About a year ago wee started design on a large project for one of our clients . Think in terms of something like a full size passenger aircraft motion simulato

About a year ago wee started design on a large project for one of our clients . Think in terms of something like a full size passenger aircraft motion simulator...so, something 100 feet long and 21 feet wide. Well, needless to say, lots of metal makes-up the entire structure. We had to design this thing twice due to fluctuations in metal pricing. The original design was all aluminum. Then came all steel, because aluminum became far more expensive than steel. Then a hybrid and now steel only. There are other factors, such as the relative cost of TIG vs. MIG welding, yet, when your material costs increase nearly four-fold you can't ignore it. By the time we finished a reduced scope prototype materials pricing and availability was just insane. This has affected other components, like fasteners. At this time, any quote we provide for product development --be it electronics, mechanical or both-- includes language to say that we cannot hold pricing on anything for more than one week. It's got to be that crazy. If you are not very careful you can easily end-up being very busy while losing money.