Metal Fabrication in Rancho Cordova, California
We do not drive to Rancho Cordova for metal fabrication work. We are in it. The shop is at 2530 Mercantile Dr, Ste H, off Sunrise Boulevard, which puts us inside the same city limits as the aerospace propulsion campus on Aerojet Road, the business park built on the old Mather airfield, and the run of light industrial and flex buildings along White Rock Road and Sunrise.
That changes what we can offer here in a way no service-radius map communicates. A Rancho Cordova facility can get a person on site the same morning it calls, get a second visit that afternoon when the first measurement raises a question, and have a fabricated part show up the next day without anybody billing a mobilization. Drawings get dropped off by hand. Material gets picked up. Somebody walks a weld sample over instead of photographing it.
Coverage
- 0 mi
- Same city. Our shop is on Mercantile Drive.
- Same day
- Site walk, field measurement, and a second look if needed
- 300 mi
- Full EPC delivery and scheduled preventative maintenance
- 600 mi
- Field services, fabrication delivery, and rigging
What We Build for Rancho Cordova Facilities
Structural and miscellaneous steel. Equipment frames, platforms, mezzanines, access stairs, catwalks, machine guarding, and support steel — fabricated from drawings our own engineers stamped, in a shop a few minutes from the job.
Specialized enclosures. Process enclosures, hazardous-area and explosion-rated rooms, and equipment or utility surrounds engineered to the classification and the relief requirement. Rancho Cordova has an unusual concentration of facilities where the enclosure is a safety system, not a screen.
The full detail
Custom equipment and one-off assemblies. Test fixtures, handling equipment, carts, transfer mechanisms, and process equipment built around a specific job rather than ordered from a page. Short-run and single-piece work is normal here.
Precision and repair fabrication. Bracketry, weldments, and replacement components reverse-engineered from a broken part. When the shop is ten minutes away, "bring us the piece" is a real workflow.
Commercial and architectural steel. Handrail, 42-inch OSHA guardrail, ADA rail, fixed ladders, roof access hatches, trash and generator enclosures, bollards, and gates for the property managers and contractors working the Sunrise and Zinfandel corridors.
What Rancho Cordova Actually Builds
Rancho Cordova is one of the few Sacramento-area cities whose industrial base is genuinely technical rather than logistical, and it is a much younger city than its industry — it did not incorporate until 2003, while the plants inside it had been running for decades.
L3Harris operates the propulsion campus on Aerojet Road, the former Aerojet Rocketdyne site, which L3Harris acquired in 2023. Solid and liquid rocket propulsion work carries the whole vocabulary a fabricator has to be fluent in: hazardous-area classification, blast and relief design, material traceability, cleanliness requirements, and documentation that has to survive an audit years later. Kratos Defense also builds unmanned aerial systems in the region.
The full detail
Mather Business Park occupies the former Mather Air Force Base, closed under BRAC in 1993 — roughly 5,716 acres now carrying air cargo operations at Mather Airport, aviation services, distribution, and light industrial. Former military bases are their own category of building: heavy slabs, oversized bays, high clear heights, generous power, and as-built drawings that stopped matching reality several tenants ago.
The Sunrise Boulevard corridor runs the city's technology and back-office employment, and the White Rock Road and Mercantile Drive areas hold the small-to-mid industrial and flex inventory — machine shops, fabricators, contractors, suppliers, and service businesses. That is our own neighborhood, and it is worth being plain about what that means competitively: several other fabricators and industrial contractors are headquartered within a few miles of us. Rancho Cordova is a real fabrication town. We are not the only shop here, and a facility engineer in this city has options.
What we would argue is that very few of those options put engineers who stamp drawings and fabricators who cut steel under one roof, and none of them publish what the work costs.
Getting to Your Rancho Cordova Facility
Ten to fifteen minutes to essentially anything inside the city limits. Aerojet Road, Mather, Sunrise, Zinfandel, White Rock, Folsom Boulevard — all of it is a short drive on surface streets without touching a freeway.
What that actually buys you is iteration. On a distant job, everything gets front-loaded into one field-verification visit because a second trip costs half a day. In Rancho Cordova we can measure in the morning, cut a template, bring it back the same afternoon, and confirm the fit before committing material to a full run. For anything that has to land in a tight existing space — a platform threading between conduit and duct, a frame fitting an opening nobody documented — that back-and-forth is the difference between a part that fits and a part that gets modified on site with a grinder.
It also means shutdown work does not require staging. A crew works the window, and if something unexpected surfaces at 1 a.m., the shop and the material rack are fifteen minutes away instead of two hours.
Two Rancho Cordova Constraints Worth Planning Around
Airspace, if there is a crane involved. Mather Airport is an active air-cargo field, and the airspace around it is regulated under 14 CFR Part 77. Construction or equipment that penetrates the protected surfaces around a runway generally requires advance notice to the FAA on Form 7460-1, and cranes are the usual trigger — a lift that would be routine elsewhere becomes a filing with a lead time when it happens near an approach path. Facilities in the Mather Business Park footprint should treat crane and high-lift work as something to schedule weeks out, not days. Sacramento County also administers airport land use compatibility policies in the surrounding area. Confirm the specific surface and notification requirement for your parcel before booking a crane.
