Prototyping

Metal

Powdered Metallurgy

Prototypes are machined from sintered metal slugs providing similar performance to production tooling. Slugs come in rectangular, square, round shapes. Materials include: aluminum, brass, bronze, copper, steel, and stainless steel.

Zinc Die Casting

Prototypes are machined from Zamak "continuous cast" rod providing similar performance to production tooling. Zamak rod is available in round, square and rectangular shapes.

Aluminum Die Casting

Prototypes are machined from aluminum slugs providing similar performance to production tooling.

Stampings

Flat parts are prototyped by laser cutting, or using a "soft" (medium carbon steel instead of carbide) steel compound die. Formed parts begin the same way as flat parts. Bends are added during a series of secondary operations, utilizing "soft" tooling to simulate a multi station progressive die.

Cold Heading

Prototypes can be machined, drilled, tapped, heat treated and plated to create samples with similar performance to production parts. The only exception is that machined parts do not exhibit the same "grain" flow as cold-headed parts.