Molds and tooling, quoted with the parts they make.

It depends on the process, the size of the part, its geometry, the number of cavities or stations and whether the tool is aluminum or hardened steel. In the quote the tooling is its own line, apart from the price per part, so you see what the tool costs and what each part costs. The tool is a one-time cost: it does not change with volume, so the more parts come off it, the less each one costs.

The tool is built for your part and it is yours; in the quote it appears as its own cost. It stays and runs in our shops and is not shipped, so every run comes from the tool you approved. If you need the terms on moving it, ask us before you accept the quote.

A mold shapes molten or semi-molten material — plastic in injection molding, metal alloy in die casting — inside a cavity. A stamping die cuts, punches and forms sheet metal between a punch and a die in one hit. A fixture doesn't shape anything — it holds a part in a fixed position so a separate process (machining, welding, inspection) can repeat accurately. All three are 'tooling': fixed, reusable hardware that makes the next hundred, or the next million, parts come out the same as the first.

It depends on the process. Progressive stamping dies typically pay for themselves from tens of thousands of units, because the die itself is expensive to cut. Injection and die-casting tooling can pay off at lower volumes — sometimes a few thousand units — because a simpler aluminum or lower-cavitation tool costs much less to build. We run the actual math against your part and volume before recommending steel, and the break-even calculator on this page gives you a first idea.

Die casting injects molten metal alloy — aluminum, magnesium or zinc — into a steel mold; injection molding does the same with molten plastic resin. Both use a similar tooling concept (a cavity, a cooling cycle, an ejection system), but die casting is for parts that need to be metal, for strength, conductivity or heat dissipation a plastic part can't match.

Usually not directly — a prototype tool (aluminum, lower cavitation) is built to validate the part cheaply and quickly, while a production tool (hardened steel, higher cavitation) is a separate, more expensive build sized for the full run. The part design validated on the prototype tool carries over; the tool itself typically doesn't.

Aluminum alloys (AlSi10Mg, AlSi12, AlSi9Cu3 among others), magnesium (AM60B, AZ91D) and zinc/Zamak alloys (ZA-8, Zamak 3, Zamak 5) — picked by the strength, weight and cost your part needs.

A progressive die moves the sheet metal strip through several stations in one press stroke — cutting, piercing and forming the part in stages as it advances. Building a die with that many stations is expensive, which is why it's typically only worth cutting once your order is in the tens of thousands of units; below that, laser cutting and bending usually wins on total cost.

Send the 3D model as a STEP file and the 2D drawing as a PDF; a mutual NDA is in place before you upload any file. Between 24 and 48 hours later you get a price per part with the lead time of each one, and the tooling shown apart. If the part can’t be made as drawn, we tell you the change it needs before anything is made.

Then we say so before any steel is cut. If your volume doesn't justify a mold, a die-casting tool or a stamping die, we'll recommend CNC, sheet metal or 3D printing instead — and revisit tooling later if your volume grows into it.