Toolcraft's Design Tips to Save you Money

Getting things right at the design stage can save you a lot of time and money - here are our top tips for good & cost saving product design!

1. Tell your designer as much as you can about the product you need.
   That way, all features can be taken into account from the very first, so you avoid the need for partial redesign later on.
• what environment is it going to be in? In or outside, hot or cold? Contact with chemicals?
• what sort of load is your product expected to bear?
• does it need protection from ultraviolet light?
• does your product need to be flame retardant?
• do you need a few or a few million?
2. Don't tie yourself down to a very specific material.
   Instead of specifying, for example, Lexan 500R, specify 10% Glass Filled Polycarbonate. That way, your plastic product manufacturer is not forced to go to the same supplier time and time again and can source the cheapest supplier with the fastest delivery times for you - check our plastic materials guide for help.
3. Once the product is designed, have some models done to test fit and function.
   This can bring any problems to light before mould tool manufacturing even starts and helps you avoid costly tool adaptations later on. Toolcraft can help with SLA, SLS & cnc machined models.
4. Ask a Toolcraft Designer to design your product for you!
   We agree a fixed price and lead time for our design service - you won't be faced with suddenly mounting design house costs - and as our designers are tool engineers with more than 30 years of experience, they will foresee potential pitfalls and will come up with cost saving ideas for your product. You can also download our free product design brief here.

Local farmer James Keyser had a great idea for a horse feeding system - Toolcraft had the expertise to make it reality. James visited us armed with a welded fabrication to make his 'Hayball'. Our designers, taking the environment and use of the product into account, helped him redesign the product.
As horses are playful and very strong, we added spikes to the arms of the starshape, to make it very difficult for the rubber tubes to be pulled off. The plastic used for the hayball is a muted green to avoid unwanted horse-attention, and it is a very strong impact-modified plastic, to withstand biting from the most curious ones.
Rubber tubes are slotted onto the arms of the starshape, resulting in a ballshaped hayfeeder, which is much quicker and easier to fill than a traditional haynet. As it's suspended from a wall it also provides amusement for stabled horses & helps prevent horse cough. Read More Toolcraft Design Case Studies