Design Tips

Get quick advice on creating plastic, metal, and elastomeric parts for injection molding, CNC machining, 3D printing, and sheet metal fabrication. Designing with manufacturability in mind can accelerate production time and reduce production costs.

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Popular Topics

Cost Reduction
Making small design changes can often save you time and money.
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Defects
Design defects happen sometimes. It’s important to know in advance how to avoid the most difficult ones.
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Basic Design
Sometimes you need quick confirmation about elements of your designs and the best advice is to go back to basics.
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Complex Design
Get past the basics and delve into the deeper questions of how to model parts with complicated geometries and features.
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Plastic
We stock more than 130 plastics across our molding, machining, and 3D printing services. Each has its own benefits and quirks. These design tips will get you ahead of any issues.
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Metal
From dangerously sharp edges to corrosion, there’s a lot to think about when designing metal parts. Learn how to avoid the big problems with these design tips.
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Featured Design Tips

Black vapor smoothed parts

Why You Should Use Vapor Smoothing on 3D-Printed Parts

Vapor smoothing uses chemical vapors to smooth and remove surface impurities from 3D-printed parts.
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Plastic part

Solving Wall Thickness Issues in Molded Parts

Address design change requests related to slot widths and wall thicknesses for molded parts.
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Brass part

Finding the Right Corrosion-resistant Metals

Parts turning to piles of rust? These materials can help you avoid the scourge of corrosion.
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A quality technician examines a plastic part

Plastics that Meet Medical Needs

Safety and longevity are paramount with plastic medical parts. Which work best for your application?
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Glass Transition Temperature of Polymers

Glass Transition Temperature of Polymers

Glass transition temperature (Tg) affects moldability, strength, elasticity, transparency, and more.
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UV Resistant Plastics

UV Resistant Plastics

This design tip evaluates UV-resistant plastic options available for injection molding, 3D printing, and CNC machining.
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Video Tips

 

Designing for Moldability

See how designing with moldability in mind can help you avoid manufacturing advisories in quoting, save you development time, and reduce production costs.

 

Explore the 3D-Printed Hexahedron 

The Hexahedron combines several 3D printing materials and technologies to teach you all about additive manfuacturing. The design aid will help you avoid common pitfalls and help us make better parts for you.

 

Improve Your Molded Parts With the Design Cube

The design cube demonstrated in this video shows several design challenges—and solutions—for injection-molded parts.

Design Essentials

We've compiled our most essential manufacturing tips into three downloadable design guides on 3D printing, machining, and molding. Each looks at improving manufacturability, reducing production costs through design, material selection, and more.