WHICH THICKNESS MONITORING SOLUTION IS BEST FOR YOUR COMPANY?
Build Your Own vs. Mate Gauge
At a glance, building your own thickness monitoring solution can feel like the most logical step — especially for highly capable engineering teams. You already have access to sensors, a machine shop, engineers, and a line that needs measuring. It seems like a solvable problem. And in some cases — and at some companies — it is.
But for large manufacturers — those pushing more than $1M of material annually on multi-shift, high speed lines — the risks, costs, and performance demands outgrow what DIY can reasonably handle. That’s when a basic set-up stops being good enough, and a full-system solution like Mate Gauge becomes essential.
Build Your Own
Mate Gauge
A fully integrated thickness monitoring system — prebuilt with precision hardware, mgOS software, PLC integration, and full lifecycle support. Designed for industrial lines, it installs fast, delivers accurate data, and requires no internal maintenance team to keep it running.
A do-it-yourself thickness monitoring system —usually a combination of off-the-shelf sensors, custom frames, and internal software. It works in theory, but scaling to production demands time, money, and long-term engineering support most teams underestimate.
Comparison at a glance
Compare the pros and cons of buying a Mate Gauge system vs. building your own thickness monitoring solution.
What many companies think is required to build their own systems is just the tip of the iceberg.
DIY builds may get you 80% of the way there with hardware, basic measurements, and a dashboard. But you don’t have a viable solution without the last 20%.
Cap-Ex and TCO comparison
Mate Gauge is the more cost-effective solution from both a CapEx and OpEx perspective. When reading the table below, keep this figure in mind: $50K to $100K.
This is the total cost range for a Mate Gauge system, which delivers all of the requirements for a high-performing thickness monitoring solution, including hardware, software, installation, configuration, and ongoing support.
Many manufacturers underestimate what thickness monitors requires, and what it takes to build a system in-house
They see a purpose-built solution like Mate Gauge as “too big” or “too expensive,” and a DIY solution as more manageable. But in reality, it’s the opposite.
Building your own system is the far bigger commitment; an open-ended engineering project that grows in cost, complexity, and risk the moment you scale. What starts simple quickly becomes a full-blown product your team must support for the total lifespan of the system.
DIY is like needing a commute to work, and deciding to build your own car.
Mate Gauge delivers everything you need, standard, at a lower TCO
If building your own system were the better path, we’d see it working in the wild. But the reality? For many new customers, we’re replacing a failed in-house attempt, and helping them recoup their losses.
Mate Gauge includes everything you’d need to build for between $50K and $150K. Most DIY builds exceed $250K in CapEx alone, not counting staffing, delays, or long-term risk.
And here’s the knockout punch: we deliver this as a standard, production-grade platform, with the ability to customize for your line and help you install and scale.
This is the system you’d build if you had unlimited time, budget, and staff. But you don’t need to. We already have. And it’s ready to go.
Mate Gauge is the right solution for high-yield manufactures
Mate Gauge is ideal for companies using $1M+ of material annually on multi-shift, high-speed production lines, who want to:
- Replace manual mic checks with real-time, closed-loop control
- Eliminate 1–2% safety margins and reduce raw material costs
- Automate calibration, cleaning, and changeovers across shifts
- Get live KPIs, alarms, and full run history in mgOS
- Integrate directly with your PLCs and line systems
- Offload support, updates, and maintenance to Mate Gauge’s expert team