Prototyping and 3D Printing
Prototyping & 3D Printing
Helping our customers at the earliest stages of new projects can be highly beneficial. We can evaluate the customer’s design or help to generate initial designs and make suggestions on how to make parts more cost effective whilst still achieving the initial brief.
Early collaboration helps to avoid costly design changes later. To Aid project development we can manufacture or source functional prototypes to test suitability. We have several options available to us.
- Liquid silicone prototypes – Manufactured using high quality liquid silicone, moulded in 3D printed tooling. This method is low cost, quick and representative of production materials so perfect for testing sealing solutions as well as many more designs. Available in 5-7 days.
- Alloy Tooling (Rubber Mouldings) – Our specialist toolmakers can produce fast turnaround single impression tooling that can be used for prototypes and where required initial production. Available in 3-4 weeks
- Far East Tooling (Rubber Mouldings) – Although not as fast our partners in the Far East can produce single impression tooling for production quality samples at very low cost, once approved these tools would be suitable for production although larger tooling may be more cost-effective long term. Available in 5-6 weeks
- VAC Casting (Rubber Mouldings) – We work closely with UK partners who can supply RTV silicone prototypes or PU prototypes, these can be available in 7-10 days.
- 3D printing – We have in house 3D printing capabilities that can print in carbon fiber filled nylon (Markforged Onyx) offering high strength, high quality prototypes with print layers as fine as 0.050mm. Available in 2-3 days
For more information about our Prototyping and 3D printing services please contact our engineering sales team.