Last month, the Society of Plastics Engineers’ held their annual Thermoforming Conference, where clients, vendors and industry leaders come together for innovative and informative thermoforming workshops and sessions.

One of the best parts of the event is the Parts Competition, which showcases the latest advances in thermoforming design and applications. The best parts receive awards, and we were thrilled to win a silver award this year for a multi-part medical device we made for a client in southern California.

A bit more about the (award-winning, sorry we had to) part:

After developing prototypes that used urethane casting to create the enclosure panels, a medical device manufacturer client was ready to move to mid-scale production. But they quickly realized that the urethane casting process would mean limited manufacturing capacity, high cost per part and could yield issues with consistency from part to part. We had a solution: pressure forming.

By switching from urethane casting to pressure forming, our client was able to significantly lower costs, improve manufacturing speed, increase durability and guarantee part-to-part repeatability while simultaneously planning for future increases in demand and capacity.

We worked closely with the client to reduce the total number of losses, adding in undercut features for rigidity and improved fit, and making other alterations to lower manufacturing and assembly costs and improving aesthetics.

We’re grateful for the recognition (including the shout out in Plastics News) and are gunning for the gold next year!