Urethane Casting Benefits

The COVID-19 crisis has severely impacted the supply chain, most notably resulting in a significant increase in the amount of time it takes to complete the manufacturing process. Lead times are longer than ever, demands on capacity are increasing, and product development professionals are struggling to meet pressing deadlines. Long lead times are not only frustrating, they can also have a severe impact on your design cycle, and ultimately, your bottom line. Urethane casting is one way to help overcome the lead time problem, without having to cut corners on quality or compromise your design specs. Here are a few reasons why urethane casting can help get your products to market faster:

Time Savings

One major advantage of urethane casting is the time savings over other manufacturing methods. Hard tooling in particular can take many months to complete. Tools take a long time to be cut precisely to spec, not to mention the additional time needed to retool or completely start over when a mistake is discovered in the design process.

Master Patterns

The tooling needed for urethane casting is created much more quickly (sometimes in a matter of days) via a master pattern. This allows product development professionals to have parts in hand much sooner, and also provides additional time for QA, fit checks and necessary revisions.

Cost Savings

Metal tools are expensive to create. From the machine time, to the actual cost of the material itself, the cost can quickly add up. Urethane material (and the material used to create the molds/master patterns) is much less expensive. In addition to drastically cutting down on lead times, urethane casting can provide a much more cost-effective method for prototyping and short run production.

Whether you need prototypes for a fit check or a low-volume production run, urethane casting offers a welcome solution to the lead time crisis. UMI’s experienced team of manufacturing professionals stands ready to deliver high-quality cast urethane parts quickly, saving you time and getting your parts to market faster. While cast urethanes are our specialty, we also offer CNC and 3D printed parts to support fit-checks, design reviews, focus groups and appearance models. Our goal is to provide turn-key, rapid manufacturing solutions to Product Development Professionals.