Young city, older buildings. Rancho Cordova has administered its own building and planning functions only since incorporation in 2003, while much of its industrial stock predates that by thirty or forty years and passed through Sacramento County jurisdiction first. In practice that means the permit history for a given building can be split across two agencies and the drawings on file may not reflect a tenant improvement done in the 1980s. We field-verify rather than trusting a plan set, and we expect to find at least one thing the paperwork does not mention. →
Published 2026 Budget Pricing
We publish our numbers. Nobody else in this market does. These are Northern California fabrication-only budget ranges.
| Item | 2026 budget range |
|---|---|
| Mechanical or generator enclosure | $8,000–$25,000+ |
| Light-duty steel mezzanine | $18,000–$35,000 |
| Guardrail system, 42" OSHA | $165–$225 per linear foot |
| Fixed ladder, 20–30 ft | $3,500–$7,500 |
| Steel-framed roof access hatch | $3,500–$8,000 |
| Standard steel bollards | $450–$850 each |
| Heavy industrial auto gate | $60,000+ |
Fabrication only. Final pricing moves with material selection, structural requirements, engineering review, finish type, complexity of fabrication, and project scope and quantity. Installation is quoted after a site visit and field review. See the full 2026 price guide →
Related Work
Explosion room enclosure → — A hazardous-area enclosure engineered to the classification and the relief requirement rather than adapted from a product line. The closest match to the propulsion and energetic-materials work that exists in this city.
OEM equipment install, live plant → — Structural and access steel prefabricated off site, equipment set with our own rigging crew, utilities tied in, handed over ready for commissioning. On schedule, zero unplanned downtime.
EXPLOSION ROOM — GRATING DECK AND SERVICESCHEMICAL PROCESSING · DWG PRJ-04 
OEM EQUIPMENT INSTALL — ACCESS STAIR AND PLATFORMMANUFACTURING · LIVE PLANT · DWG PRJ-01
Service area
Nearby
Divisions
Related services
Structural Steel Fabrication and Erection
Structural and miscellaneous steel fabrication in Rancho Cordova. Platforms, mezzanines, supports, and access systems. Engineers on staff who stamp.
Specialized Industrial Enclosures
Process, hazardous-area, food and pharmaceutical, and equipment enclosures. Explosion rooms and clean process rooms designed, built, and installed.
In-House Rigging and Equipment Setting
Fully in-house industrial rigging. Receive, offload, stage, and set equipment with our own personnel. 600 miles from Sacramento.
Industries
Industries this work runs in
Manufacturing and Assembly Line Equipment Installation
Manufacturing and assembly line equipment installation in live plants. Rigging, structural supports, utility tie-ins, commissioning support.
Campus Facilities and Research Equipment Installation
Campus facilities contractor for equipment installation, structural steel, and utility work. Sequenced around class schedules and shutdown windows.
Portfolio
Related project work
Explosion Room: Hazardous-Area Enclosure Build
A hazardous-area enclosure designed, fabricated, and installed by Miller 3 Engineering. Containment, relief, and utility penetrations in one scope.
OEM Equipment Install in a Live Plant, Zero Unplanned Downtime
OEM equipment installed inside an active manufacturing and processing facility with no extended shutdown window. No unplanned downtime occurred.
Coverage
- 600 mi
- Field services, installation, fabrication delivery, and rigging from Sacramento
- 300 mi
- Full EPC delivery and preventative-maintenance programs
- Nationwide
- Engineering, design, and fabrication for shipment
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we drop drawings off at your shop, or bring in a part to be copied?
Yes, and Rancho Cordova customers do it constantly. We are at 2530 Mercantile Dr, Ste H, off Sunrise Boulevard. Bring a print, a sketch on a napkin, or the broken part itself — reverse-engineering a failed weldment from the actual piece is faster and more accurate than measuring it in the field and describing it over email. Call (916) 842-7402 before you come so somebody who can answer your questions is on the floor.
How quickly can you get someone to our Rancho Cordova plant?
Same day, in most cases, and often within a couple of hours. Everything inside the city limits is a ten-to-fifteen-minute drive on surface streets. We can also come twice — measure in the morning, bring a template back in the afternoon — which is not practical at distance and matters a great deal when a part has to fit an existing space.
We need a crane near Mather. Does that complicate things?
It adds lead time rather than difficulty. Mather Airport is an active field and the airspace around it is regulated under 14 CFR Part 77, so a lift that penetrates the protected surfaces near a runway typically requires advance notice to the FAA on Form 7460-1. The filing is routine; the timeline is not something you can compress the week of. Tell us early if a crane is in scope and we will plan the sequence around the notification rather than around the crane's availability.
Do you do short-run and single-piece work, or only full projects?
Both. Proximity makes small work economically sensible here in a way it is not two hundred miles out — a single bracket, one replacement guard, a modified frame. There is no minimum that would make us turn down a Rancho Cordova job we can do well. What we will say honestly is that a one-off part carries its engineering and setup cost in a single unit, so the per-piece number looks high next to a production run of the same thing.
Who permits work at our facility — the city or the county?
The City of Rancho Cordova has run its own building and planning functions since it incorporated in 2003, so current permits go through the city. The complication is historical: buildings that predate incorporation were permitted through Sacramento County, and the file for a given property can be split across both. If a plan set matters to your project, we field-verify rather than relying on it. Confirm the current requirement with the city's building division for your specific parcel.
Call (916) 842-7402
Send drawings, a photo, or a rough scope. We answer with questions before we answer with a number.
Miller 3 Engineering · 2530 Mercantile Dr Ste H, Rancho Cordova, CA 95742 · CA LIC #1136711