Using Micro 3D Printing to Accelerate Prototyping & Design Testing

Learn why Mark Lattimore, Director of R&D at Tessy Plastics turned to micro 3D printing technology to enable fast prototyping and multiple design iterations for a medical device.

Founded in 1973, Tessy Plastics is a global contract manufacturer headquartered in Skaneateles, NY, specializing in injection molding and custom automated assembly solutions. One of their largest customers manufactures minimally invasive surgical tools. In the past, large scale predictive modeling studies were done to optimize features and then a mold was made of the most promising design – this was the only way to make a prototype to test the design due to the complexity, small size and tight tolerances required for these parts. The downfall to this is that making multiple molds just for a prototype was cost/time prohibitive with some component molds taking 6 months and costing more than half a million dollars.

Attend the webinar to discover how:

• Tessy was able to test 15 different designs to optimize the product development process within 1-2 weeks vs 10-16 weeks
• They improved a fairly mature product line with the added ability to now experiment with multiple design iterations without having to wait for a traditional prototype mold
• Tessy was able to 3D print mold cavities using their own material resulting in end-use parts that can potentially bridge to production molding
• micro 3D printing has enabled Tessy to use their 3D printed parts in order to set up their automation, instead of waiting for production tools which can take 24 weeks or more