Tag - prototype

06 Aug

Case Study: An Inventor’s Product Development Journey

The SlingBaron: World’s First Twirling Harmonica Dryer An inventor’s journey through the product development cycle can be very difficult, time-consuming and costly. It was all three for Mike J. Baron, inventor of the SlingBaron, the world’s first twirling harmonica dryer. Mike is a longtime inventor and harmonica player who combined these two talents to develop a problem-solving product and bring it to market. The development process wasn’t easy for Mike, but his persistence and belief in his product drove him to continually [...]

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26 Jun

Urethane Casting for Fast Prototypes

We are pleased to announce that we are now offering urethane casting as a manufacturing method to complement our injection molding and CNC machining services. The advantages of urethane casting over injection molding are speed and cost. Due to the properties of the silicone molds used in urethane casting compared to injection mold tooling, it is ideal for plastic or rubber prototypes and low-volume parts (approx. 20-25 pieces). To learn more about urethane casting, and in particular about its advantages and [...]

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26 Sep

Prototype and Low-Volume Plastic Injection Molds

Sometimes you need a prototype or low-volume injection mold rather than a full production mold. Maybe you’re just at the point of needing some prototype plastic parts to test for form, fit and function. Or maybe you need a bridge tool to ramp up to full production. At ICOMold, we’re very good at producing prototype molds, and we can make them very quickly and at low cost. Our prototype molds carry a warranty of 10,000 cycles, so they’re ideal for low-volume [...]

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06 Jun

CNC Machined Plastic Prototypes Shipped in 1-5 Days

CNC machining is a great option for testing a plastic prototype part, or for a small quantity of parts. And, it’s very fast – your parts will usually ship in 1-5 days. Since we only use high-quality plastics for our CNC machined prototype parts, they’re perfect for testing the form, fit and function of your parts, without having to produce injection mold tooling. Although the gap is closing, material choice is still an advantage of CNC machining over 3D printing for [...]

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17 Oct

Getting From Prototype to Production Parts

You know how your plastic part has to perform, so you’ve designed it with its purpose in mind. Then you had a prototype made – either 3D printed or CNC machined. Now you’ve got your prototype to test for form, fit and function. Maybe it still needs a little tweaking. Maybe it was 3D printed with a material that does not have the performance properties that the actual parts will need to have when they’re injection molded. Or maybe you’re [...]

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