Fabricable

Fabricable is an adjective describing something that can be fabricated, manufactured, or produced using available processing methods. In engineering and design, a part or material is described as fabricable when it can be realized with current fabrication technologies within reasonable cost, tolerances, and lead times.

Common contexts include mechanical parts, polymers for molding or additive manufacturing, and microfabrication in electronics. For example, standard steel blocks are fabricable by conventional machining, while parts with complex internal channels may require specialized processes or become impractical to fabricate.

Factors that influence fabricability include material machinability and formability, process constraints (machining, casting, forming, 3D printing), geometry complexity, surface finish, and total cost. Design for manufacturability (DFM) is a related discipline that optimizes parts to maximize fabricability.

Terminology varies: fabricable and fabricatable are used interchangeably in many contexts, though some style guides prefer fabricatable. The root is fabricate, from Latin fabrica meaning a craft or workshop; in everyday usage, fabricable means capable of fabrication.

Limitations exist; a part labeled as fabricable may still be impractical due to tooling, supply chain, tolerances, or regulatory requirements. Fabricability is thus one dimension of overall product feasibility.