The world’s fastest digital manufacturer of custom prototypes is investing in services which support engineers to save costs and speed up production of low-volume parts.

Protolabs is offering specialist analyst advice for taking a family moulding approach to tooling – a move it says could see costs slashed by around 40% on some injection moulding projects.The company has also begun stocking and supplying threaded brass inserts for injection moulding production, offering a cost effective and more efficient alternative for customers currently supplying their own part inserts.

David Barnes, EMEA Injection Moulding Product Manager for Protolabs, says: “Improving our processes and developing the services we provide our customers is at the heart of Protolabs’ business philosophy.

“We strive to support our clients in every way we can, particularly in helping them get their products to market and generating revenue as quickly as possible. Both the introduction of our insert supply service and the specialist advice on family tooling is very much part of that.”

“If you can produce two or more parts from the same mould then you could make significant cost savings. While our Protoquote design for manufacturability analysis software will help you with the design of parts, we’re offering the specialist support of our application engineers for family and other multi-cavity moulds.

“To help us identify parts suitable for family moulding, we suggest that you upload CAD designs for the same project concurrently so that our analysts can identify potential opportunities for you. Of course, if you think that two or more parts may be suitable for multi-cavity moulding then it is worth drawing our attention to it so that we can advise you on what is possible.”

Mr Barnes said the decision to stock and supply threaded brass inserts was another service introduced to address challenges affecting prototype development and production schedules.

“Managing our own stock of part inserts means that our customers do not have to commit their own resources to supply the parts needed – often on a time critical basis.

“When customers place IM orders with us, the actual number of part inserts required may not be easy to determine. For example, some inserts may be wasted in the process or rejected for qualitative reasons. When timescales are especially tight, and they usually are, our new service takes away the need for customers to provide additional stock at short notice.

“From our perspective, part inserts are relatively insignificant on a unit price basis, but for our customers, the true cost of purchasing, managing delays and working through the supply chain can be much more substantial.”

The Protolabs supplied insert service is now live, with a range of high quality, brass threaded inserts in stock.