You’ve got a deep-tech idea. Here’s everything it takes to build it — and the investors who back ideas like it.
Describe your idea in a short brief — a paragraph to a page. Anvil, the engine inside Fractional Forge, returns an 80+ page Design Dossier: the hardware engineering, what it’ll cost, the licences and regulations you’ll face, the risks you haven’t spotted — and investors who’ve backed similar products, with how to reach them.
No deck required. A short brief in, a full Design Dossier out.
Hardware is structurally slow.
It takes most founders 12–18 months and a small fortune just to reach a credible, fundable plan. Anvil compresses that first, hardest step into an afternoon — so you can decide what to build, what it costs, and who to talk to before you spend a penny on prototypes.
From a paragraph to a plan you can raise on.
Write your brief
A paragraph to a page about your idea — what it does, who it’s for, roughly how big. That’s all Anvil needs to start. No spreadsheets, no deck.
Get your Design Dossier
An 80+ page Design Dossier: system architecture, a full bill of materials with real part numbers and costs, a 13-stage engineering review, the licences and regulations you’ll face, a manufacturer shortlist per module, and 5 investors who’ve backed similar products.
Go deeper with me
Want to turn the Dossier into a plan you can actually raise on? Book a call and we’ll pressure-test the design, the costs and the story together.
Everything in the Design Dossier.
You’re an expert in part of this. The Dossier covers the rest — the engineering, the materials, the licences and regulations, the costs, and the risks you didn’t know to look for.
System architecture
Your idea broken into buildable sub-systems and modules.
Full bill of materials
Real manufacturer part numbers and costed lines — with the maths shown so you can check it.
13-stage engineering review
An honest gate-by-gate verdict: what’s sound, what still needs work.
Manufacturer shortlist
Named UK & EU suppliers per module, drawn from 14,000+ profiles.
Licences & regulations
The standards, certifications and approvals you’ll face — BS EN, IEC, UL, G99 — so nothing blindsides you later.
Investors who’ve backed similar
5 investors who’ve funded products like yours, with a starting point on how to reach them — researched, not a guarantee.
Risk & readiness audit
A straight “what’s not ready yet” list, so nothing bites you in diligence.
Worked calculations
Every key number derived in plain sight with real, open physics libraries — PyBaMM, CoolProp, ASHRAE psychrometrics — hand-checkable, not a black box.
A credible first stab — and the basis for the conversations that follow.
The Design Dossier is a concept-stage engineering and procurement briefing. It’s enough for you and a small team to genuinely understand what it takes to design and procure your product — built from real, first-principles calculations, not placeholders. It’s a strong first stab, not a final, for-construction engineering package — and it says so on every page.
Walk in knowing the questions
It tells you what to get quoted, what to validate, and the questions to ask — so your conversations with experts and suppliers start from “what does good look like”, not “where do we begin”.
The open items are your to-do list
The ±ranges, the “RFQ” flags and the decisions still to make aren’t hedging — they’re the exact list of things to pin down with the people who know, before you commit.
Punch above your weight
A founder and a small team can hold their own with specialists and suppliers from day one — before spending on expensive consultants just to find out where to start.
Four real Design Dossiers. Open one and scroll.
Each was built by Anvil from the short brief shown under it — architecture, full physics and workings, a costed bill of materials, and named suppliers. Real and unedited. Open one, and see the brief that made it.
Grid-scale battery storage
A 3.5 MWh containerised battery energy-storage system for the UK grid-scale market.
See the brief behind it
We’re designing a containerised 2.5 MWh Battery Energy Storage System, 1 MW PCS, LFP prismatic cells, in a 40-foot ISO container.
Target market: UK grid-scale frequency response and the capacity market, plus C&I peak shaving. Factory-assembled, deployable within 5 working days of delivery.
Key constraints:
- Unit cost £1,700,000 ex-works (premium UK-certified band, ≈£600–760/kWh usable)
- Max gross mass 35,000 kg; 40-ft ISO envelope
- Usable energy ≥2.5 MWh at 25 °C, 80% DoD; power 1.0 MW continuous (ride-through 1.10 MW ≤60 s)
- LFP prismatic (CATL/EVE 280 Ah class); ~800 V DC bus; 400 V / 50 Hz AC out
- 15-year / 6,000-cycle life; −20 °C to +50 °C; 25 units/year
Safety & regulatory: IEC 62619, UL 9540A, NFPA 855, G99 Issue 6, BS EN 61439.
Modular vertical farm
A 40 ft container modular vertical farm for high-care leafy-green production.
See the brief behind it
A modular vertical farm inside a single 40 ft high-cube ISO shipping container, for commercial propagation of ornamental plants.
Product: eight mobile growing trolleys; 100 m² total growing surface (~12.5 m² each); crop is ornamentals on a 25–30 day cutting-to-plant cycle to ~25 cm height.
Inside: climate control (HVAC) for humidity, temperature and CO₂; watering distribution to the eight trolleys; lighting and controls.
Outside: an irrigation skid (nutrient dosing, mixing, tanks, pumps) feeding the internal distribution.
CO₂ capture & mineralisation
A containerised CO₂ capture and mineralisation plant, designed against the Carbfix reference.
See the brief behind it
A modular carbon-capture and mineral-carbonation plant capturing 1 tonne of CO₂/day from flue gas with 30 wt% aqueous MEA, then mineralising it with gypsum to precipitate calcium carbonate. Co-product sulfate is recovered as potassium sulfate fertiliser; MEA is regenerated and recycled. Skid-mounted, continuous, two saleable solids bagged at 25 kg.
