The front end for hardware.
A costed, buildable engineering design in a few days — free, and reviewed by senior engineers from our partner network, who can then build it. From there we help you raise the capital too.
Anvil designs and costs it, our partner network’s engineers review it — and the same network can build it.
Founded by Tristan Fischer — a decade building Fischer Farms into one of the world’s largest vertical farms. Every Design Dossier is reviewed by a senior engineer from our partner network.
Hardware is harder than software — by design.
Software won partly because the hard infrastructure is rented. AWS and Azure run the compute; the app stores handle distribution. A founder can stay product- and customer-led and let someone else own the atoms. Hardware has no equivalent: founders must invent the product, engineer it, stand up a factory or supply chain, and raise the capital — all at once. It’s why so many genuinely good hardware companies stall.
Three parts, one chain: designed, reviewed, built.
One brief goes in; a costed design comes out, checked by the engineers who can then build it. You stay product-, sales- and customer-led.
Anvil — the engine
Anvil turns your project brief into a costed, physics-checked Design Dossier in a few business days: a buildable design, a costed bill-of-materials ledger, engineering drawings, a financial model and a risk register.
Every number is a formula you can check. Your first Dossier is free.
Fractional experts — the review
Before you see it, the Dossier is reviewed by senior engineers from our curated network of design and engineering partner firms.
Not an anonymous sign-off — the same firms that build hardware for a living put their eyes on your design.
Contract manufacturing — the build
When you’re ready, the same curated partner network builds it — from prototypes to mid-volume production.
So you don’t build a factory to ship a product.
And when you’re raising: we help with the capital too — fundraising on an introducer / success-fee basis (no raise, no fee), plus grants and non-dilutive routes. A costed, engineer-reviewed design with a route to build makes you far more fundable.
Four lines we are building to be genuinely good at.
Anvil still takes a short brief for any machine. These four are where the engine, the packs and the partner review are deepest — battery energy storage, water treatment systems, electric motor sets, and medical assay machines. Everything else uses the same door as a generic pack.
Battery energy storage
Wall-store and container packs: cells, cabinet, power conversion and thermal. The same door as Anvil Home Storage.
Water treatment systems
Process plant: tanks, pumps, membranes, dosing and distribution. Fertigation and irrigation sit here.
Electric motor sets
Drive units and motor–inverter sets: stator, rotor, cooling and power electronics. The same door as the Lucid Air drive unit.
Medical assay machines
Benchtop and sample-to-answer instruments: photometers, readers, fluidics and the board that runs them. An instrument, not a plant.
Other hardware
Anything else still comes in as a short brief and goes out as a Design Dossier and a quotation. We do not pretend it is one of the four specialist lines.
Your day-one on-ramp: a full Design Dossier, free.
Describe your idea in a short brief — a paragraph is enough to start, and the more you tell it, the more precisely it hits your spec. Anvil, the engine inside Fractional Forge, builds your Design Dossier: an auditable Excel workbook — a buildable design, a costed bill-of-materials ledger, the true cost and a live financial model, the engineering drawings, and the risks and codes it must meet. Every number is a live formula you can trace, and Anvil runs independent checks on its own work before it ships.
A few business days, not a quarter — a Design Dossier compresses the two-to-three months and £20k–£40k of an upfront engineering study* into one auditable workbook.
*Compared with a typical early feasibility / FEED-style scoping study for an industrial product: concept design, equipment sizing, budget costing and a first risk register.
A buildable design
Your idea broken into modules, with every principal part sized and dimensioned — geometry that audits itself.
Costed bill of materials
A full BoM ledger: every line costed, with the method, the confidence, and where each number came from.
True cost & a financial model
A cost waterfall from materials to installed price, and a live financial model — capex, opex, levelised cost — you can change.
Engineering drawings
General arrangement, P&ID, block-flow, single-line and HVAC — real, print-ready ISO A1 drawings — plus photoreal renders.
Worked calculations
Every key number recomputed live in the sheet and checked — hand-verifiable, not a black box.
Risk & regulatory
A hazard and risk register, and the codes and standards the design was actually sized to.
Holds & open questions
The honest open-items list: what’s assumed, what’s excluded, and the exact questions to confirm with us.
It checks itself
Component specs validated against datasheets, load-vs-rating sizing checks, standards checked for your market, cross-document consistency checks — then a quality scorecard and ship verdict.
Design to your reality — then change it.
Every design has one number that can’t move. Tell the engine which, and it engineers to hit it — flexing everything else.
Fix a £5m ceiling and it designs the best plant that fits it.
Only a 30 × 10 m building? It makes the design fit the envelope.
Need a set output? It sizes to that and prices the rest.
Change your mind and it re-solves in hours — no three-month sunk cost forcing you to ship a design you’ve outgrown.
An auditable workbook, not a black box.
Your Design Dossier is a live Excel model. Every cost traces from the inputs and assumptions, through the calculations and quantities, into a bill-of-materials ledger, a cost waterfall and a full financial model — so you and your investors can change an assumption and watch the numbers move. Nothing is a black box.
Traceable costs
Inputs & assumptions → calculations → quantities → bill-of-materials ledger → cost waterfall → financial model. Every number is a formula.
Engineering drawings
General arrangement, P&ID, block-flow, single-line, HVAC and electrical — plus 3D renders of the build.
Risk & open questions
What you’ll need to certify, the holds and exclusions, and the questions still to resolve — stated plainly, not buried.
It checks itself
A scorecard, sense-check, connection trace and audit run before delivery — then a senior engineer from our partner network reviews the whole workbook. It’s built to be checked: it makes an expert think, and catches what a busy team would miss.
