We are often approached by customers who have unrealistic expectations of the amount of time, people and money required to get components into production. We know there is a “challenge” ahead when the conversation immediately goes to timelines, or there is a comment like, “can you make a few samples next week”.
The casting industry will typically work on an 8 to 12 week timeline to manufacture tooling and provide samples for customer approval. This assumes you have all the design and CAD work finished and approved, ready to start cutting metal. Frequently a potential client will have existing tooling they may want to re-use, but the reality is that by the time it’s modified to fit the new foundry equipment it may have cost around the same, and taken as long to get ready, as new purpose built tooling.
Once the samples have been approved, delivery of production quantities can take 6 to 12 weeks depending on the foundry production schedule at the time and how many post casting processes are required.
So what do you do if you find yourselves in this situation? You call PPC.
With multiple foundries, tooling manufacturing shops and CAD designers within our stable of suppliers we may not be able to do the impossible, but we are more likely to have the capability and attitude to come close. Don’t be afraid to contact us in these circumstances, we understand how these things happen and it’s become one of the key strengths of our team.