Assembly aids, error-proofing fixtures, inspection tools, and operator tooling in engineering thermoplastics. The small tooling that makes a line run right — printed in days at a price that finally justifies building it.
Every plant has a backlog of small tooling that never gets built: the assembly aid that would kill a recurring defect, the drill template that would cut a rework loop, the guide that would stop operators scratching a finished surface, the grip that would take the strain out of a thousand-rep shift. Not because the value isn’t there — because at toolroom pricing, small improvements don’t justify the queue. At FDM pricing, the backlog clears.
An aid that makes the wrong assembly physically impossible doesn’t save money once. Kill one recurring defect, and the same printed part earns its keep again every shift the line runs.
A kaizen suggestion that takes six weeks to tool dies in the queue. One that shows up on the line Thursday gets the next suggestion made.
On painted, polished, or customer-visible surfaces, a plastic contact face isn’t the budget option — it’s the better tool.
These are published engineering case studies from the industrial FDM literature — their numbers, not ours. We cite them because the application is proven; we build the same classes of tooling in the same classes of material, locally.
Wheel-protection lug-nut aid: guides the gun onto all bolts without scuffing the wheel. ~$925 → ~$24 per tool (97%). Tool development 56 days → 10. The plant-wide program it seeded brought 93% of external tooling in-house — roughly $290,000 a year saved.
400 spindle adapters after a customer-driven line change: quoted at $47,000 and 1,200 machinist-hours in-house, printed instead. 86% cost saving, 90 days of lead time back, ROI on the printer in six months.
Door-seal assembly jig. 150 lb → 28 lb for operator handling. ROI in 12 months on cycle savings alone.
Guides, nests, and go-only geometries that make the wrong assembly physically impossible — VW's lug-nut aid is the class example.
Go/no-go gauges, check fixtures, CMM nests, and surrogate parts for repeatable presentation.
Hole patterns and bond-line guides to your spec, with press-fit steel bushings where the operation demands them.
Grips, handles, torque-tool guides, and lift-assist interfaces shaped to the operator and the part — the cheapest injury prevention you can buy.
Kitting trays, shadow boards, point-of-use part presentation shaped to your exact parts, not foam cutouts.
Paint masks, marking jigs, and surface-protection covers for finished or customer-visible parts.
Standard work runs PA12-CF and PA6-CF; polycarbonate where impact and clarity matter; PPS-CF where chemistry or heat gets serious. Anything bolted or clamped gets metal in the bolt path — heat-set inserts and compression limiters — so preload runs through steel, not creeping polymer.
And we’ll tell you no when polymer is the wrong answer: long cantilevers under sustained load, precision reference surfaces, anything where steel’s stiffness is the actual product. A tool that fails on your line costs us more than the order.
The items that pencil out at our price will surprise you. Send a STEP file, a sketch, or a photo of the problem on the line — we’ll come back with price and lead time, typically same day.