One advantage Toolless offers is our ability to accept changes during production. Let’s say we have completed your prototype and you like how it turned out. So you order 100 units. We complete the order and all is going well. But when you are about to order another 100 units you find out one of the connectors you have been using is no longer available. You need to change the size of the hole to accept the new connector – what can be done?
If you are using an injection molding company you will need to purchase another mold before you can begin the second production order. This can be extremely costly, and all you’re doing is changing the size of one hole!
If you are using Toolless, all you need to do is let us know what has changed. We make the change for the production run and there is no additional cost and no delay in your order. We have done this many times in the past – we have even been half way through the production run and been able to make changes.
I just had a customer make a request that illustrates my point perfectly. Our customer had a way to improve the product which required an alteration of the circuit board.
The picture above shows how we have made the enclosure in the past.
This picture is after and shows the changes requested. The two left holes are 5mm smaller and the far right hole is deleted. I opened the CNC program; changed a dimension and deleted a tooling – took 2 minutes tops – no charge!
Of course a lot depends on the scope of the change. For instance, if you wanted to make the enclosure bigger or smaller – then it may be a good idea to run another prototype. Changing the size of an enclosure changes almost everything else inside and we would rather make sure you have a good unit before we make 100 of them. However, if there is a component change or moving something from here to there, we can normally accomplish this easily. If we have the component or you can send the component that has changed, then we can test fit here before we send you units you cannot use.
Until next time,
Scott