Page 1 of 1

Thermoplastics prototyping?

Posted: 13 Aug 2011, 13:50
by PIE-R
Looking for a manufacturer of small bespoke thermoplastic parts, I know several companies which produce thermoplastic materials, but none which will take a CAD drawing and ship me a part. Does anyone have suggestions of a company to go thou for small run prototyping, application is valvetrain/timing.

Re: Thermoplastics prototyping?

Posted: 13 Aug 2011, 14:08
by marcush.
Don´t understand your problem here.As I understand this is an injection molding application as you need fully functional parts and rp parts production is limited to a small range of materials and surface finishes .
A small part needs only small tooling ..so if it´s not too intricate a part the tooling cost will not brake your neck and tool shops specialising in injection molding dies are around galore ...

Re: Thermoplastics prototyping?

Posted: 14 Aug 2011, 23:30
by PlatinumZealot
PIE-R wrote:Looking for a manufacturer of small bespoke thermoplastic parts, I know several companies which produce thermoplastic materials, but none which will take a CAD drawing and ship me a part. Does anyone have suggestions of a company to go thou for small run prototyping, application is valvetrain/timing.
you can search for CNC machining companies, or rapid prototyping companies. Nylon is a thermoplastic, but it is also used a lot in rapid protyping. For the CNC machining you can just machine your part out from a block of whatever material you want.

Re: Thermoplastics prototyping?

Posted: 03 Nov 2011, 16:26
by ScudTop
Pie R

I use a company called Solid Concepts in Texas. They have made carbon fiber reinforced nylon intake manifolds for me that we have actually run on both the dyno and on race cars.

You will need to provide them with a "step" file of the part that you need and they can usually produce it in 24-48 hours.

Paul