Target market: industrial CO₂ emitters (cement, lime, biogas, energy-from-waste) wanting on-site capture with a revenue-generating mineralisation route. UK & EU.
Process: absorb CO₂ into MEA → react with gypsum → filter/wash/dry the CaCO₃ → react filtrate with KOH for K₂SO₄ + regenerated MEA → recrystallise, distil wash water, bag.
Constraints: 1 t CO₂/day; ~2.3 t/day CaCO₃ + ~3.9 t/day K₂SO₄; cost ≤£1,900,000 ex-works; ambient–120 °C; skid/containerised; 6 plants/year.
Safety & regulatory: UKCA/CE, PED 2014/68/EU, DSEAR & ATEX, COSHH, Machinery Directive, environmental permitting, GB/EU fertiliser regulation.
Power-to-Liquid aviation fuel
A field-erected Power-to-Liquid plant making sustainable aviation fuel from biogenic CO₂ and renewable hydrogen.
See the brief behind it
A first-commercial Power-to-Liquid plant converting captured biogenic CO₂ and renewable hydrogen into Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) plus a naphtha co-product. A single-step Fischer-Tropsch synthesis over a shaped iron-based catalyst hydrogenates CO₂ directly to jet-range paraffins, recovering the reaction exotherm as raised steam. Output: ~1,000 tonnes of finished SAF a year at ≥8,000 operating hours.
Target market: UK and European SAF producers and project developers responding to the UK SAF Mandate (with its Power-to-Liquid sub-obligation) and the European ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation. Off-takers include airlines and fuel suppliers, airport fuel operators, biogenic-CO₂ hosts and renewable-hydrogen producers.
Process: receive, dry and compress CO₂ and hydrogen; blend with recycled tail gas and preheat; react over the iron catalyst at 200–350°C and 20–30 bar; separate tail gas, process water and syncrude; recompress and recycle to near-extinction with a small purge to a thermal oxidiser; hydrocrack and isomerise; fractionate into the on-spec SAF (jet) cut and a naphtha co-product.
Hard constraints: ≥60% jet-range selectivity; ≥65% CO₂ conversion over the recycle loop; ≥70% lifecycle greenhouse-gas reduction versus fossil Jet A-1; finished cut to ASTM D7566 Annex A1; installed first-of-a-kind capital ≤£45,000,000; plant electrical load ≤3.0 MW; ≥20-year design life; UK outdoor installation.
Real, unedited Dossiers (~25 MB each) — they open in a new tab. Yours covers your idea, not these.
Real physics. Real data. Not a black box.
Anvil isn’t a chatbot guessing numbers. Its engineering review runs 231 calculation tools built on the same peer-reviewed, open physics libraries professional engineers use — and checks every part against live, real-world data. Each Dossier shows its workings and its sources.
Peer-reviewed engineering libraries
The maths behind your Dossier comes from published, citable science:
231 calculation tools across battery, thermal, fluids, power, chemical-process and structural domains — all open and citable.
Checked against real-world data
Every part and price is grounded in live sources, not invented:
- Live component pricing — Mouser, Digi-Key, Farnell & LCSC
- 36,000-part reference library with real manufacturer part numbers
- 30,000 UK & EU suppliers — matched per module
- Jurisdiction standards — BS EN, IEC, G99, UL, NFPA
- Curated materials pricing — steel, copper, aluminium, composites
35 data sources in total — over 5 million reference records, refreshed continuously.
Built for the very start.
First-time deep-tech founders
You know the science is good. Anvil tells you what it takes to build the physical product, before you commit money or months.
University spin-outs & academics
Brilliant science, first product. Get the engineering, cost and investor picture you need to turn research into a company.
Small teams scoping a product
A fast, structured second opinion on architecture, cost and sourcing — in an afternoon, not a quarter.
You get the Dossier on day one. When you’re ready to go further, you work with me.
I’m Tristan Fischer. I’ve spent twenty-five years building, financing and scaling capital-intensive businesses — founding and leading companies in solar power (Lumicity) and carbon finance (Camco), and building in vertical farming (Fischer Farms). I know what it takes to get a physical product funded and built, because I’ve done it.
I built Anvil because the hardest part of a deep-tech company isn’t the idea — it’s knowing what it really takes to make it, what it costs, and who’ll back it. The Design Dossier gives you that on day one. When you want to pressure-test the plan, the numbers and the raise, that’s where I come in — directly, not through a chatbot.
— Tristan, Founder, Fractional Forge
Start free. Go deeper when it’s worth it.
Design Dossiers
- One paragraph in, a full Design Dossier out
- Architecture, bill of materials & costs
- Manufacturer shortlist per module
- 5 investor matches + how to reach them
- First Dossier free — £100 per Dossier after
Advisory
- We work through your Dossier together
- Pressure-test the design, costs & sourcing
- Shape the raise & the investor approach
- Direct access to me, not a queue
Good to know.
How does it work?
How accurate are the costs and the investor list?
Who owns the IP I create?
How is my idea protected?
How quickly can I get my Dossier?
Turn your idea into a Design Dossier — free.
Write a short brief. Get the architecture, the costs, the risks, and investors who’ve backed similar products.
Get your brief →Or book a call if you’d rather start with a conversation.