Traditional tooling while presenting economies of scale in terms of component cost often proves costly for high value low volume product manufacturers as they are forced to hold large quantities of stock. Modifications to the design may also lead to wasted stock along with the additional costs and time associated with setting up a new tool.
In an effort to avoid these potentially costly production pitfalls a number of manufacturers have turned to Additive Manufacturing / Rapid Prototyping, allowing them to source low volumes of production components.
The Vacuum Casting Process is used to create plastic or rubber components from silicone moulds. Parts produced using this process are precise, dimensionally accurate replicas of the master pattern with all profiles and textures faithfully reproduced. Tooling costs, however are a fraction of the costs for full production tools, and parts can be produced within just a few days! Parts built directly in sintered nylon (and metals too!) require no tooling at all, and can be produced overnight with no minimum order quantity!
Brandon Medical, a high value low volume manufacturer of medical lighting units turned to Vacuum Casting when they sought to reduce stock holdings for low value components of their HD LED Quasar lighting system. While wishing to lower their inventory levels Brandon Medical were conscious of meeting customer lead times and quality expectations.
Using RP services at LPE, Brandon Medical were able to source cost effective high quality production parts within days, eliminating expensive tooling costs and the need to hold large volumes of stock.
