The company
PTI Tech is a global contract manufacturer of precision-engineered injection-molded components specializing in engineering polymers and metal injection molding (MIM). In this process, metal powder is mixed with a binder and injected into a mold cavity under high pressure. Debinding and sintering the “green parts” produces high-quality, high-density metal parts.
PTI Tech specializes in the manufacture of complex, high-precision parts for critical sectors such as aerospace, defense, medical devices, and high-end industrial applications.
The challenge
PTI subjects its customers' parts to a DFM (Design for Manufacturability) process to ensure that they can be manufactured cost-effectively using either plastic or metal injection molding.
A major elevator manufacturer used plastic-overmolded button covers and stainless steel button housings. Cleaning with strong disinfectants caused the plastic threads to become damaged and break. The manufacturer urgently needed to redesign the button housing and cover and wanted to manufacture all components entirely from durable 316L stainless steel.
The company needed to bring these parts to market quickly in order to retrofit elevators that were already installed. The button housing design consisted of a pair of flexible retaining tabs that had to be thin enough to be bent by hand but retain their shape without breaking.
PTI Tech sought a manufacturing technology that could produce a series of parts that were market-ready for the customer to use for testing and design validation. The finish and physical properties of these parts had to be comparable to MIM-produced parts so that PTI Tech could finalize its design before building the tools for production.
“The shrinkage and density we achieve with binder jetting parts are very similar to those of parts made using MIM processes.”
– Gaetano Mariella, CTO
The solution
Metal binder jetting and metal powder injection molding have several similarities: According to a report by PTI Tech, both are sintered metal powder processes that produce parts with similar mechanical properties. They also exhibit similar shrinkage behavior during sintering.
PTI Tech chose Markforged's binder jetting to quickly produce a series of elevator button prototypes for the customer to test. According to Neal Goldenberg, President of PTI Tech, the parts exhibit a similar percentage of shrinkage during sintering, as well as comparable density and surface finish to parts produced using metal powder injection molding. The part met the requirements and matched the MIM part in many areas. The flexible tabs and several thin-walled components met PTI's durability requirements and ensured that they would not break off during on-site installation.
Without metal binder jetting, PTI Tech would have had to build numerous tools for the injection molding process prior to production in order to test a range of tab thicknesses and other design variables for the parts. This would have taken up to 16 weeks, as a new tool had to be manufactured for each iteration, Goldenberg emphasizes. With the help of metal binder jetting, PTI Tech was able to carry out a careful DFM process and still deliver several batches of 275-300 pre-production parts to the customer for review in just four weeks without tools.
The customer's developers were able to perform functional and destructive testing. They were also able to analyze the structural performance of the prototypes and optimize their aesthetics and dimensions without investing in tools. Once the design was finalized, the customer was able to order the MIM tools with greater confidence.
Huge cost savings
PTI Tech estimates that the use of binder jetting to produce functional prototypes and the elimination of these steps has resulted in six-figure cost savings and a reduction in development time of several months. This rapid development process enabled the manufacturer to replace the parts in the installed elevators within the expected time frame. It is further proof of PTI Tech's reputation for satisfying customers with high-quality parts in short timeframes. In addition, this strengthened the customer's confidence in PTI's ability to deliver parts for production and meet tight deadlines.
The future
Many of PTI Tech's orders are complex parts that require extensive consideration and comprehensive problem solving. The ability to quickly develop a series of market-ready MIM prototypes allows the team to test ideas and iterate solutions faster than when machining parts or manufacturing MIM tools for pre-production.
This process also gives the PTI Tech team more confidence in the design of its molds before cutting steel for the manufacture of a production tool, while reducing risk.
Because metal binder jetting can provide PTI Tech's customers with pre-production parts so quickly, PTI Tech is confident that it will soon replace machining for prototyping for many of its customers. Binder jetting can also be used for limited bridge production, allowing customers to begin assembly while the tools for production are being manufactured. In addition, it can be used to manufacture end-use components in smaller quantities where the cost of metal powder injection molding tools is too high.
Given the time and cost savings achieved by the elevator button project, PTI has no doubt that binder jetting offers a significant competitive advantage for PTI Tech and its customers.
Elevator button assembled, machine-made, and sintered. (From left to right.)
— Neal Goldenberg, President
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