US Energy OEM: Silicone-Mold Prototypes Skip Hard Tooling for Overmolded Cable
A US energy management company needed a handful of physical samples to validate a complex overmolded power cable design before investing in production tooling.
Background
A US energy management company needed initial physical samples to validate a complex custom overmolded power cable design before committing to production tooling.
The Challenge
Standard production molds for overmolded cable assemblies are costly and slow to build, creating a barrier for early-stage NPI validation that needed only a handful of units.
Our Solution
We proposed a rapid prototyping approach using silicone molds instead of hard tooling. We allocated 50 pieces of raw material to produce an initial batch of 5 sample units for testing.
The Result
Functional samples were delivered within a 3-4 week turnaround, including 2 weeks for silicone mold creation. The customer proceeded with physical testing and design iteration without any upfront hard-tooling investment.