metro areas follow the US Census definition. A metro, city or state page needs at least 5 shops; a national page needs 20. Lists are ordered by how much each shop publishes about its capabilities.
Corrections and removal
Every profile has an "Is this your shop?" link to fix a detail, claim the listing or remove it. Removals happen within 2 business days, and a removed shop stays off when we re-read sites each quarter. See For suppliers.
Licences and sources
Place data © Overture Maps Foundation contributors, under CDLA-Permissive-2.0 and Apache-2.0 (sources include Meta, Microsoft, Foursquare and BrightQuery). Metro area boundaries, place and ZIP code centres: US Census Bureau, 2023, public domain. Capability quotes are short excerpts from each shop's own website, with a link to the source page.