Problem: A U.S. based valve manufacturer contacted Carson Castings with an RFQ for a new iron casting valve design they wanted to test for production.

The design would require extensive testing during the prototype stage and there would be a high likelihood that the iron casting would need to be modified prior to production.

The customer wanted to reduce costs on production tooling (due to the high chance of modifications being needed) and requested prototype tooling instead.

Solution: Carson Castings reviewed the design and discussed it with the client. During discussions it was determined that the coring of the iron castings could possibly change, but that the design of the exterior features were frozen.

Carson Castings proposed that instead of full prototype tooling, hybrid tools would reduce costs and increase future efficiencies. The patterns for the exterior features of the casting were produced as production ready tools; the cores were produced using 3-D sand printed molds (which require no hard tooling).

The cost to tool the jobs was similar to prototype tooling, but a savings of over 50% was realized when the jobs moved to production.