Metlase, a joint venture between Rolls-Royce and Unipart, designed and manufactured a stainless steel tool with a diameter of 4 meters and a capacity of 2 meters in height.
The company met the challenges of major aerospace customers and completed the production receipt and delivery in just one month, which was 150 days faster than the customer’s original expectation.
“Typical conventional tooling approaches often take a massive block of material and then you machine away the bits you don’t want to form the tool,” explained Richard Gould, Business Development Manager at Metlase. “We take a different stance, basically laser cutting sheet metal, usually stainless steel or titanium, into lots of different elements. These are then joined together to form the tool using our very own manufacturing technique, removing the need to weld them together and the distortion that usually comes with this approach.”
He continued: “Everything is controlled ‘in-house’ at Metlase and that’s another big benefit as we control the entire process. We have all the technology we require, we have the engineering talent and we are always adding to our standardized feature library and parametric modeling system that will allow us to instantly access formula for creating tools for specific applications. All of this means we are able to work with customers to reduce lead times to weeks if not days, meaning the client has more time to iterate their component design before signing off the tooling. As well as the time saving, our service can also help mitigate massive financial costs associated with last-minute changes.”
Initially, people became interested in the automotive and aviation industries, but the company is now looking at other fields, such as construction and medical, in order to find quick tools and their benefits. Richard concluded: “The Metlase method means that the design engineer you talk to first will actually supervise the entire project, usually completing the tool manufacturing by yourself. Unlike traditional processes, we can also use very little The cost of developing prototype tools to test ideas relatively quickly. This is also a vital lifeline for companies looking to increase production or quickly create new production units.”