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A partnership between a metal fabricator and a customer is not built on just one positive experience. It’s an ongoing commitment of working together to fulfill current product needs and identifying opportunities for improvement.
One example that stretches across several years is our custom metal fabrication services for a medical device company. The focus of our custom metal fabrication: electrical connectors.
Using Custom Metal Fabrication for Electrical Connectors
The story began in 2009, when Switzer was first contacted by a mechanical engineer at the organization. The engineer was initially looking for help in the custom metal fabrication of quick-turn prototypes for an electrical connector.
While the feasibility of the design was an initial concern, our custom metal fabrication processes—chemical etching, forming and heat treating, in this case—were able to meet the needs of the application.
Two designs were initially trialed with prototype runs (500-1000 pieces per run), and two more variations were trialed shortly after. Throughout these runs, different material thicknesses were tested, and design modifications were made based on subsequent findings.
After customer testing and additional quality testing to ensure that critical-to-performance features would be maintained, the electrical connector design was finalized.
Meeting Growing Customer Needs
Over the next few years, production-volume quantities began to increase as the device gained success, notoriety and acceptance. (It was also around this time that a discovered change in heat-treatment processing produced a performance improvement that became a new requirement.)
With this growth in production, our custom metal fabrication team was able to help the customer focus on new initiatives around the product. In 2015, for instance, specialty packaging was developed to better match the company’s needs. During that same time frame, additional processing once performed by the customer in-house was transitioned over to Switzer after a successful trial.
The fabricated custom metal parts were eventually moved to full high-volume production, and the process was validated extensively for more than a year. After the customer was acquired in 2017, Switzer’s work was transitioned to a major medical device manufacturer as the product is rolled out on a global scale.
At Switzer, our custom metal fabrication services are centered around the complete picture. While keeping your needs and budget in mind, we ensure that your precision metal parts are designed and manufactured for repeatability and scalability. This same experience and expertise is applied to helping you continuously improve your products well into the future.
Let Switzer help with your custom metal fabrication needs. It all starts here.
